Gender, Violence and Criminal Justice in the Colonial Pacific: 1880-1920

Centering on cases of sexual violence, this book illuminates the contested introduction of British and French colonial criminal justice in the Pacific Islands during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, focusing on Fiji, New Caledonia, and Vanuatu/New Hebrides. It foregrounds the experiences of Indigenous Islanders and indentured laborers in the colonial court system, a space in which marginalized voices entered the historical record.

Rape and sexual assault trials reveal how hierarchies of race, gender and status all shaped the practice of colonial law in the courtroom and the gendered experiences of colonialism. Trials provided a space where men and women narrated their own story and at times challenged the operation of colonial law. Through these cases, Gender, Violence and Criminal Justice in the Colonial Pacific highlights the extent to which colonial bureaucracies engaged with and affected private lives, as well as the varied ways in which individuals and communities responded to such intrusions and themselves reshaped legal practices and institutions in the Pacific.

With bureaucratic institutions unable to deal with the complex realities of colonial lives, Stevens reveals how the courtroom often became a theatrical space in which authority was performed, deliberately obscuring the more complex and violent practices that were central to both colonialism and colonial law-making. Exploring the intersections of legal pluralism and local pragmatism across British and French colonialization in the Pacific, this book shows how island communities and early colonial administrators adopted diverse and flexible approaches towards criminal justice, pursuing alternative forms of justice ranging from unofficial courts to punitive violence in order to deal with cases of sexual assault.

Kate Stevens is Lecturer of History at University of Waikato, New Zealand. Her research focuses on comparative histories of cultural, environmental and economic exchange in the colonial and postcolonial Pacific. She has published her work in the Journal of Pacific History, Law and History Review and The Contemporary Pacific, and supported by the Marsden Fund and Camargo Foundation.