CHAPTER XV
THE MODERN HISTORY OP THE PACIFIC
We have seen how from time to time distant Pacific The islands cast sunshine or shadow and wove passing patterns "^tory of upon the carpet of Australian politics. We must now the Pacific look through the other end of the telescope and watch ^hree"' 0 Australian and European events from the point of view of periods. the Pacific islands, and observe how island after island group was swept by white men and by destiny into the maelstrom of European politics. The end has just been reached. In the advance towards that end three periods may be distinguished : (i) After the Maori, Tahilians and New Caledonians, who were absorbed in the second epoch, the turn of the Fijians came, and their history, like that of each Pacific group, was inextricably interlaced with the history of every other Pacific group. Similarly the action of England with regard to Fiji (1874) was partly a reaction against the interested desires of France, Germany, and the United States, partly* 1 response to the interested desires of Australia and New Zealand, and was partly inspired by a disinterested desire to prevent the abuses of the labour trade which was being carried on by Americans, Spanish-Americans, Frenchmen, and Germans, as well as by our fellow-countrymen. The Pacific was once more the theatre of universal history, and our fifteenth chapter is like our first. (2) After the annexation of Fiji (1874) a series of complicated episodes occurred both in the Pacific and in Europe, and the second period culminated in the annexation of New Guinea (1884), in the Anglo-German agreement (1886), in the Anglo-French agreement and Protectorate over the New Hebrides (1887),