[Pacific Content] – Luke, Harry Charles.

[Luke Pamphlets and Essays] Extremely interesting Sammelband with 18 items of which are: twelve (12) pamphlets [Omnibus-Letters] on the British Pacific Colonies including very rare, printed (!) personal and confidential situation-reports from Fiji (with at least one manuscript-annotation by Luke), together with five (5) essays and news paper-articles by Luke, hidden in a pocket to the rear of the Volume / Also loosely included one (1) pamphlet on Malta / Cyprus: “Discrittione delle cose di Cipro, con le ragioni in favore, o contra diverse openioni, et delle provisioni, che erano necessarie per quel Regno”. – See detailed list and some confidental content mentioned below.

[This item is part of the Sir Harry Luke – Archive / Collection]. Fiji / Malta, Government Printing Office etc., 1932 – 1943. 26 cm x 17,5 cm Original Softcover pamphlets bound in red cloth. Harry Luke’s (Lukach) personal copy. Very good condition.

Includes various writings of Sir Harry Luke for newspapers, journals, letters, speeches etc., c.100 pages bound in red hardcover.

This Sammelband includes the following eighteen (18) reports and pamphlets:

1. Harry Luke: Printed Situation-Report from Government House, Suva, Fiji, 30th July, 1939, (4 pages):
In this first Situation Report, Luke tells us that within 4 months he has been to: New Zealand, Australia, Nez Zealand again, Fiji, New Caledonia (French), New Hebrides (Anglo-French Condominium), British Solomon Islands Protectorate , Nauru (Australian Mandated Territory), Gilbert Islands, Ellice Islands, Rotuma, Fiji

2. Harry Luke: Printed Situation-Report: “Personal and Confidential” [from Fiji] 12th September, 1940, 4 pages with manuscript annotation/correction by Luke :

In this second Situation Report, Luke speaks about his journey in the R.C.S. “Viti” to the New Hebrides and New Caledonia. The “Viti” had arrived from Hong Kong on the 14th of August 1940….″I left Suva oin the 22nd August and gave passage to Garvey and his family, Garvey being about to take up his new post as Assistant to the British Resident Commissioner in the New Hebrides. Macpherson, Acting Medical Authority and Martin, Comptroller of Customs, Fiji, also accompanied me, with Reid as A.D.C. On arrival at Vila on the 25th [of August, 1940] I got down to things with Blandy and his French colleague, Monsieur Henri Sautot….The great majority of the French people in the New Hebrides, both officials and unofficials, in Vila and in the Districts, are pro-de Gaulle and pro-British….″

3. Harry Luke: Printed “Personal and Private” Situation-Report from Government House, Suva, Fiji, December, 1940:

″During the latter part of November duty took me in the R.C.S. (Royal Colonial Ship) “Viti” to Samoa, then to the Kingdom of Tonga and lastly to the Southern Lau Islands, the easternmost part of the Fiji Group”. Luke then continues: “This short account in diary form from my cruise in a part of the world as yet untouched by the Horrors of actual warfare may on that account have an air of unreality about it, but you may for that very reason be able to wade through it as a change from the grim reading of your daily papers”.

Luke writes on 10 pages in this report about his trip from 11th November, 1940 to 27th of November 1940 in wonderful detail about this Samoan-Tongan cruise: Struck good weather for the first time since I have been afloat in the “Viti” and we had a lovely day in the Koro Sea…..arrived 6 am at the islet of Wailangilala (″the beautiful empty water”) on which stands Fiji’s most important Lighthouse….etc. etc. etc.

4. Harry Luke: Printed “Private and Personal” Situation-Report from Government House, Suva, Fiji, June, 1941:

″I have recently returned from an inspection in the Solomon Islands, which kept me away from mails for some weeks. As my duties took me to some rarely visited islands and brought me into contact with some curious and almost unknown peoples, you may care to see this copy of my diary of the tour: [Luke then goes on to include 12 pages with diary entries from his trip:

″26th April – After unexpectedly good weather arrived at Tulagi about 1 pm. At the official landing I presented to the Matron of the Hospital, Miss Cleaver, the insignia of a Serving Sister of the Order of St.John of Jerusalem….went out for a day’s fishing, North Island treating me as well as it did two years ago…Went in the “Tulagi” to Savo, an island of Hot Springs and the principal haunt in the B.S.I.P. of the megapode…..after a quick launch, re-ebarked in the flying-boat for the next District of Gizo….″

″Most of us, when we speak of a ‘black man’, are using , consciously or unconsciously, a figure of speech, for the majority of those to whom we refer as “black” are really coffee-or, at the darkest, chocolate-coloured. But in the case of the natives of Shortlands, Gizo and Choiseul the designation ‘black man’ is the literal truth; in fact, it is difficult to visualize such intense blackness as that with which they are pigmented. They are more than black, they are positively blue-black. In the afternoon I had a large meeting with the Gizo people on the football ground and was given specimens of the native money of this region, which takes form of large cut out of the shell of the giant clam……This money, unlike that of Malaita, seems to be dying outand some of the natives were in favour of its active revival” etc. etc.

5. Harry Luke: Printed “Private and Personal” Situation-Report from Government House, Suva, Fiji, 12th January, 1942:

″I append an account from my diary of my recent visit to the Phoenix Islands, perhaps the last cruise to the Territories of the Western Pacific High Commission….In case of the Phoenix Islands…they are eight tiny lonely atolls politically incorporated since 1937 in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony…. / “In March, 1938, the British at Canton were joined by a party sent by the United States Government, who also occupied Enderbury; and in April 1939 the British and United States Governments signed an Agreement for the joint occupation of Canton and Enderbury, to run for 50 years….”

[Pearl Harbour: 6th of December, 1941]:

Luke follows up with diary entries from 19th November 1941 and ends with 6th of December 1941: We took off at 6 a.m. and landed at Suva at 3 pm after a comfortable journey during most of which we flew at 11000 feet….the only land we saw before approaching the Fiji Group was Futuna….the next day (Eastern Time) came the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour – the “Honolulu incident” as its perpetrators will probably prefer to call it – and the name of this ocean became not only climatically but politically a misnomer″

6. H.E.Sir Harry Luke – “Empire Address to Fiji and the Wesytern Pacific – 1940 – 1941 – 1942 and in Malta [Speech to the Overseas League], 1935” – 21 pages

7. Sir Harry Luke: “Confidential – Printed for private circulation only”:

″British Pacific Colonies in Peace and War”

Address by Sir Harry Luke at a Meeting of members of the Empire Parliamentary Association, held at the House of Commons, Westminster, on 1st of December, 1942. with The Rt. Hon. M. Harold Macmillan (Under-Secrretaro of State for the Colonies) in the Chair” – London, 1942 – 20 pages.

Very interesting, confidential, pamphlet in which Harold Macmillan introduces Luke: “It is my great pleasure to preside over this meeting in which Sir Harry Luke is going to speak to us about the British Pacific Colonies. I must explain to him that at meetings under the auspices of the Empire Parliamentary Association a shorthand writer is present…..It would be an impertinence on my part to tell the audience what they all know. They know Sir Harry’s distinguished record in the Colonial Service. But as well as a very distinguished administrator he is also a master of the highest culture and learning…….Perhaps one thought we would like to have the long service Sir Harry Luke has given – I think eight years in all as Lieutenant-Governor of Malta, which he left only in 1938. I think the story of Malta now must give him great satisfaction and pride. Since 1938 he has been Governor of Fiji and High Commissioner for the Western Pacific and he has done splendid work both, before and during the war. He has now been succeeded by a younger man and I know he has left everything in very good shapefor his successor. Without ado, I will ask Sir Harry to give us his talk.

Luke then sets out to give an extremely interesting and extensive insight into “The British Colonial Empire in the Pacific” and what it means to be acolonial officer in this part of the world. Luke talks about the “Cession and Population of Fiji”, “The Fijians – King Thakombau’s Club”, “Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony”, “Pacific Races”, “Kingdom of Tonga”, “H.M.Queen Salote”, “Pitcairn, Solomons, the Pacific Condominia” and Luke then goes into a chapter called “Criticisms of British Colonial Empire” in which he allows everyone to learn about his rationale of colonialism: “I cannot help feeling that some of the critics (I do not say all) of our Colonial Empire have scarcely the equipment of knowledge or experience of our Colonial equipment of knowledge or experience of our Colonial Administration to carry conviction. As one who had heard something of this type of criticism before leaving the Pacific, especially after the Fall of Malaya, I should like to say how heartened I was on returning home to hear what the Home Secretary had to say at the end of October and what the Prime Minister had to say in his Mansion House speech…., because that is just the sort of thing we in the Colonial Service at the back of beyond have been wanting and hoping to hear……″

[Luke then marked/highlighted in pencil the following section of his speech in his working copy of the pamphlet: “May I also be allowed to say this: The art (if it is an art) of under-statement is not understood or appreciated on the other side of the world, where people have not learned – nor in fact have they any ambition – to express their thoughts and emotions in half-tones. When there are only reported magnificent achievements of the troops from the Dominions to this country, that is a form of modesty which may degenerate into Quixotism and is in any case liable to be misunderstoodin the New World. I am glad that latterly this tendency seems to have given way to that of bringing into proper relief what has been done by the troops from the United Kingdom….″

Luke continues with talking about “Pacific Islander’s war effort” and then he talks about “Post-war reconstruction”:

[″That cannot go on !”]:

″A word, in conclusion, about what may be expected after the war. Parliament should be prepared for demands from Europeans, more particularly in Fiji, for a greater measure of self-government both in the Legislature and in municipal affairs. Another effect of the war will be a change in manners on the part of Natives coming into contact with troops from outside, sometimes with little experience of Natives, and generally with more money in their pockets than they know how to spend…….Now, what should be expected of US ? Let me quote the words of Sir William Jowitt to which I listened in the House of Commons just before coming into this room, when he was speaking on post-war reconstruction in this country: ‘Finance must no longer be our master’. My I apply those words to what should be done after the war in those very poor territories, especially the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, the Solomon Islands and the New Hebrides, whose revenues in each case run into only five figures and who have been expected hitherto to live more or less on their own non-existant fat ? That cannot go on. The important settlement scheme for moving the surplus population of the overcrowded Gilberts to certain of the Phoenix Islands, already so successfully begun, will have to be continued, and these very poor Groups will have to be put on their feet”.

Luke closes by talking about the “Suva Central Medical School”, which he calls “the most beneficient institution that British Rule has conferred on the Islands of the Pacific”.

Luke then faces a Q & A from several members of the Epire Parliamentary Association in which for example John Parker, Labour M.P.for Romford in Essex asks Luke:

″Are all these People now on the increase and how far does literacy exist in all the Groups ?

Luke answers:

″Most of them are on the increase in the British Islands. In the Marquesas, which belong to the French, they were so decimated in the last century by opium sold under licence by the local French Government and so forth, and so generally depressed, that they lost all desire to perpetuate themselves. They lost their joie de vivre, lost the will to beget and raise children and they are vanishing…..″

Vote of Thanks by “The Rt.Hon. Leslie Hore-Belisha, Independent from Devonshire”:

″It is fairly late, and I am sure everybody here would prefer that the time should have been taken up by Sir Harry Luke himself rather than in oration of thanks to him for his very admirable address. It is in one respect unfortunate that the House of Commons should have decided to create a new world this afternoon [The House was discussing post-war reconstruction in the Debate on the Address in reply to the King’s Speech] at the very time when Sir Harry was speaking about this actual world of romance and adventure. His story has entranced us all. No millenium that we could build here after the war could equal in attractiveness the part of the globe over which he has been presiding.

I would like to say something about Sir Harry. As a subaltern in the last war, when I visited Cyprus on an epoch-making mission [″During the First World War he (Leslie Hore-Belisha) joined the British Army and served in France, Flanders and Salonika and finished the war with the rank of major in the Army Service Corps” (Wikipedia)], I sought out the best-informed and the most instructed of all officials, and a very elderly gentleman called Mr.Harry Luke was brought within my acquaintance.

Many years later, when I went to Malta, I founmd a very much younger gentleman called Sir Harry Luke. Now we meet this very buoyant and genial Governor, who must have partaken that Elixir of Life which the late King of Tonga seems to have consumed with so much advantage both for himself, his descendants and for the world…..to see Sir Harry in person and to hear him speak is to be persuaded that our Colonies are well administered.″

8. Sir Harry Luke: “Tonga : The Last Kingdom of the South Seas” – 6 pages with four photographs on two pages, showing The Queen proceeding to open her Parliament, the Queen’s Jubilee-dance by Girls dressed in Tapa, Tonga : Preparing Banquet for the Queen’s Jubilee / Tonga : Postmarks on Tin Can Mail Letter / (This Essay was reprinted from The Scottish Geographical Magazine, Vol.59, October 1943)

9. Sir Harry Luke: “British Rule in the Pacific” Lecture given on February 3, 1943, Sir Angus Gillan in the Chair, 9 pages

10. Sir Harry Luke: “The British Colonial Empire in the Pacific” 12 pages with photographs and a minor manuscript correction by Luke.
One of the photographs shows King Thakombau’s War Club, presented by him to Queen Victoria at the cession of the Colony and now the Mace of the Legislative Council of Fiji / One photograph showing “The Governor, Sir Harry Luke, about to open the Great Council of Chiefs at Taveuni Plain in 1938” / One photograph showing the Queen of Tonga and one photograph showing “A House in Guadalcanal (Solomon Island Architecture) / The address by Luke is followed by a very interesting Discussion in which Luke answers questions about architecture and also why pigs are indigenous in Polynesia to which Luke answers his speculation is that the “Pacific Pig” is a “descendant of those brought by Captain Cook and the other navigators”.

11. Sir Harry Luke: The British Colonial Empire in the Pacific / “British Pacific Islands” by Sir Harry Luke. 13 pages (c.1943)

12. Sir Harry Luke: “The Western Pacific and the War” – 4 pages, in: “United Empire – Journal of the Royal Empire Society – Vol. XXXIV. No.1 – 1943.

13. Sir Harry Luke: [Cyprus] – “Discrittione delle cose di Cipro, con le ragioni in favore, o contra diverse openioni, et delle provisioni, che erano necessarie per quel Regno” [The Institute of Historical Research – Malta – Bulletin No.5]. Malta, Government Printing Office, 1932. [This pamphlet is loosely inserted].

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Newspaper – Clippings and Articles by Sir Harry Luke OR mentioning Sir Harry Luke (e.g. statements by him):

1. “Guadalcanar” [or “Guadalcanal”] – article in the paper “The Listener”, 29 October 1942, under the Headline “Did you hear that ?″
- Sir Harry Luke gives a short History of the Island and the fact that the American forces landed and evicted the Japanese etc

2. “Falcon Island” [mentioned in an article under the Headline “Did you hear that” under the section “The Disappearing Island”] – article in the paper “The Listener”, May 8, 1952

3. “The Ellice Islands” by Sir Harry Luke – – article in “The Trident”, possibly in 1943, pages 262 – 263 of the magazine.

4. “A Far-Flung Domain in the Southern Seas – Mixed Races and Governments” – by Sir Harry Luke [article under the series: “Islands of the Pacific”] – Lengthy Article in “The Times” on 15th of December 1942.

5. “For Private Circulation only” – Sir Harry Luke : “The British Pacific Islands and the War” – Original Mimeographed Lecture (Talk) given by Sir Harry Luke at Chatham House, “The Royal Institute of International Affairs”, on December 30th, 1942, 11 pages with a highlighting in pencil by Luke at the end of the document.

[All these essays are loosley inserted].

• Keywords: British Colonial Administration · British Colonial History · British Foreign Office · British Foreign Policy · British Western Pacific Material / Sir Harry Luke Collection · British Western Pacific Territories · Harry Luke – Pacific (1938 – 1947) · Middle East · Middle Eastern History – Rare · Sir Harry Luke · Sir Harry Luke – Personal Archive of Books and Correspondence · Sir Harry Luke Collection · South Sea Material – Sir Harry Luke Collection
• Language: English
• Inventory Number: 30109AB

EUR 275.000,-- 

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