Colonial officials: play halted “in the interests of industry and progress”

Abstract

This chapter explores how foreign officials understood and responded to kirikiti. Prior to partition, officials overwhelmingly understood kirikiti as wasteful and disruptive, even if colonial rivalries sometimes modulated their opposition. After partition, commercial and ideological factors meant officials in German Samoa sought to regulate the game, albeit not always rigorously or consistently. Such efforts were also evident in the US-controlled islands, notwithstanding American officials’ comparatively modest ambitions for reform. Finally, while officers in New Zealand’s wartime administration showed little appetite or capability for proscription, their successors after 1920 aimed to reshape Samoan society—including by targeting ‘inefficient’ practices such as kirikiti. As such, official antipathy towards kirikiti was remarkably consistent throughout the period of study—even if their reasons for opposing it were subtly different.

Too much atte ntion is now being given to cricket, between villages, and not enough to necessary work on the plantations to keep them clean, and insure [sic] an adequate supply of food. Games may be played between villages on Saturday afternoons and on national holidays without obtaining the permission of the Governor. Until further orders, the Governor will not grant permission, to play games between villages, at any other time.

H.F. Bryan [Governor], Order: ‘Cricket Games’, 11 January 1927, P10 Recreation—Amusement [#8], General Correspondence, 1921–1949, Box 28 (NN-373-91), RG 313: Records of Naval Operating Forces, 1849–1997, National Archives and Records Administration—Pacific Region (NARA), San Bruno