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Cook Islands
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History
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Though
spread across a vast empty expanse of ocean, the Polynesians knew all
these islands by heart long before the first Europeans came. Rarotonga was
first sighted by Polynesians between 600 and 800 AD. Anthropologists
believe these people may have originated in Peru and migrated to Malaya in
Asia Minor and then to Polynesia. However, local legend says they came
from a land called Avaiki, (place you were before) which refers to Raiatea
in French Polynesia.
The
Spanish explorer Alvaro De Mendana first sighted Pukapuka in 1595. He was
followed by Pedro Fernandez de Quiros who discovered Rakahanga in 1606. In
the 1770s Captain Cook made contact with Atiu, Mangaia, Manuae, Palmerston
and Takutea which he called the Hervey Islands.
In 1789 the Bounty
mutineers visited the bays of several islands on their way to Pitcairn
Island. It was the Russian cartographer, Johann von Krusenstern who named
the Southern Group, The Cook Islands in 1824.
New
Zealand law took effect in 1901 and after pressure from the UN, the group
became a self-governing state in free association with New Zealand on the
4th of August, 1965, a day which is now celebrated as Constitution Day.
Pre-European |
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Cook Islanders are true
Polynesians, the finest seafarers of the vast Pacific, voyagers on frail
canoes who felt at home on the ocean and who travelled across its huge
wastes in search of new lands and new beginnings.The journeys undertaken
by these stone age people in their fragile craft dwarf the voyages of
exploration boasted of by the Portuguese, Spanish, British, Dutch, and
French. Over-population on many of the tiny islands of Polynesia led to
these oceanic migrations.
Tradition has it that this was the reason for the
expedition of Ru, from Tupua'i in French Polynesia, who landed on Aitutaki
and Tangiia, also from French Polynesia, who are believed to have arrived
on Rarotonga around 800 AD. Some evidence for this is that the old road of
Toi, the Ara metua which runs round most of Rarotonga, is believed
to be at least 1200 years old. Similarly, the northern islands were
probably settled by expeditions from Samoa and Tonga. As was common with
most patterns of Polynesian migration, expanding population and pressure
on resources resulted in the ocean-going canoes being stocked with food
and the most venturesome souls being encouraged to set off to look for
more living space. This pattern continues today across most Pacific
islands except that entry restrictions to other lands are nowadays much
more stringent.
Cook Islanders are convinced that the
great Maori migrations to New Zealand began from Rarotonga possibly as
early as the fifth century AD. The most favored location for the starting
point was Ngatangiia on the eastern side of Rarotonga where there is a gap
in the fringing reef at the widest part of the island's lagoon.
Early European contact |
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The written history of
the Cooks began with the sighting of Pukapuka
by the Spaniard Alvaro de Mendana in 1595 followed by a landing on Rakahanga
in 1606 by another Spanish explorer, Pedro Quiros. The British arrived off
Pukapuka in 1764 and named it Danger Island because they could not land.
This was a very active time in Pacific exploration with the British and
French seeking greater prestige as maritime powers.
Between 1773 and 1779 Captain James Cook sighted
and landed on many of the southern group but never came within eyeshot of Rarotonga.
The infamous Captain William Bligh of the Bounty landed on Aitutaki
in 1789 -- he is credited with importing paw paw trees to the Cooks -- and
in April of that year the mutineers of the Bounty appeared off
Rarotonga but, contrary to popular belief, probably did not land. Cook
named the islands the Hervey Islands. In fact, he gave this name to the
first island he discovered -- Manuae. The name "Cook Islands"
was given to the group by the Russians in honor of the great English
navigator when it appeared for the first time on a Russian naval chart in
the early 1800s.
The first official European sighting of Rarotonga
was from the Endeavour in September/October 1813. The first known
landing was by the crew of the Cumberland in 1814. This was a
commercial expedition from Australia and New Zealand and its objective was
to find sandalwood. There was none on Rarotonga. Instead, trouble broke
out between the sailors and the islanders and many were killed on both
sides including the captain's girlfriend, Ann Butchers. She was eaten and
her bones are buried in Muri, close to the site of the sailing club. She
has the distinction of being the only white woman ever to have been killed
and eaten by Pacific islanders!
Missionaries |
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The bluestockings and Rechabites were
next to arrive -- the missionaries. John Williams of the London Missionary
Society landed on Aitutaki in 1821. Williams used Tahitian converts to
carry his message to the Cook Islanders and they took to this task with
great enthusiasm and were extremely successful.
Williams was later killed
and eaten on Erromango in the New Hebrides, now known as Vanuatu, but by
then his work had been followed up and the gospels were well and truly
embedded in the people's psyche.
The missionaries were responsible for the
discontinuation of cannibalism. They also tried hard to fence their island
converts off from the influences of European and American ships' crews and
introduced schools and written language so their charges could read the
scriptures. However, they also supported rigid police supervision over the
people's morals and activities considered by them to be dubious. There are
reports, for example, that in 1900 islands such as Mangaia
had more than 150 "police" spying on and questioning a
population of fewer than 2000 in the name of "morality". An
American voyager to Mangaia in 1863, E.H. Lamont, wrote scathingly of the
lifestyle enjoyed by the first permanent white missionary, Mr G. Gill and
his wife.
He said:"It is evident that missionaries
in the South Seas have an opportunity of acquiring wealth, and of having
more of the comforts of life around them than their poor struggling
brethren at home; but, oh! how much more delightful to the exalted mind it
is to fill a position where they can benefit hundreds of their fellow
creatures, where they can promote happiness, virtue, and love amongst a
whole community, enlightening their minds and improving their habits, and
therefore being looked up to by them with respect and veneration."
The "police" were known as "rikos".
They were appointed by the missionary and were usually married church
members. Their purpose was to discover the delinquencies of their
neighbors and they pursued this with great diligence. There are many
exhaustive and interesting accounts of the missionaries' labors.
The early missionaries estimated the population
of Rarotonga at between 6000 to 7000. The impact of contact with the wider
world was devastating. Western diseases spread like bushfires through the
islanders and their numbers reduced dramatically during the mid-19th
century to probably fewer than 2000. Since then periodic additions of
people from outer islands have built Rarotonga's population back to about
10,000. In 1923 the population was reported by Stewart's Handbook of the
Pacific Islands to have been '3287 natives and half-castes living as
natives, and 200 whites and half-castes living as whites.'
However, even as late as 1923 curious attitudes
existed to the extent that Stewart's Handbook blamed the decline on:'There
are various causes which have produced this decrease, such as severe
epidemics, immorality, intoxicating liquors (prohibition is now in force
for all), and the careless use of European clothing.'(!)
Further depletions of the outer islands'
populations resulted from the raids of Peruvian slavers in the mid-1800s.
Most of those kidnapped never returned.
The British period |
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France's armed takeover of Tahiti and
the Society Islands in 1843 caused considerable apprehension among the
Cook Islands' ariki (chiefs) and led to requests from them to the
British for protection in the event of French attack.
This nervousness
continued for many years and the call for protection was repeated in 1865
in a petition to Governor Grey of New Zealand.
During the 1870s the Cooks enjoyed prosperity and
peace under the authority of Queen Makea, Makea Takau as she was known. A
wily negotiator, she secured good prices for exports and cut the debts
which had piled up before she became ariki. By 1982 four of the
five ariki of Rarotonga were women. Since the sovereign of the
British Empire was Queen Victoria, Makea probably found it easier to
achieve a paramount status. In 1888 she formally petitioned the British to
set up a Protectorate to head off what she believed to be imminent
invasion by the French.
The British were reluctant administrators and
continued pressure was applied to them from New Zealand and from European
residents of the islands to pass the Cooks over to New Zealand. In 1898 a
New Zealander, Major W.E. Gudgeon, was made British Resident with the aim
of paving the way for New Zealand to take over from Britain as part of the
expansionist ambitions of New Zealand's Prime Minister, William Seddon.
This was not favored by Makea who preferred the idea of being annexed to
Britain. One of the results of the British annexation was freedom of
religion and a new influx of missionaries from different denominations.
The first Roman Catholic church was dedicated in 1896.
The New Zealand period |
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After much manoeuvring and
politicking, the Cook Islands was formally annexed by New Zealand on
October 7 1900 when a deed of cession was signed by five ariki and
seven lesser chiefs without any debate or examination of its ramifications
or implications.
The following year Niue was annexed by New
Zealand and included in the Cooks although it had always been associated
previously with Samoa and Tonga. In 1903 it was, after protest, placed
under separate administration. The Cook Islands remained under New
Zealand's benign negligence until 1965. Desultory and half-hearted
attempts were made by New Zealand authorities to upgrade facilities but
the majority of New Zealanders were not interested in their colonial
possessions and had only the haziest idea of the islands' geographical
location. Even today there are many New Zealanders unaware that the Cook
Islands was once one of their colonies.
In 1946 an important step was taken when a
Legislative Council was elected. This was a tentative move towards
allowing the islanders to participate in the government of their own
country. After World War II a boom in the New Zealand economy called for
large numbers of unskilled workers for factories and this need was filled
largely by migrants from Western Samoa, the Cook Islands, Niue and Tokelau.
New Zealand now has the largest Polynesian population in the world with
the addition of thousands of Pacific islanders to its substantial numbers
of Maori and awareness of the Pacific islands has increased significantly.
In the early 1960s New Zealand became
hypersensitive to the decolonisation fashion then sweeping the rest of the
world and quickly buckled under pressure to give the Cook Islands
self-rule. Elections were held on April 20 1965 and resulted in the first
government of the Cook Islands Party headed by Albert Henry. He was later
knighted and, many years later, stripped of his knighthood for illegal
electoral rigging.
The islands became self-governing in association
with New Zealand. This "special relationship" is recognised by
New Zealand in the form of annual aid and by the automatic right Cook
Islanders have to New Zealand citizenship, a right also enjoyed by the
people of Niue and the Tokelau Islands.
Self-rule and democracy |
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Democracy in the Pacific is a
delicate flower. Some believe that occidental democratic systems of
government sit uneasily with the traditional power structures of Polynesia,
Melanesia and Micronesia. As many Western countries are now re-examining
their own democracies sometimes with the objective of giving ordinary
people a greater say in the workings of government, traditional Polynesian
countries often find it uncomfortable having to cope with calls for more
accountability from their political leaders.
Nearly all Pacific island nations have difficulty
with the investigative, questioning attitude of privately-owned news
media, particularly the printed media. Western democracies have long been
used to this and, indeed, thrive on it. The role of the fourth estate is
recognised and cherished in these societies as being one of the
cornerstones of successful democracy.
It is very different in many Pacific island
nations. Western Samoa, for example, has a recent history of demanding
respect from journalists for matai (hereditary chiefs). The
government also runs its own newspaper -- a hair-raising prospect for
Europeans and North Americans. In the Kingdom of Tonga in the late 1990s a
journalist and a correspondent to a newspaper's letters column were
arrested and convicted for "angering a public servant", namely,
the Minister of Police.
Democracy was stone-cold dead in Fiji after the
military coup of Sitiveni Rabuka in the mid-80s and Fiji officially
practised a very real form of racial discrimination against its citizens
of Indian provenance by denying them the vote. The only sanctions used
against Fiji was to eject them from the Commonwealth until they were
reinstated in October 1997 after Rabuka had a change of heart about
disenfranchising the Indians.
In contrast, the Cook Islands enjoys universal
suffrage, democratic government, two privately-owned newspapers and a
vigorous standard of debate. For all practical purposes the Cook Islands
is independent. It is governed by a Parliament of 24 elected
representatives including one who represents Cook Islanders living in New
Zealand and Australia, as well as a House of Ariki or hereditary chiefs
who provide consultation and advice.
The Members of Parliament represent districts and
entire islands. The system is based on the Westminster model and elections
are held every five years. The Head of State is Queen Elizabeth II in her
capacity as Queen of New Zealand.
For
more general information
on Cook Islands, go to: |
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For more regional information on Cook Islands, go to: |
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For more product information on Cook Islands, go to: |
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We have included the Cook Islands in some of our specials to the South
Pacific, eg. our Bounty
Voyage and South
Sea Dream Voyage.
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