Ebook: A bibliography of Fiji, Tonga and Rotuma

The Pacific Islands constitute an important geographical link between the civilisations of Europe and America and those of Asia. Increasingly the region is the subject of serious study in many disciplines — over the last twenty or so years, publications referring to the South Pacific exceed those of the past 300 years.

Some bibliographies of different regions and selective ones for the whole area do exist; until now none has existed for the trio of territories that straddle the 'dividing' line between the Melanesian western Pacific and the Polynesian eastern Pacific — Fiji, Tonga, and Rotuma.

This bibliography is the result of thirty-one years' research in libraries and archives throughout the world. It consists of some 10,000 entries in distinct categories, each giving full bibliographical details, and it ranges in time from the seventeenth century to the mid-1960s. It is non-selective, for, as its author rightly says, no bibliographer knows the purposes for which his work will be used.

Though this work is an essential tool for all workers in the Pacific area, the many vicissitudes it has endured — literally, it has suffered fire, flood, and war — together with its wide range in time and space, make it less than perfect. It is, therefore, published now as a preliminary working edition with the invitation that any new or emending material be sent to the author.