‘No ordinary sun’: Indigenous Pacific Cold War literature

This chapter explores Cold War literature produced within Oceania, focusing on a wide range of material emerging from the three main geocultural areas of the Pacific: Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia. It begins by analyzing literature focused on the nationalist and millenarian movements that developed in Melanesia during and beyond the Second World War, before moving onto representations of various social and regional movements that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s (these include the ‘Pacific Way’ ideology, the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific movement, and various interventions reacting against capitalist exploitation of the Pacific). The chapter ends with a consideration of literature focused on several military conflicts that broke out in the 1980s, including the Fiii coups, the Bougainville Civil War, and the West Papuan struggle for independence from Indonesian colonial occupation