ABSTRACT
Methodologies and interpretations differ, but what has developed is a historiography on the island Pacific. Books written by participants in European expansion in the Pacific, of which there were many, usually constituted subjective and anecdotal accounts. In Paris, researchers combined the techniques of the social sciences, including structuralism and post-structuralism, to investigate questions of culture contact and the effects of European expansion on island life. Few serious historians would argue that the islands were paradisiacal before the arrival of the Europeans; the argument that islanders were decimated by European diseases and firearms wherever the foreigners landed has been shown not to be true everywhere in the island Pacific. As for European, American and Australasian business interests in the island Pacific, the coverage is uneven. The Netherlands was also a European power in the island Pacific with control of western New Guinea, on the border of the East Indies.
