ABSTRACT
New Ireland Province forms a distinctive linguistic grouping of nineteen Austronesian languages together with the adjacent Tolai and Duke of York islands. As one of the northernmost islands of the Bismarck Archipelago that lies off the coast of mainland New Guinea, New Ireland is also the second largest, though of a shape that belies its size. Resettlement along the coast left villages fringed by foreign-owned plantations, by the sea, and by a frequently inaccessible interior, which, along the west coast, drops in places in vertical cliffs four hundred metres down to sea level; along the east coast the interior descends more gently into a wider coastal expanse; yet here too are found plantations limiting the expansion of villages and of gardens. Large indigenous coconut plantations along the coast of the island, not to speak of the many natural harbours along its shore, made the island into a haven for the booming trade in copra.
