ABSTRACT
During their visits to the Pacific islands most European naval captains and crews are known to have been conscious of whether their behaviours were legal and honourable, so theft and impression management were high on their agendas and implicated in the management of situations in which there was any potential for violence to develop. Anton Blok explored these ideas in his book Honour and Violence (2001), and this chapter addresses the probable universality of these phenomena as motivators for action and decision-making that could lead either to peaceful or violent outcomes. The analytical methods used by Brass (1997) and also by Wilson (2008) in their separate investigations of modern ethno-religious violence are shown here as effective methods for investigating what roles human decision-making and culpability had during violent intercultural episodes in the Pacific in precolonial times. This chapter demonstrates the role of honour/mana and also of fear and emotion as triggering factors in such violent sequences. It considers whether the Polynesian notions of mana and utu could be compared with the European notions of honour and revenge, and whether the Polynesian world view may offer insights into the universal problem of violence and reconciliation. Human agency and decision-making are shown to be key determining factors in whether violent conflict eventuates when tensions arise.
