Paradise for sale a parable of nature free download

They were often deserters from whaling ships or runaway convicts who lived independent lives, sometimes preying upon, and at other times helping, the islanders. Most were transients, but some stayed and adopted an island's traditional way of life. Beachcombers were among the first westerners to transmit the European worldview to Pacific islanders. The first Europeans to live on Nauru were Patrick Burke and John Jones, Irish convicts who had escaped from Norfolk Island, an English penal colony set aside for the worst criminals transported to Australia.

They were reputed to have been on the John Bull , a ship that had mysteriously disappeared in Several of those who pirated the John Bull reportedly ended up on Ponape Island, while Jones and Burke proceeded to Nauru; along the way they ate all of their shipmates. In , when five seamen deserted their whalers to adopt the beachcomber's easy life, they found about eight Europeans already on Nauru. The welcome the newcomers received was not what they had expected. Jones had become Nauru's first, and last, dictator.

When the five seamen landed on the island, Nauruans under Jones's command stripped them of their clothes and possessions. They were permitted to stay only by the sufferance of Jones, who, as they soon learned, had set adrift in a canoe two beachcombers who annoyed him. Beachcombing was not what it was cracked up to be, at least not on Nauru in At the earliest possible moment, the five would-be beachcombers stowed away on the Duke of York en route to Sydney, Australia.

In October Jones poisoned seven beachcombers and shot four others so they would not usurp his power, and then he blamed the Nauruans for the deaths. In return the Nauruans ostracized Jones and banished him to Banaba, Nauru's closest neighbor kilometers due east. Jones tried to return several months later, but the Nauruans would not allow him back. By only two beachcombers remained on Nauru. Long before Europeans arrived, other Pacific peoples had moved among the islands, and although some of these newcomers were killed or enslaved, many were welcomed.

At first the Pacific islanders viewed the strikingly different physical appearance of Europeans with awe, treating them with deference, but as more westerners arrived and their deeds became known, the islanders realized these foreigners were ordinary humans like themselves. Most of the beachcombers in the Pacific were not as disagreeable as Jones. Many respected the islanders, befriending them and treating their leaders and elders with the respect appropriate to their rank.

The beachcombers were sensitive to the local norms of behavior and behaved accordingly, and the natives welcomed beachcombers who were integrated as economic and political assets. The newcomers could repair pistols, muskets, cannons, and an abundance of other articles—axes, knives, scissors, pots—that flowed from the ships to the islands.

The beachcombers even served as valuable intermediaries between islanders and Europeans who came to trade. One of the two beachcombers remaining on Nauru in was William Harris. He, like Jones, had escaped from the British penal colony on Norfolk Island and arrived in at the age of twenty-nine. In contrast to Jones, however, and in the beachcomber tradition, Harris assimilated native culture and became an influential intermediary as Nauru came under European influence.

He took a Nauruan wife, fathered several children, and was adopted as a Nauruan. He became perhaps the only beachcomber the Nauruans ever fully accepted and trusted. Over the next decades and into the twentieth century the Nauruans traded pigs and coconuts for steel tools, firearms, alcohol, tobacco, and other products of Western civilization.

The islanders had quickly acquired the desire for some of these products, notably firearms. Other desires, however, were created by beachcombers and traders. Tobacco, for example, became a staple as a result of smoking schools where pipes and tobacco were handed out free of charge to generate demand. Each clan and its leaders regarded the beachcombers as invaluable in negotiating trade agreements with visiting sailors and ship's delegates; and the beachcombers gained great advantage in performing such services.

The beachcombers were key agents in bringing Western economic concepts to the islanders. At the outset, goods were exchanged by barter, but as the natives learned that all items had a relative value in marks or pounds or dollars, the concept of money as a medium of exchange became accepted. The social and economic consequences of reducing everything to a single dimension—its market price—were not grasped by the Nauruans, nor by anyone else, for a long time to come.

Copra, dried coconut meat, was a major trade item in the tropical Pacific. It was a natural transition for the Nauruans to shift from preparing dried coconut meat for their own use to making commercial copra, because for thousands of years they had been drying and storing coconut meat for the inevitable droughts.

In such a crop was valued at , German marks on the Hamburg market. On Nauru, as on other islands, beachcomber-traders established themselves as middlemen who processed and exported copra. Although the beachcombers provided valuable services, their presence led to aggressive behavior among the natives. In , in a disputed purchase of a cannon, the Nauruans, encouraged by beachcombers, captured the American brig Inda , killed the captain and several of the crew, and then set the ship adrift.

Several other purported incidents gave Nauru a bad name. An amicable people started to settle quarrels in ways contrary to their traditional customs. For a number of years ships avoided the island whenever possible. Traditional life was also disrupted by the introduction of alcohol, a drink absent from ancient Nauru. Although the Nauruans had drunk toddy for millennia, it was always consumed soon after it dripped from the cut coconut flower.

In the mid s visitors from the Gilbert Islands came to Banaba and introduced a new way of preparing toddy by letting it ferment for several days. The product, though sour, induced new sensations. The Banaban chiefs quickly recognized the disruptive nature of the new drink and put the Gilbertese back to sea in their canoes. The currents brought them to Nauru, where sour toddy took hold, and many islanders began to get drunk regularly. Guns and alcohol are a reactive combination, as the Nauruans learned in the s during a festival associated with a marriage.

When a heated argument developed over a point of etiquette, one of the guests fired a pistol and accidentally killed a young chief. It was clear that the young chief's death must be avenged. In the past, clan conflicts had often begun over similar unfortunate incidents, only this time every family in every clan had guns.

One drunken shooting incident led to another until most islanders were involved. A form of guerrilla warfare broke out; people randomly shot at others or sneaked up on an enemy's house at night and shot at a candle, a match, or anything that moved.

Women and children were slaughtered. Unlike past conflicts in which traditional behavior had restored peace, the strife was not resolved. A squadron of the Royal Navy arrived off Nauru on September 21, , and the flagship approached the island to assess the situation.

William Harris, the acculturated beachcomber, boarded the ship, and in the evening the flagship semaphored the rest of the squadron: "A civil war on the island. An escaped convict is king. All hands constantly drunk: no fruit or vegetables to be obtained, nothing but pigs and coconuts.

The present island-king wants a missionary. He was evidently hungry. Moss of Auckland went ashore while copra was being loaded. The Nauruans were friendly and in good humor although most of the boys and all of the men were armed with carbines or repeating rifles. The feud was still raging, but they appeared tired of it. From his conversations with Nauruans, Moss surmised that no one wanted to continue, but no one trusted the others to put down arms. The Nauruans wished that someone would simultaneously disarm them all.

During his visit with Moss, Harris told the visitor that two members of his family had already been shot and killed and again expressed a strong desire to have a mission established to bring peace to the island. During this tumultuous period in Nauruan history, the military and economic power of Europe was expanding because of technological innovations such as steam power and telegraphy.

The colonial empires were dividing vast areas of the world among themselves. The huge demands of growing industries for raw materials and the quest for new markets for their manufactured goods fueled the expansionist mentality, even in Germany, where the general imperialist push for colonies had not been strong.

England and Germany, wanting to avert conflicts and to protect their interests, reached an agreement in that established each country's sphere of influence in the western Pacific. The German trading consortium the Jaluit-Gesellschaft had traders on Nauru who recognized the island's capacity for copra production. As the discussions proceeded, the German negotiators adjusted the original line of demarcation slightly south to include Nauru in the German sphere but left Banaba to the British.

The British did not object, thus setting the stage for German control of Nauru. The decade-long civil war on Nauru had not helped copra production, nor could the traders' safety be assured. Traders and German officials proposed, therefore, that the government take an active hand in ruling Nauru. The welcome the newcomers received was not what they had expected. Jones had become Nauru's first, and last, dictator.

When the five seamen landed on the island, Nauruans under Jones's command stripped them of their clothes and possessions. They were permitted to stay only by the sufferance of Jones, who, as they soon learned, had set adrift in a canoe two beachcombers who annoyed him.

Beachcombing was not what it was cracked up to be, at least not on Nauru in At the earliest possible moment, the five would-be beachcombers stowed away on the Duke of York en route to Sydney, Australia. In October Jones poisoned seven beachcombers and shot four others so they would not usurp his power, and then he blamed the Nauruans for the deaths. In return the Nauruans ostracized Jones and banished him to Banaba, Nauru's closest neighbor kilometers due east. Jones tried to return several months later, but the Nauruans would not allow him back.

By only two beachcombers remained on Nauru. Long before Europeans arrived, other Pacific peoples had moved among the islands, and although some of these newcomers were killed or enslaved, many were welcomed. At first the Pacific islanders viewed the strikingly different physical appearance of Europeans with awe, treating them with deference, but as more westerners arrived and their deeds became known, the islanders realized these foreigners were ordinary humans like themselves.

Most of the beachcombers in the Pacific were not as disagreeable as Jones. Many respected the islanders, befriending them and treating their leaders and elders with the respect appropriate to their rank. The beachcombers were sensitive to the local norms of behavior and behaved accordingly, and the natives welcomed beachcombers who were integrated as economic and political assets.

The newcomers could repair pistols, muskets, cannons, and an abundance of other articles—axes, knives, scissors, pots—that flowed from the ships to the islands. The beachcombers even served as valuable intermediaries between islanders and Europeans who came to trade. One of the two beachcombers remaining on Nauru in was William Harris. He, like Jones, had escaped from the British penal colony on Norfolk Island and arrived in at the age of twenty-nine.

In contrast to Jones, however, and in the beachcomber tradition, Harris assimilated native culture and became an influential intermediary as Nauru came under European influence. He took a Nauruan wife, fathered several children, and was adopted as a Nauruan. He became perhaps the only beachcomber the Nauruans ever fully accepted and trusted.

Over the next decades and into the twentieth century the Nauruans traded pigs and coconuts for steel tools, firearms, alcohol, tobacco, and other products of Western civilization. The islanders had quickly acquired the desire for some of these products, notably firearms.

Other desires, however, were created by beachcombers and traders. Tobacco, for example, became a staple as a result of smoking schools where pipes and tobacco were handed out free of charge to generate demand.

Each clan and its leaders regarded the beachcombers as invaluable in negotiating trade agreements with visiting sailors and ship's delegates; and the beachcombers gained great advantage in performing such services. The beachcombers were key agents in bringing Western economic concepts to the islanders. At the outset, goods were exchanged by barter, but as the natives learned that all items had a relative value in marks or pounds or dollars, the concept of money as a medium of exchange became accepted.

The social and economic consequences of reducing everything to a single dimension—its market price—were not grasped by the Nauruans, nor by anyone else, for a long time to come. Copra, dried coconut meat, was a major trade item in the tropical Pacific. It was a natural transition for the Nauruans to shift from preparing dried coconut meat for their own use to making commercial copra, because for thousands of years they had been drying and storing coconut meat for the inevitable droughts.

In such a crop was valued at , German marks on the Hamburg market. On Nauru, as on other islands, beachcomber-traders established themselves as middlemen who processed and exported copra. Although the beachcombers provided valuable services, their presence led to aggressive behavior among the natives. In , in a disputed purchase of a cannon, the Nauruans, encouraged by beachcombers, captured the American brig Inda , killed the captain and several of the crew, and then set the ship adrift.

Several other purported incidents gave Nauru a bad name. An amicable people started to settle quarrels in ways contrary to their traditional customs. For a number of years ships avoided the island whenever possible. Traditional life was also disrupted by the introduction of alcohol, a drink absent from ancient Nauru.

Although the Nauruans had drunk toddy for millennia, it was always consumed soon after it dripped from the cut coconut flower.

In the mid s visitors from the Gilbert Islands came to Banaba and introduced a new way of preparing toddy by letting it ferment for several days. The product, though sour, induced new sensations. The Banaban chiefs quickly recognized the disruptive nature of the new drink and put the Gilbertese back to sea in their canoes.

The currents brought them to Nauru, where sour toddy took hold, and many islanders began to get drunk regularly. Guns and alcohol are a reactive combination, as the Nauruans learned in the s during a festival associated with a marriage. When a heated argument developed over a point of etiquette, one of the guests fired a pistol and accidentally killed a young chief. It was clear that the young chief's death must be avenged. In the past, clan conflicts had often begun over similar unfortunate incidents, only this time every family in every clan had guns.

One drunken shooting incident led to another until most islanders were involved. A form of guerrilla warfare broke out; people randomly shot at others or sneaked up on an enemy's house at night and shot at a candle, a match, or anything that moved. Women and children were slaughtered. Unlike past conflicts in which traditional behavior had restored peace, the strife was not resolved. A squadron of the Royal Navy arrived off Nauru on September 21, , and the flagship approached the island to assess the situation.

William Harris, the acculturated beachcomber, boarded the ship, and in the evening the flagship semaphored the rest of the squadron: "A civil war on the island. An escaped convict is king. All hands constantly drunk: no fruit or vegetables to be obtained, nothing but pigs and coconuts. The present island-king wants a missionary.

He was evidently hungry. Moss of Auckland went ashore while copra was being loaded. The Nauruans were friendly and in good humor although most of the boys and all of the men were armed with carbines or repeating rifles.

The feud was still raging, but they appeared tired of it. From his conversations with Nauruans, Moss surmised that no one wanted to continue, but no one trusted the others to put down arms. The Nauruans wished that someone would simultaneously disarm them all.

During his visit with Moss, Harris told the visitor that two members of his family had already been shot and killed and again expressed a strong desire to have a mission established to bring peace to the island. During this tumultuous period in Nauruan history, the military and economic power of Europe was expanding because of technological innovations such as steam power and telegraphy. The colonial empires were dividing vast areas of the world among themselves.

The huge demands of growing industries for raw materials and the quest for new markets for their manufactured goods fueled the expansionist mentality, even in Germany, where the general imperialist push for colonies had not been strong. England and Germany, wanting to avert conflicts and to protect their interests, reached an agreement in that established each country's sphere of influence in the western Pacific.

The German trading consortium the Jaluit-Gesellschaft had traders on Nauru who recognized the island's capacity for copra production. As the discussions proceeded, the German negotiators adjusted the original line of demarcation slightly south to include Nauru in the German sphere but left Banaba to the British.

The British did not object, thus setting the stage for German control of Nauru. The decade-long civil war on Nauru had not helped copra production, nor could the traders' safety be assured. Traders and German officials proposed, therefore, that the government take an active hand in ruling Nauru. Nauru came under the German Protectorate on April 16, , and a ban on firearms was declared.

Accompanied by William Harris, the armed marines marched around the island and returned with all twelve chiefs, the white settlers, and the newly arrived Gilbertese missionary. The marines kept the chiefs under house arrest until the next morning, when the annexation ceremony began with the raising of the German flag.

The Germans explained how the island was to be administered: There would be peace on Nauru and a ban on firearms was promulgated. The Germans told the chiefs that all weapons and ammunition must be surrendered within twenty-four hours or the chiefs would be taken to prison. By the morning of October 3, guns were turned over with at least 1, rounds of ammunition.

Nauru's devastating internal feud was over. Continue with Facebook. Sign up with Google. Log in with Microsoft. Bookmark this article. You can see your Bookmarks on your DeepDyve Library. Sign Up Log In. Copy and paste the desired citation format or use the link below to download a file formatted for EndNote. All DeepDyve websites use cookies to improve your online experience.

They were placed on your computer when you launched this website. You can change your cookie settings through your browser. Open Advanced Search. They did the latter. In a captivating and moving style, the authors describe how the island became one of the richest nations in the world and how its citizens acquired all the ills of modern life: obesity, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension.

At the same time, Nauru became 80 percent mined-out ruins that contain severely impoverished biological communities of little value in supporting human habitation. This sad tale highlights the dire consequences of a free-market economy, a system in direct conflict with sustaining the environment.

In presenting evidence for the current mass extinction, the authors argue that we cannot expect to preserve biodiversity or support sustainable habitation, because our economic operating principles are incompatible with these activities.

Get A Copy. Paperback , pages. More Details Original Title. Other Editions 4. Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Paradise for Sale , please sign up. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Jan 11, Nathan Albright rated it did not like it Shelves: challenge One of the most notable aspects of the contemporary left, and that includes the authors of this book, is an appalling lack of self-awareness that would allow the readers to rise above the hypocrisy that all too many works end up in.

The authors want to use Nauru as an example of error and use a supposed crisis in Nauru--a crisis that is not felt by the people of Nauru, much to the annoyance of the authors who want the reader to fear environmental catastrophe and anthropogenic climate change--as One of the most notable aspects of the contemporary left, and that includes the authors of this book, is an appalling lack of self-awareness that would allow the readers to rise above the hypocrisy that all too many works end up in.

The authors want to use Nauru as an example of error and use a supposed crisis in Nauru--a crisis that is not felt by the people of Nauru, much to the annoyance of the authors who want the reader to fear environmental catastrophe and anthropogenic climate change--as a means to encourage social change. Unfortunately, the authors' strident anti-Western and anti-Christian mentalities only serve to demonstrate that they are a slave to their own myths that they have insight and wisdom that lead them to think themselves to be more aware about how to live than those they are writing about and writing for.

This combination of ignorance and arrogance makes for a frustrating read, and in general tends to be a feature of leftist writings in general, regardless of the subject matter that this flawed and mistaken worldview seeks to comment on. Those who lack insight are blind guides no matter where they attempt to lead others. This book is about two hundred pages or so and is divided into several large chapters that contain material that should not be unfamiliar.

The book begins with a list of illustrations and acknowledgements, though it is unclear why a sane person would want to be acknowledged by the authors or anyone of their ilk. After that the book begins with a prelude that, like the coda at the end of the book's main material, bookends the authors' speculative framework about supposed environmental wisdom in a frame story of the authors' own trip to the island, which was inspired predictably and lamentably by a misguided New York Times article on the island.

In between these the prelude and coda are several chapters that provide a hostile view of Nauru's environmental stewardship and compare it to other examples cherrypicked from history. The authors start with a view of Nauru as a pleasant island in the period before and at the beginning of the Western knowledge, providing the "myths of pre-Western and pre-Christian and pre-Capitalist paradise" that are necessary for accounts like this one 1.

This is followed by a chapter on the supposed progress that came to Nauru 2 as well as the supposed shadow that Nauru casts over the rest of the earth 3. The authors purport to be able to identify various myths in Western society without being self-aware enough about their own 4 , and then closing with chapters that view science as a story 5 through the myth of enlightenment rationalism, discuss a love of cockroaches 6 , attempt to frame a view of the market as servant 7 , and claim that reality is a chimera 8 , after which there are notes and an index.