A History of Ethnobotany in Remote Oceania

Ethnobotany has had a relatively short history as a scientific or scholarly discipline, and according to R. L. Ford still lacks a unifying theory. In this paper the history of ethnobotany in Remote Oceania is reviewed. In sequence, the roots of Pacific ethnobotany in European exploration and colonial expansion are discussed, then the contributions of early foreign residents, and finally the rapidly growing field of scientific ethnobotany during the latter part of the twentieth century. Examples of key research from the disciplines of botany, anthropology, archaeology, and geography, as well as major trends in ethnobotanical research in Remote Oceania, are described. GEOGRAPlllCAL FOCUS nobotanical" research, focusing on "theoretical and applied non-western, non-commercial aspects of human uses of plants," was contrasted with "economic botany," which focused instead on "applied economic, agricultural, western, or commercial aspects of human uses of plants" (McClatchey 1999). In its broadest sense, ethnobotanical research came to have a wider purview than just native use, and now includes the study of many other traditional, non-Western relationships, such as native folk taxonomies, as well as beliefs regarding origins, growth, seasonality, and therapeutic value (see Table 1). Until recently, Western scholars divided Oceania, or the Pacific Region beyond Southeast Asia and Australia, into three subregions: Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. A two-part regional division of Near Oceania and Remote Oceania based on such factors as linguistics, degrees of insular isolation, and adaptation to small islands has been suggested recently (Green 1991) (Figure 1). Human settlement of Near Oceania (essentially western Melanesia) and Australia occurred at least 40,000 yr ago. The islands of Remote Oceania, which include the Santa Cruz group (the easternmost Solomon Islands), Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, and all of the islands lumped into Polynesia and 275 1 Manuscript accepted I November 1999. 2 Biology Program, University of Hawai'i at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawai'i 96822. DURING THE MUTINY on HMS Bounty in 1789, rebellious sailors forced Captain Bligh and his loyalists off the ship. Later, the mutineers threw carefully tended breadfruit seedlings overboard. It is well known that the Bounty was intended to take breadfruit cultivars from Tahiti to the West Indies. It is less well known that Bligh (1792) recorded eight names for Tahitian varieties of this tree crop, Artocarpus altiUs, and included descriptions for some of them. Fragments of ethnobotanical information, such as Bligh's notes on breadfruit, can be gleaned from the earliest Western accounts of Pacific Islanders and their environments. However, it was not until the end of the nineteenth century that Westerners began systematic research into the traditional uses of plants by indigenous peoples. The first use of the word "ethnobotany" to define the study of plants as understood by "primitive and aboriginal people" is dated December 1895 and is credited to the American botanist John W. Harshberger (1896). Before "ethnobotany" became a defining term, others words were adopted, some of which are still in use. "Aboriginal botany," for example, drew attention to "all forms of the vegetable world which the aborigines used for medicine, food, textile fabrics, ornaments, etc." (Powers 1873-1875: 373). "Eth276 PACIFIC SCIENCE, Volume 54, July 2000