OCEANIA

A JOURNAL DEVOTED TO THE STUDY OF THE INDIGENOUS

PEOPLES OF AUSTRALIA, MELANESIA, MICRONESIA,
INDONESIA, AND THE PHILIPPINES

OCEANIA Vol. 55 No. 1 September, 1984

The Intensive Study of a Restricted Area,

Or, Why Did Malinowski Go to the Trobriand Islands?

Michael W. Young*

INTRODUCTION
More than any other anthropologist of his generation, Bronislaw Malin-
owski continues to fascinate his disciplinary descendants in the British
tradition, and forty years after his death his personality and his career
remain almost as controversial as they were during his lifetime. 'There
is still a paradox in the public image of Malinowski', remarked Raymond
Firth introducing his recent biographical appraisal (1981: 103). It is a
paradox, one might add, dutifully kept alive by those who give the annual
lecture in honour of his name, and by those of his students who spring
to its defence whenever that name is maligned (Leach 1980; Mair 1980,
1981). Although we are still awaiting a definitive biography by some
courageous soul, Malinowski memorabilia continue to accumulate, and
now that some of his personal papers are relatively accessible there will
doubtless be a good deal more written about him - culminating, perhaps,
in 1984, when the British-based Association of Social Anthropologists
commemorates the centenary of his birth.'
The present essay addresses a problem that has not to my knowledge
been raised before. The facts are generally known that Malinowski spent
some two years on the island of Kiriwina in eastern Papua, and that - in
the words of another of his eminent .pupils - 'A whole generation of
his followers were brought up to believe that social anthropology began
in the Trobriand Islands in 1914' (Leach 1957:124). Although that
particular belief has long since been discredited (among others by Ed-
mund Leach himself), no one denies that Malinowski's pioneering and

* Department of Anthropology, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian

National University. Although I have been unable to incorporate all their suggestions
for its improvement, this article has benefitted from the helpful comments of Sir
Raymond Firth, Professor George Stocking, and Dr James Urry. For permission
to cite from Malinowski's unpublished correspondence I gratefully acknowledge Mrs
Helena Wayne, The British Library of Political and Economic Science, Cambridge
University Library, and Yale University Library.
1 Collections of Malinowski's correspondence are held at the London School of
Economics, Yale University, and among the papers of A. C. Haddon (Cambridge)
and C. G. Seligman (L.S.E.). An official file on Malinowski held in the Australian
Commonwealth Archives has been particularly useful for the purposes of this article.
See Bibliography for full references.

1
Why did Malinowski go to the Trobriand Islands?

intensive fieldwork in the Trobriands was of singular importance for his

own writing and teaching, and hence for the course that he directed for
British anthropology in the twenties and thirties. His Trobriand corpus is
still unrivalled in Melanesian ethnography and (as I have commented
elsewhere) Trobrianders have occupied a place in the limelight of aca-
demic debate and generally enjoyed or endured a fame out of all pro-
portion to their numbers or the size of their islands. While this is partly
due to their own uniqueness, exotic appeal, and the sheer richness of their
culture, it is no less due to Malinowski's insistent publicity in his celebra-
tion of them (Young 1979:2). Once his major publications had begun
to appear (starting with Argonauts in 1922), it would have seemed a
pointless question to raise: Why did he go to the Trobriands and not to
any of the other islands or places on mainland Papua that were accessible
to him? For a long time anthropology was simply grateful that he had gone
there and done what he did. Today, anthropology is considerably larger
and the world considerably smaller, allowing a historical question to take
shape. For, given the historical significance for the development of social
anthropology of Malinowski's research in the Trobriands, why did he
choose to go there when there were innumerable other ripe, ethnographic
'plums' to be picked in Papua at that time?2 And there is an important
corollary too, in the question why he stayed in Kiriwina as long as he
did, for it was this circumstance that had such a profound effect upon
the kind of anthropology he disseminated. It is too easy to say (if I may
quote myself once again) that in-so-far as Malinowski did found the
modern discipline of social anthropology, it was 'a matter of the right
man being in the right place at the right time', unless we can say what
factors led this man to the 'right place' (ibid:7).8
With some such puzzle in mind, I perused Malinowski's correspondence
held in several archives. Like many if not most historical questions posed
long after the event, the answer to it is ambiguous on present evidence.
But some intriguing facts turned up in the search, and these are worth
communicating for the more detailed picture they provide of Malinowski's
exemplary fieldwork career.

PAPUA IN 1914
Malinowski first set foot in Papua, his 'promised land' (as he wrote
to C. G. Seligman), on 24 September 1914. Despite the outbreak of
war in August while he was still in Australia (having attended the British
Association meeting), he was allowed to proceed to Papua through the
good offices of Atlee Hunt, Secretary of the Department of External
Affairs, who had interviewed him in Melbourne. In a letter of intro-
duction, the Director of the London School of Economics, W. P. Reeves,

2 The metaphor is Malinowski's. He referred to the southern Massim in a letter

to Haddon as 'a plum just right for any ethnographer who can swallow it'. He had
in mind W. E. Armstrong, Haddon's student, whom he met in Australia in 1920
{He, 7).
8 Firth notes that Seligman had tried, but failed, to get Malinowski funds to work
in the Sudan (l967:xiii). Elsewhere, Firth gives a summary account of Malinowski's
movements in Papua, mentioning that 'he meant to go to Mambare, and to Dobu,
as well as to Rossel Island, which Seligman had wanted him to investigate. But he
stopped in the Trobriands, since apparently the people with whom he had made
arrangements in those other places had moved elsewhere' (1957:4). One of my
main objectives in this essay is to explore in more detail Malinowski's fieldwork
options in Papua.

2
 Michael W. Young

had recommended Malinowski as 'an investigator of exceptional promise

and ability', who proposed 'to spend from a year to eighteen months
doing Anthropological research work in New Guinea' (11-6-14. AA).
This plan must have seemed precarious under the new circumstances,
and Malinowski was obviously in a difficult position with respect to the
authorities. Not only was he technically an enemy alien (as a Polish
subject of the Austrian Empire, he was easily mis-identified as German,
and just as easily suspected of German sympathies), but he was also
threatened with impecunity since his funds from Europe could no longer
be guaranteed. It was with respect to these two difficulties that most
official correspondence about Malinowski was concerned in the years
that followed. His status was continually under review, and his sources
of funds - although they generously saw him through to the end - were
initially Insecure.' Anxiety about both matters is reflected in his personal
letters and in his Diary. But the fact remains that, under the circum-
stances, he was treated generously by the authorities despite Lieutenant-
Governor Murray's personal dislike and chronic suspicion of him. It is
important to understand that, except during his final year in the Territory,
neither his ambiguous status nor his level of funding dictated his field-
work or inhibited his research.s
Malinowski's 'promised land' was by no means a terra incognita in
1914. What he found on his arrival in Port Moresby was a land with
a history of 40 years of white exploration and settlement and 30 years
of colonial government, as well entrenched as many of the towns of
northern Queensland his boat had visited."
Papua (British New Guinea until 1906) was administered on a shoe-
string, importing all European goods for its survival, and exporting gold,
copra, sisal, hemp, rubber and cotton. Of its European population -
about 1200 in 1914 - the majority were Australian. Miners, planters,
traders, storekeepers, etc., made up about three-quarters of the working
population; government officials and employees and missionaries the other
quarter. In 1906 a Royal Commission gave Europeans the opportunity
to say what they thought of Papua, and the Commission's report is in-
dicative of the attitudes that persisted throughout the following decade.

4 Laracy (1976) has dealt with Malinowski's relations with officialdom and
presented the main details of his financial circumstances during 1914-18. Although
I cover some of the same ground as Laracy I address quite different questions. A
good case can 'be made, I suspect, for arguing that on £250 a year Malinowski
(1922:xix) was considerably better off than many students undertaking fieldwork in
more recent years. This sum was about the middle of the salary range for govern-
ment officers in 1914-15. For example, most Assistant Resident Magistrates in
Papua earned £250 p.a. after several years' service. Lieutenant-Governor Murray
himself received £1250, of which £450 was an entertainment allowance, while his
Private Secretary's salary was £300 (Papua: Annual Reports, 1914, 1915). A
perusal of Malinowski's Army and Navy Store invoices indicates that he neither
skimped on equipment nor denied himself a rich and varied fare of tinned foods,
including delicacies such as jugged hare, cod roes, roast turkey, and (though it was
coa1s from Newcastle) lobster! (MPY, box 9:689).
5 Francis West, Murray's biographer, appears to believe that Malinowski was a
German (1968: 216), and he perpetuates the myth, that Malinowski was 'confined'
to the Trobriands (ibid. 1970:83n). On Murray's dislike of him, West paraphrases:
'he resented the patronizing and intolerant air which he detected in Malinowski'.
6 The remainder of this section owes much to Hank Nelson's useful analysis of
colonial attitudes in Papua during the period 1906-14. Full references can be
found in Nelson 1969.

3
Why did Malinowski go to the Trobriand Islands?

Although the country had been 'much maligned' from the health point
of view,everyone now seemed agreed that the climate was - with
appropriate use of quinine and other protective medicines - quite
suitable for Europeans after all. Nevertheless, 'Papua will never be a
white man's working country', and with racist attitudes so well ingrained,
whites were little disposed to view the Native as anything but a hewer
of wood and drawer of water. Voices like that of Resident Magistrate
W. Beaver, who saw hopes for the 'true development of the country' in
native production and sale of cash crops, were quite exceptional. Charles
Abel of the London Missionary Society was almost alone, too, in believing
that Papuans were teachable and could be turned into tradesmen; the
Royal Commissioners ignored his demonstration at Kwato island (which
Malinowski was to visit in December 1914) that technical training was
not necessarily wasted on them. Papuans were innately lazy, the
Commissioners. suspected.
Judge J. H. P. Murray, whose long reign as Lieutenant-Governor
(1907-1940) is usually characterized as paternalistic, believed the Papuan
was not so much 'lazy' as 'lacking in determination and perseverance'.
The more hardheaded and outspoken settlers chided Murray for pursuing
policies and enacting legislation which acted as a brake on development.
There was some talk at the time of the need to import coolie labour,
as it was feared the labour resources of Papua would be insufficient to
develop the country. But as new areas were brought under control by the
government, the supply of labour proved sufficient to meet the demands
of the mines and plantations. A related issue was depopulation. Murray
called it 'race suicide' or 'race despair', and he believed the remedy was
to give Papuans 'something to live for', and 'to substitute an industrial
ideal for the old ideal of murder and bloodshed'. An 'industrial ideal'
meant, in the main, wage labour for whites. But Murray was determined
to prevent exploitation, and under his administration Papua developed
one of the most complex bodies of labour legislation in the colonial
world. Murray spoke of the 'native problem' in terms of the European's
responsibility for 'preserving and raising the Papuan to the highest level
of civilization of which he is capable' (though he was unwilling to say
what that level might be). He regarded it as a more difficult problem
than the development of the country, which would be easy to achieve if
Papuan interests were ignored. It was this relatively enlightened, if
protective, attitude which gave him good reason to introduce taxation in
1920. The revenue was to be spent exclusively on benefits (such as health
and education) for Papuans. In short, it was another exigency of a
shoestring economy rather than an attempt to make Papua pay for itself.
The one-dimensional relationship most White residents had with Papuans
meant that the latter were judged first and foremost as workers and
servants. The stereotypes of the period hinged on this factor: at their
most intractable, Papuans were slothful, indigent, excitable, childlike,
mendacious, licentious, stubborn and treacherous. Another crucial factor
which reinforced this stereotype was the strategic necessity for social dis-
tance between whites and Papuans, If the country was to be ruled by
so few white officers they must treat the native with aloofness and a
degree of scorn. Murray called it 'administration by bluff'; the prestige
and racial superiority of the whites must be maintained at all times. As
Nelson puts it: 'the ideal for the European was to be strict, just, and
aloof; the Papuan was to be respectful, obedient, and, if capable of fine
4
 Michael W. Young

sentiments, grateful' (1969: 612). Keeping up standards was therefore a

duty for the white man ('discarding one's socks leads to the beach and a
loin cloth'), and fear of 'polluting' their caste made it only proper to
dismiss from the service government officers whooonsorted or cohabited
with native women. Such, in general terms, was the social milieu of
colonial Papua when Malinowski did his fieldwork there.
THE ETHNOGRAPHIC MAP IN 1914
In Murray's estimation, after almost thirty years as a British possession,
half of Papua was still 'totally unexplored'and of the other half only 'a
comparatively small proportion' was really well known (1912: 247).
Papua was bigger than Britain, several times higher, and thickly forested
from end to end. By 1914 there were still no roads to speak of, and
most travel was done on foot or by boat. The coast was under complete
control and had been for quite a few years. Much early exploration had
been done by miners and missionaries who left imperfect records of their
discoveries, but systematic exploration began with the first Lieutenant-
Governor, Sir William MacGregor. During his eight-year term Mac-
Gregor climbed the highest mountain, ascended the largest river, and
twice crossed the island from sea to sea. More important, he made initial
contacts with more native groups than any freelance explorer, and he set
the precedent of making exploration a matter for the government.
In Murray's time, virtually all exploration was done by government
officers in the normal course of their duty. In 1913, with more funds
for the purpose, Murray began a programme of penetration and pacifica-
tion of the interior, sending long exploratory patrols into the Gulf and
Western Divisions, then the most intractable and unknown. East of Port
Moresby there were few areas which had not yet been contacted, and in
the year of Malinowski's arrival, a number of arduous cross-patrols had
linked up several government stations (Abau, Cape Nelson, Baniara,
Buna, Kokoda) north and south of the main ranges. Murray himself,
without fuss, crossed Papua by 'the usual route' of the Kokoda trail, taking
a week for the journey (Papua: Annual Report, 1913-14). Much of the
half that was 'totally unexplored' (the upper reaches of the huge rivers
which drained the great Papuan plateau, the valleys of the southern
highlands, the vast swamps of the west) would, however, remain un-
contacted for a decade or two longer.
We must not underestimate the amount that was known about the
inhabitants of Papua at this time, for although much of it was superficial
there was a broad ethnological (rather than ethnographic) knowledge of
the coastal populations and many of the more accessible interior peoples.
Strictly speaking, the ethnological enterprise began in 1848 with Thomas
Huxley's observations on the people of the Louisiades during the Rattle-
snake surveying expedition of Owen Stanley; or even earlier in 1845
with Marist missionary Carlo Salerio's observations on the Woodlark
Islanders. The London Missionary Society, extending from the islands
of the Torres Strait to the south coast of Papua in the 1870s, had in
Turner, Lawes, and Chalmers, missionaries whose distinction it was to
publish the very first articles on the ethnology of several New Guinea
tribes in the Journal of the [Royal] Anthropological Institute.' In the last
7 Excluding articles dealing with race and language, the Journal of the [Royal]
Anthropological Institute published 14 papers on British New Guinea ethnology
between 1877 and 1913, nine of which were written by missionaries.

s
Why did Malinowski go to the Trobriand Islands?

decade of the nineteenth century government officers were reporting their

own ethnological observations. MacGregor found time to record word
lists of each of the new languages he encountered on his tours of inspec-
eion, and he encouraged his officers to to the same. Although his primary
objective was to aid pacification, he was scholar enough to recognize that
such information would be invaluable to science, and he published
hundreds of pages of ethnographic observations and vocabularies in the
Annual Reports of British New Guinea."
By the turn of the century, then, a body of ethnological knowledge was
already in existence, built up almost entirely by missionaries, government
officers and other explorers. It is only to be expected that it was super-
ficial, patchy, and often opinionated; but with the exception of Huxley
(1848), Hamy (1888), and Haddon's brilliant Cambridge team (1898),
few scientists with ethnological interests had visited Papua, and none had
stayed more than a few weeks.
More than anyone else, it was Alfred Cort Haddon who provided the
moving force for the ethnographic exploration and discovery of British
New Guinea. It was he who produced, in 1894, the first scholarly
synthesis of the ethnology and the art and artefacts of the area. And it
was he who led the Cambridge expedition to Torres Strait in 1898, a
turning point in the history of anthropology as well as in the ethnography
of Papua. It was also Haddon who served as the lynch-pin for subsequent
professional fieldwork in Papua, beginning in 1903-4 with C. G. Seligman
(who had been a member of the Torres Strait expedition), G. Landtman
and R. W. Williamson in 1910, and now Malinowski in 1914. (Indeed,
the only anthropologist of the time who was not directly influenced by
Haddon was Diamond Jenness, a student of Marett's at Oxford.) Sub-
sequently, two other students of Haddon, W. E. Armstrong and F. W. P.
Chinnery, became the first government anthropologists of Papua and
(ex-German) New Guinea respectively. We must also note that it was
Haddon, rather than W. H. R. Rivers, who first made a plea for intensive
fieldwork. In 1906 he wrote:
What is required at the present day is intensive studies of restricted
areas, but these areas should be carefully selected so as to procure
the maximum results with the least expenditure of time and energy.
It is only by careful regional study that the real meaning of insti-
tutions and their metamorphoses can be understood (1906: 157;
see also Stocking 1979: 10).
There was one more area in which Haddon was influential: his en-
couragement of missionaries to be more anthropologically-minded. The
LMS missionaries of Torres Strait and southern Papua were there long
before him and had earned his respect. While not uncritical of their
methods and the destructive effects of their work, he judged them worth
cultivating for the information they could provide about the very religions
they were trying to subvert. What they most needed, Haddon said, was
'a good grounding in anthropology, carpentry and medicine', and between
1900 and 1914 he taught anthropology at various vacation courses for
missionaries (Reid 1978:179; Quiggin 1942:124-5). Haddon, of course,
was not the only anthropologist of his day to cultivate the missionary

8 In 1897, towards the end of MacGregor's career in British New Guinea, Haddon
and Sidney Ray, the linguist, warmly complimented him on the value of these
records for the armchair anthropologists of the day (MacGregor 1897:97-8).

6
 Michael W. Young

connection. It must have seemed quite natural for itinerant anthropolo-

gists to tap their expertise on local customs, and although missionary-
ethnographers of the stature of R. H. Codrington and Maurice Leenhardt
were truly exceptional, in many areas of Melanesia missionaries were
more common (and more reliable) than government officers. Both
Seligman and Rivers used them extensively, and it was clearly expected
of Malinowski that he would do likewise. As we shall see, the fact that
he did not was as much a matter of chance as of his personal antipathy
to certain missionaries. As Kenelm Burridge put it, 'the break in partner-
ship [between anthropologists and missionaries] was bound to come', and
it was Malinowski who was instrumental in achieving it (1978:4).
As 'leader and dean of British field anthropology' (in Malinowski's
phrase), Haddon's own summary of what was known of the ethnographic
map in 1914 can usefully be cited from his introduction to Williamson's
book on the Mafulu, a mountain tribe beyond ,the Mekeo:
Thanks mainly to the systematic investigations of Dr Seligman and to
the sporadic observations of missionaries, government officials and
travellers, we have a good general knowledge of many of the people
of the east coast of the southeast peninsular of New Guinea, and of
some of the islands from the Trobriands to the Louisiades. The
ethnology of the fertile and populous Mekeo district has been mainly
made known to us by the investigations of various members of the
Sacred Heart Mission, and 'by Dr Seligman. What little we know
of the Papuan Gulf District is due to missionaries among the coastal
tribes, Mr T. Chalmers and Mr W. Holmes. Dr G. Landtman is at
present investigating the natives of the delta of the Fly River and
Daudai. The natives of the Torres Strait islands have also been
studied as fully as is possible (Haddon 1912:xix).
It was indeed the 'systematic investigations' of Seligman in 1903-4
which made the greatest single contribution to the ethnology of Papua
(see Firth 1975). His monumental Melanesians of British New Guinea,
published in 1910, documented a dozen representative 'tribes' of central
and eastern Papua, systematizing data under such headings as geographical
relations, settlement, trade, warfare and cannibalism, totemisrn, clans,
chieftainship, feasts, kinship and marriage, magic and religion, etc. Selig-
man had published his definitive Classification of the Natives of British
New Guinea in 1909, which substantially agreed with Haddon's view
that there were two major races: the original 'Papuans' and the intrusive
'Melanesians', of which there were two distinct branches, an eastern and
a western stock. Williamson's work among the Fuguye (or Mafulu)
confirmed to Haddon's satisfaction that there was also a third element,
'negritoes' or 'pygmies'.
No other scholars were so well-acquainted with the ethnographic
picture of Papua as Haddon and Seligman, for none had done as much
to construct it. Both knew Papua at first hand, though Seligman had the
edge in terms of length and breadth of field experience there; but long
after Seligman had become engrossed in the Sudan, Haddon maintained
his deep interest in New Guinea through his many students. As far as
Malinowski was concerned, however, Seligman's influence was more
immediate and direct, and there can be no doubt that his book on the
Melanesians did more to shape Malinowski's ethnographic expectations
than any other single work on the area. Argonauts of the Western Pacific,

7
Why did Malinowski go to the Trobriand Islands?

we may recall, is dedicated to his 'friend and teacher' Professor C. G.

Seligman.

MALINOWSKI IN MAILU
It should come as little surprise, therefore, that Malinowski arrived in
Papua knowing exactly where he wanted to go: a part of the south coast
recommended by Seligman." Yet we must give pause to wonder why
Malinowski was not overwhelmed by an embarrassment of ethnographic
temptations. His first few weeks he spent working among the Koita with
Seligman's old informant Ahuia Ova (Malinowski 1967:9 et seq; Firth
1975:275-6). But during these weeks in Port Moresby he met and talked
with many knowledgeable officers, missionaries and explorers. If he had
done his homework before leaving Australia he would have known of
many of them through their reports and publications. Murray, of course,
had been almost everywhere it was possible to go in Papua and Malin-
owski must have read his stocktaking book Papua or British New Guinea
(1912), which, despite Murray's claim to know nothing of ethnology,
devotes 100 pages to a lively survey of the native population. While it
presents an administrator's view (discussing each area with respect to its
degree of pacification and the problems it presents for control), Murray's
book gives a olear and general picture of what was then known about the
various districts. On the Massim for instance, which Malinowski was
eventually to study, Murray writes that the islander is:
commonly a mild-mannered, law-abiding citizen, often industrious,
and not infrequently a regular attendant at church; but at first these
people were particularly wild and intractable, and even now, in some
parts of the D'Entrecasteaux and to a lesser extent on Rossel Island,
they are not entirely under Government control (1912:114).
Malinowski records in his Diary several meetings with Stamford Smith
[sic] who, as Administrator and compiler of the Papua Handbook (2nd
Ed. 1909), was almost as knowledgeable as Murray, though the two
were bitter enemies. Staniforth Smith had led a 'disastrous' expedition
(in Murray's judgment) up the Kikori River in 1911, accompanied by
L. L. Bell, two other officers, and a surveyor called Pratt. Their major
discovery was the large and fertile Samberigi valley, though this was not
to be fully explored until 1922. Malinowski talked to Bell, Pratt, and
also to H. J. Ryan, an intrepid officer who in 1913 penetrated further
than Smith's party.'? Malinowski mentions A. K. Chignell, author of
An Outpost in Papua (1911), whom he dismisses as 'a good-natured
missionary with absolutely no understanding of the natives' (1967: 10).
He met J. T. O'Malley, Resident Magistrate of Central Division, who had
the initiative to collect native texts on a variety of topics in a Motu

9 In his first letter to Seligman from Port Moresby, Malinowski tells him he is
waiting to go to Mailu 'as you ordered' (20-9-14. SP). George Stocking has pointed
out to me that given Seligman's interest in racial distributions and tribal relation-
ships, 'he would have been interested in having Malinowski follow up his earlier
survey work by exploring particular boundary areas: that I take to be the significance
of Mailu' (personal communication, 1-8-83). Mailu borders the southern Massim
with which it has frequent trading contact. Seligman's (and Haddon's) fascination
for Rossel Island can be largely explained by its being an ethnological anomaly.
l°Souter (1963:103-8) gives a brief account of the expeditions of Smith and
Ryan based on their own detailed reports in Papua: Annual Report, 1911-12 and
1913-14.

8
 Michael W. Young

community, and who had them published with his own translations in
the Annual Report of 1912. This was a modest corpus inscriptionum of
which Malinowski might heartily have approved ten years later, though
at the time he remarked that O'Malley did not have 'anything interesting'
to tell him (1967: 15). Malinowski also met Beatrice Grimshaw the
writer and Robert Hunter the explorer.
Then, abruptly, he is bound for Mailu. If he was tempted, Malinowski
evidently resisted the appeal of all the exotic places these seasoned trav-
ellers must have told him about. Perhaps Mailu was exotic enough for
a first field trip, though it rated little mention in the literature of the time.
Long since pacified,missionized since 1900, midway between the ad-
ministrative and commercial centres of the colony, Mailu was disposed
of in eight lines by Murray, who made their neighbours on either side
sound more interesting (1912: 146). Malinowski was not intrepid; he
had no ambitions to be an explorer in the geographical sense. The call
of the wild to him was something of a romantic indulgence, a flight of
imagination which would not have withstood a real and implacable un-
known. With his worries about his status, his funds and whether his
health would survive the tropics, Malinowski understandably played safe.
He dutifully went to Mailu as Seligman 'ordered'.
One combs the Diary in vain for any indication of his research plans.
and it is only in his letters that he gives any clue to what they might
have been. Soon after arriving in Moresby he wrote to Atlee Hunt ex-
plaining his financial difficulties. 'When I started on my expedition', he
wrote, 'I intended to stay for at least two years in Papua'. This was
longer than the Director of the L.S.E. had indicated, but Malinowski may
have exaggerated to win Hunt's sympathy, for he then makes a bold
request for £120 to allow him 'to stay here for another year to carry
out my investigations as far as to be able to publish some fairly complete
accounts of one or two districts' (21-10-14 AA). When he learned of
it, Seligman was appalled at the temerity of Malinowski's request, thinking
it wiser for him to keep a low profile.'! But Hunt was indeed sympathetic
and persuaded his minister to fund Malinowski for nine months of 1915.
'We might as well help the poor chap', a note on his memorandum said,
'since we'll have to support him anyway'. To Murray's disgust the grant
of £150 was charged against Papuan funds, a fact which probably did
much to sour his subsequent relations with Malinowski."
In his preface to The Natives of Mailu, Malinowski acknowledges that
it was Seligman who 'suggested' the expedition to Mailu (1915: 496),
though to call the country between Aroma and Mullins Harbour 'one of
the least-known portions of British New Guinea' was somewhat hyper-
bolic (see Seligman 1910:22-3). As we learn from his Diary, Malinowski
did not find Mailu people personally congenial (he spoke of them as
'coarse and dull') and his stay among them was punctuated by bouts of

11 'You have obtruded yourself on official notice', Seligman chided him, 'not as a
working anthropologist but as an enemy alien with a definite request which might
easily be considered impudent .. .' And he dryly advised: 'If you do get into
trouble it might be worthwhile to get a certificate from some well-known occulist
setting forth the condition of your eyes, and pointing out that no country in the
world would have you as a soldier at any price' (letter dated 14-1-15. SP).
12 For his own part, Malinowski did not mention in his published acknoweldge-
meats (1922:xix) that £150 of the £250 he received from the Commonwealth came
out of Murray's Papuan budget.

9
Why did Malinowski go to the Tro1>riand Islands?

lethargy and sickness. W. J. V. Saville, the L.M.S. missionary who had

worked there since 1900 and published a grammar of the Mailu language,
was initially Malinowski's host. Seligman had met and worked with
Saville in November 1904 (Field Diary, 2-11-04. SP), and his presence
at Mailu was presumably a factor in Seligman's advising Malinowski to
go there rather than to Aroma, where there were no white missionaries.
(The following year, though, Seligman wrote telling Malinowski he was
'keen' for him to study Aroma 'if it was feasible' [12-7-15. SP].) Malin-
owski's relations with Saville soon became strained, however, and he was
not long in confiding his dislike of him to his Diary (1967:27).
Three weeks after his arrival in Mailu, on 8 November 1914, Malin-
owskiwas visited by Haddon and his daughter Kathleen. They were
conducting their own expedition along the coast of Papua following the
British Association meeting in Australia. Haddon was investigating canoes
and his daughter was collecting string figures, both working toward
Haddon's larger ethnological study of migration in western Oceania
(Quiggin 1942: 108-9) . Malinowski showed Haddon his notes and evi-
dently won some praise, for Haddon later put in a good word for him to
Atlee Hunt and told Seligman he was 'getting on very well' and thought
he would 'make an excellent fieldworker' (14-2-15. SP). In view of
Malinowski's dislike of Saville, however, Haddon's friendly attitude to-
ward the missionary seems to have rankled, and subsequently on this
expedition Malinowski took every opportunity 'to talk against the mis-
sionaries', at one point pondering 'a really effective anti-mission campaign'
(1967: 41). It is needless to seek the cause of Malinowski's animosity
toward Saville, though he excused it later by his poor health and 'per-
secution mania' (1967: 134), possibly a reference to his insecure status
as an 'enemy' alien. But their personal incompatibility probably coloured
his attitude toward other missionaries.P
Although he seems to have made no effort to learn Mailu, Malinowski
soon mastered Motu which he claimed to be 'a completely satisfactory
instrument of investigation'. In boasting of his faculty for 'acquiring a
conversational command of foreign languages' in a very short time, he
makes it clear that he had learned an important methodological lesson.
"Over and over again I was led onto the track of some extremely im-
portant item in native sociology or folklore by listening to the conversation
of my boy Igua with his Mailu friends' (1915:500-1).
Settling at Mailu, Malinowski placed himself at the centre of a coastal
area which Seligman had declared to be relatively unknown, and he
made short expeditions to east and west as opportunity offered. The
traffic along this coast between the two main ports of the Territory,
Moresby and Samarai, was considerably greater in 1914 than it is today.
In his introduction to Natives of Mailu, Malinowski states that he spent
'the best part of December, January, and February' living 'quite alone

13 On the other hand, Malinowski formed a 'favourable impression' of the Rich

family at Isulele on the Suau coast, and seems to have got on well with the Abel
family at Kwatonear Samarai (1967:44-5). In view of his dawning realization that
the key to good fieldwork was a mastery of the vernacular, it is possible that
Malinowski was resentful if not jealous of Saville's knowledge of Mailu (see 1915:
513n). When Saville came to publish his own book on the Manu, Malinowski
wrote a patronizing foreword praising it, not too sincerely, as the work of an
amateur who had benefited greatly from Malinowski's teaching at L.S.E. (see
Saville 1926).

10
 Michael W. Young

with the natives, except for short periods of about two or three days'
when he was travelling along the coast or staying in Port Moresby.
Ostensibly, he mentions this for the sake of a methodological point:
I found that work done under such circumstances is incomparably
more intensive than work done from white man's settlements, or
even in any white man's company; the nearer one lives to a village
and the more one actually sees of the natives the better (1915: 501 ) .
These sentiments, however, represent an ideal he had not yet lived up
to in reality. For if we accept his Diary as giving an accurate picture of
his movements, then of the 73 days he spent among the Mailu proper,
only 37 days were spent without some social contact with Europeans.
Even so, Malinowski accomplished a prodigious amount of work. His
212-page monograph on the Mailu is testimony to the detailed informa-
tion he collected, though it omits much of his data on neighbouring
peoples gathered in Abau, Suau, Samarai, Port Moresby, and among
the Sinagolo,
The Natives of Mailu, of course, is a compendium rather than a focused
monograph, and it attempts to cover everything in the Mailu universe in
the manner of other. ethnographies of the day.14 But although it helped
to win him a D.Sc. from the University of London, it was not long before
he was expressing dissatisfaction with it even as a 'trial run', and he refers
to it disparagingly as a 'booklet' or 'pamphlet' (1967: 133; letter to Hunt,
14-4-16. AA). Writing to Rivers in October 1915 he says:
As it is my very first attempt, it is of course very weak, and if it ever
comes into your hands, please don't condemn me on its account.
I hope I am improving a little in my present work (15-10-15. He,
12055).
At that time he had been in the Trobriand Islands four months.

NEW PLANS FOR 1915

Malinowski had been in Mailu for only five weeks when he wrote to
Arlee Hunt telling him of his intention to 'go South' to Australia in
February or March 'to write up my results, digest my experiences and -
metaphorically - to look at my work from a distance; and then, of
course, to go again over the same material as I return to Papua'
(24-11-55. AA). While this could be interpreted as an intention to
return to Mailu in 1915, is is improbable that he would have wanted to
oommit himself to do so when his work among the Mailu had hardly
begun. Yet his Diary shows that he was already thinking of moving on.
The day after he wrote to Hunt, 25 November 1914, his entry records:
'Regrets about the period that is over, and fear as to what will happen
next' (1967:42). What did happen is that he took a trip to Samarai and
the mission stations on Kwato island and the Suau coast, then returned
to Mailu for a far more intensive stint of fieldwork. In February he
made another trip to Samarai, taking the opportunity to visit Woodlark
Island in the company of the returning Resident Magistrate, H. A.

14 In fact it follows very closely the demarcation of topics proposed by the 4th
edition of Notes and Queries on Anthropology (1912) which Malinowski used in
the field (1915:502). This edition contained substantial contributions by Rivers,
and it is presumably to these that Malinowski refers in his Diary when he mentions
reading Rivers (e.g, 1967:65-6; see Urry 1972:51-2).

11
Why did Malinowski go to the Trobriand Islands?

Symonds, who would have provided him with much local information. 111
Malinowski seems to have enjoyed his few days on Woodlark, and he
witnessed his first Kula transaction in Dikoyas, though without being
aware of its significance.l"
At the end of April 1915 when he had begun to work in Melbourne on
his Mailu material, Malinowski wrote to Atlee Hunt reporting on his
first expedition:
I have paid special attention to the economic and sociological aspects
of native life, as well as to their beliefs and general psychological
features. I did not neglect the sociological problems arising from
the transitory stage of the native society and I studied the extremely
interesting (both theoretically and practically) process of adaptation
of the natives to their new conditions. I was unable to pay serious
attention to physical anthropology and to broad racial problems as
well as to speculations about origins (28-4-15. AA)P
Tailored as it is for consumption by his government patron, this statement
is interesting in that it stresses the 'practical' aspect of his work - that
which might be most useful to the colonial administration. It even admits
to a neglect of the central preoccupations of contemporary academic
anthropology, notably the concern with 'origins'. In appealing for fund-
ing assistance, Malinowski writes of his future plans to
study the natives on the North coast (Mambare), and to go inland
as far as Kokoda and back to the coast, somewhere near Cape
Nelson. Again, in order to complete my studies in the East I should
have to cross from Bartle Bay to Mullins Harbour and remain a
certain time inland among the Borowai, whom I have reason to
consider as an extremely important centre of radiation in religious
ideas and ceremonies (ibid) .18
In a letter to Seligman a few days later, Malinowski outlines similar
plans, this time appealing to his supervisor's interests:
I am going to the Mamba [i.e. Mambare], and if you wish it, I shall
go to Rossel [Is.] and Sudest [Is.]. The two must be studied to-
gether . . . I must put in some time inland of Mullins Harbour -
go to Bartle Bay. The Mailu feast, the Walaga described by CGS
[Seligman] and Haddon, and the Soi I saw on the south coast are
nearly identical ... (4-5-15. SP; see also 1915:685n.).
Probably flushed with the speedy completion of his Mailu report and
doubtless satisfied that he has thus far fulfilled his supervisor's expecta-

111 There is no evidence that Malinowski visited the Trobriands on this trip
despite Firth's intimation that he did so (1967:xiii; also 1981:102).
16 Malinowski 1967 :94; 1922:477. In Argonauts (1922: 16) Malinowski dates
this event to March 1915, but his Diary is clear on the point that he was in
Dikoyas from 22-24 February and by March 1st he was 'nearing Cairns' in Queens-
land (1967: 88-94).
17 Malinowski's neglect of physical anthropology appears to have been quite
calculated. His personal copy of Notes and Queries (in the 'possession of Richard
Randolph of the Department on Anthropology, Santa Cruz, University of California)
has some interesting marginalia: among them two bold ink crosses through 'Part I:
Physical Anthropology' in the Table of Contents.
18 James Urry points out to me that the notion of a 'centre of radiation in
religious ideas and ceremonies' reflected Haddon's interests as developed in his
Huxley Memorial Lecture (1920).

12
 Michael W. Young

tions, Malinowski now feels ready to spread his wings and make more
adventurous decisions about his future fieldwork. One of the areas he
mentions was dearly suggested by his investigations along the south coast;
another seems to be included as a conciliatory gesture, knowing as he did
how keen Seligman was to learn more about the anomalous Rossel
islanders. But the area to which he gives priority at this stage - the
Mambare - is a completely new departure." It therefore deserves
comment.
Mambare district, named after a large river which debouches close to
Papua's border with New Guinea, was the home of the Binandere tribe,
one of the congeries of 'Orokaiva' people who occupy most of the north-
east corner of Papua (later known as Northern District and more recently
as Oro Province). The Mambare had been partly explored by MacGregor
in 1894, and the Anglican mission entered the area in 1899. Besides its
abundant gold, the river gained notoriety for mud, mosquitoes and war-
like natives (a massacre of a white Government Agent and several native
police occurred at Tamata, an up-river station, in 1897) . By 1914,
however, the Binandere were thoroughly pacified and the gold had prac-
tically run out, though the government now became concerned about a
series of prophetic cults which swept through the area.w
Judging by his curious proposed itinerary, it is possible that these cults
were the reason for Malinowski's interest in northeast Papua. The so-
called Baigona movement was first reported from Cape Nelson by the
Rev. Copland-King in 1912, and it had soon spread up the coast to the
Mambare and inland to Kokoda, where Chinnery (then a magistrate)
investigated it. The Baigona movement was suppressed by government
action, but it was quickly succeeded by the Taro cult and, in other places,
the Kekesi rites. The extent of these cults would have been known to
Murray in 1915, and one might suppose that here, if anywhere in Papua,
was a practical task for an anthropologist to pursue. The Orokaiva area
was populous and parts of it were suitable for European settlement, so
Atlee Hunt too would have approved any 'practical' anthropology done
there. In the event, of course, Malinowski did not visit the Mambare or
study the Orokaiva, and it was left to Chinnery, and later F. E. Williams,
to describe their recurrent cults." It was also left to Haddon to make a
perceptive (and almost Malinowskian) interpretation of their significance:
they were religious movements, he wrote, which attempted 'to sanction
social or political aspirations'; they were the product of social unrest and
of 'the weakening or disruption of the older social order' (Chinnery and
Haddon 1917, cited by Worsley 1957: 66) . Malinowski missed an extra-

19 Firth states that Seligman 'wanted him [Malinowski] to go to Mambare on the

north coast, beyond the area he had been able to reach himself' (1975:274), but
I have found no evidence in the correspondence to suggest it was specifically
Seligman's idea.
20 See Williams 1930: 1-8 for references, though he does not acknowledge Selig-
man, who had given a preliminary definition of the Binandere group (1909: 264-8).
21 See Williams 1928 for an account of the Taro cult and its precursors, including
full references to Chinnery's observations of them. Chinnery was to become a
student of Haddon's at Cambridge, though there is no evidence that he met
Malinowski while they were in Papua. Jointly with Wilfred Beaver, another
anthropologically-minded officer, Chinnery published on initiation ceremonies in the
Koko tribe of the Yodda river. Their article, which seems to have been edited by
.Haddon, appeared in the IRAl the year before Malinowski's Baloma essay. The
PIeces are poles apart in ethnographic sophistication.

13
Why did Malinowski go to the Trobriand Islands?

ordinary opportunity to join his interest in primitive religion to the study,

as he had expressed it to Hunt, of the 'adaptation of the natives to their
new conditions' (28-4-15. AA) .22
Malinowski's other plan, to cross from Bartle Bay to Mullins Harbour
and spend some time among the Borowai, was evidently suggested by his
interest in exploring varieties of 'big feast'. Although it would have
involved a week or more of strenuous walking, it was far more plausible
than the proposal to travel from Mambare to Kokoda and then to the
coast 'somewhere near Cape Nelson' (indeed, had Murray known of this
itinerary he would probably have questioned Malinowski's ability to en-
dure it). Even the second plan, however, smacks of 'survey' work rather
than intensive study, though it probably met wlith Seligman's approval.
In a letter he had written to Malinowski early in February, Seligman
referred to a review by Marcel Mauss of Melanesians of British New
Guinea, in which Mauss had pointed out the similarity between the 'big
feasts' (Walaga) as described by Seligman and the potlatoh of northwest
coast Indians. Seligman confesses it has never occurred to him to com-
pare them ('but as a rule Mauss knows what he is talking about'), so he
suggested that Malinowski read up 'the feasting habits' of the Kwakiutl
before returning to the field (4-2-15. SP). Malinowski brushed the lead
aside, saying, 'I shall take note of Mauss's criticisms, though I prefer not
to read about Potlatch (no time besides)' (4-5-15. SP). Another fifty
years were to pass before anthropologists published on Papuan 'big feasts'
as potlatch-like competitlive exchanges (see Rubel and Rosman 1970;
Young 1971).
Seligman's immediate response to Malinowski's plans was non-com-
mittal. He generously offered him £50 of his own money 'if you really
require it to keep the work going', and added regarding Rossel Island,
'measure and photo all you can, and if you can get some of their skulls
so much the better' (16-6-15. SP). He had also written a few days
earlier, telling Malinowski 'not to worry about the Gulf, for Haddon and
Holmes have done intensive study' (11-6-15. SP).
There is no evidence that Malinowski ever contemplated working in
the Gulf. It offered scope, however, for more spectacular ethnographic
discoveries than the eastern end of New Guinea, and the 'intensive' study
of Haddon and Holmes was in fact considerably less intensive than
Malinowski had already accomplished in Mailu. Haddon had done rapid
surveys on the coast and a few of the more accessible rivers, and just
how far from intensive Holmes' investigations were can be judged by
comparing his publications with Williams' weighty monograph on the
Elema, written some twenty years later (Haddon 1901, 1908; for an
evaluation of Holmes' work see Reid 1978). Williams himself expresses
perplexity at the fact that Holmes gave less than four pages to what it
took him 300 to describe: the grand cycle of Hevehe initiation ceremonies

22 Malinowski's interest in primitive religion at this time is evident in his Mailu

monograph. We must also recall that it was the subject of his address to the
British Association meetings in Australia in 1914, and that in 1915 his book
Primitive Beliefs and Forms of Social Organization was published in Poland. Con-
cerning his interest in social change, Malinowski had earlier (while working with
Ahuia in Port Moresby) proposed a study of the 'process of transformation and
adaptation of the Koita Iduhu' as these groups moved down to the coast (letter to
Seligman 20-9-14, cited by Firth 1975:276). Nothing came of this suggestion,
however.

14
 Michael W. Young

(1940:xii). Here was another remarkable opportunity missed by Malin-

owski, for the last cycle of ceremonies - which took about 15 years to
run their full course - had begun about 1915.
But while he would have been richly rewarded by ignoring Seligman's
casual advice, it might have got him on the wrong side of Haddon and
Holmes. It was not so much that the marking out of ethnographic pre-
serves had begun, but that Haddon, drawn as he had been to anthropology
from zoology by an acute sense of urgency (see Urry 1982), would have
seen it as an outrageous duplication of effort to cover the same area
when there were so many dying cultures to study. In this connection
one might wonder if Haddon privately disapproved of Malinowski's in-
dulgently long sojourn in the Trobriands; they had, after all, been studied
by Seligman, adequately in Haddon's view no doubt. As we shall see,
this very question was raised in Malinowski's correspondence with Selig-
man: was he wasting time and opportunity by remaining among one
people for so long? Yet as late as May 1915 when he left Australia
for his second expedition to Papua, he appears to have had no intention
of visiting the Trobriands.

ANCHORED BY CIRCUMSTANCES IN THE TROBRIANDS

Early next week I am starting for the northeast coast [wrote Malin-
owski to Seligman from Samarai on 13 June 1915]. Possibly I
shall go via the Trobriands. Bellamy is leaving for the front and I
would like to get as much as possible out of him and get his help
in securing some of the Trobriand stuff [i.e, museum specimens].
The Trobriand people are the leaders of the whole material and
artistic culture of this end, and ,it is quite essential to get an idea of
what is going on among them. I should stop there for about one
month, and then go by the B.P. small steamer Misiana to the Mam-
bare River which wiU be the main theatre of my operations this
season (13-6-15. SP).
He mentions two other vague plans. Having met Bishop Henry Newton
again in Samarai, he hoped to be 'able to put in some time at Dogura'
(the Anglican mission headquarters at Bartie Bay). 23 He refers also to
Dr W. M. Strong, who had assisted Seligman in 1904 and who was now
thinking of leaving Government service and 'joining anthropology'. Mal-
inowski expresses a high opinion of Strong's 'qualifications for E.F.W.'
(presumably 'extended fieldwork'), and begs Seligman to write and en-
courage him. If he 'joined', Malinowski adds, 'the two of us could do
something and we were planning how to get you over here for a time!
He seems to be keen on the West [i.e. the Gulf] and I told him that
Holmes' stuff tis tabooed for me' (ibid).
Among the half-formed plans that were fermenting in his mind it
is clear that Malinowski fully intended to make for the Mambare. His
inclination to visit the Trobriands on the way seems quite reasonable
however. His work among the Mailu and hisenquiries in Suau and

23 While in Samarai at the end of his first expedition, Malinowski mentions in

his Diary that Newton had given him a book (1967:90). This was in all probability
Newton's own In Far New Guinea (1914), which remains one of the best written
and most anthropologically-sensitive books by a missionary ever to come out of
New Guinea. It contains a chapter on the Walaga feast, which was apparently
Malinowski's chief 'reason for wanting to go to Bartle Bay.

15
Why did Malinowski go to the Trobriand Islands?

Samarai, his brief observations in Woodlark and his discussions with

magistrates like Symonds and missionaries like Gilmour, his reading of
Seligman and Haddon (both of whom had made similar observations
about the cultural importance of the Trobriands), and not least his read-
ing of early Annual Reports in which MacGregor gives some intriguing
descriptions of his first visits to the islands - all would have provided
justification for a diversion to the Trobriands. Finally, although we may
doubt that Malinowski was given to reading popular travel books, he can
hardly have been unaware of the accounts of Colonel Mackay (1909),
George Brown (1910), Beatrice Grimshaw (1911) and others who,
observing 'Polynesian types', chiefly aristocracies and erotic dances, helped
to fabricate the popular image - part noble savage, part licentious syba-
rite - that was beginning to adhere to the Trobriander. This reputation
may well have prompted a more personal curiosity in Malinowski who
did, in the end, give a respectable academic gloss to the image rather
that the lie to it. 24
But it was admittedly R. L. Bellamy who attracted Malinowski to the
Trobriands at that time, and had he left for the War a few weeks earlier
Malinowski might well have finished up among the Orokaiva. Bellamy
was well worth a visit. Liked and respected throughout Papua, he was
an educated young medical officer and resident magistrate who had
chosen to remain in Papua rather than complete his medical training in
England. He spent ten years in Kiriwina, longer than any government
officer before or since, and had done much to eradicate venereal disease
in the islands, He built roads and planted coconuts. He was enthusiastic,
conscientious, and wrote his annual reports with such charm and flourish
that portions of them were reproduced in Australian newspapers. Selig-
man had cited him extensively in his chapters on the Northern Massim
and sent him his drafts for comment. Even if Malinowski had not been
drawn to him simply for his local knowledge and wide experience of
Papua (as an ex-journalist he had travelled everywhere), he would have
found Bellamy's urbane style irresistable. His published reports were
unusual for their factual detail and ethnographic vignettes, bringing the
Trobrianders to life in a way which his contemporaries would have envied,
though they might be writing of payback killings and cannibalism while
Bellamy was writing only about his jail or his hospital. He was also an
amateur anthropologist and in 1908 had published a worthy little paper
on Trobriand 'customs' (mainly totemism), though Malinowski never
found cause to cite it. In 1912, Bellamy had done a census of every
island in his district and in 1913 he started a register of births and deaths,
instruments of demography which were years ahead of their time in Papua.
In short, in 1915 Kiriwina was one of the best-governed and most 'civil-
ized' places in the Territory, with its twelve white residents and booming
pearl industry. 'I fancy my district will show its heels to the rest', Bellamy
had said, and it was indeed an ideal and even idyllic place to conduct a
graduated experiment in intensive fieldwork (see Black 1957 for an
account of Bellamy's life and work).
Bellamy sheltered Malinowski on his arrival, taught him some of the
language, and even gave up his bed to Malinowski when there was a
second guest. 'He is a Pole from Cracow originally but quite a nice chap',

24 For a Trobriander's comments on this popular image and its association with
Malinowski, see Kasaipwalova 1973 cited in Young 1979: 17.

16
 Michael W. Young

wrote Bellamy to his sister. 'Very clever and all that - he intends
spending a year or so out here amongst the natives' (Black 1957: 279).
Malinowski apparently suggested that Bellamy collaborate with him on a
book on 'the sociology of the Trobriand people', but Bellamy was deter-
mined to go to the war and turned down the offer. When he returned to
the Trobriands for a visit in November 1918, Malinowski had left the
previous month. During their month's companionship in 1915, however,·
the two men somehow fell into disagreement and subsequently, according
to Black, 'Bellamy developed a profound dislike for Malinowski' (ibid).
It is less surprising, then, to find Malinowski disparaging Bellamy in
his first letter to Seligman from the Trobriands:
He knows more than the average R.M. but nothing amazing. Gil-
mour (who is now in Ubuia) [near Dobu] knows both language and
customs infinitely deeper, but as a missionary he is unsympathetic,
too busy moreover, and not on the spot. I found again that it is
quite futile to reckon on anyone but oneself, though there is a trader
here, a Turkish Jew, who helped me a great deal more than either
Bellamy or Gilmour - very intelligent and ready to help (30-7-15.
SP).
Seligman had also. consulted and cited Gilmour, who in 1905 had pub-
lished the first account of Trobriand trading activities, an account that
giv,esessential information on the full range of products traded - some-
thing which Malinowski himself neglected to do in ArgonautsP The
"Turkish Jew' was Rafael Brudo, a planter and cultivated ex-Parisian,
who like Malinowski had uncertain status as a technical enemy alien,
though he too was allowed to proceed to Papua having been caught in
Australia at the outbreak of war (AA. CRS, item G71-16-1914).
In the same letter Malinowski comments on Seligman's own Trobriand
research:
I find your account of the Trobriands excellent, as far as it goes ...
I don't think there is any essential inaccuracy in all you say. about
the northern Massim. But there are lots to be done yet and things
of extreme interest.
He mentions 'ceremonial gardening', 'beliefs and ceremonies about the
spirits Baloma', the 'unusual harvest feast Milamala', and trading which
he finds 'much more peculiar and interesting as it might appear at first
sight'.
But I am only sketching these things and I propose to do the north
Massim together with Misima and Panaieti and perhaps Dobu (Daw-
son Strait); they all belong together, in a way. (There was a big
'trading ring' called Kula in which there was a constant current of
native wealth.)
This is the first time that Malinowski puts a name to the trading circuit
he made so famous in Argonauts. Although he was to discover that,
strictly speaking, neither Misima nor Panaieti were in the ring (as Dobu
was), he had a correct sense that 'they all belong together' in an ethno-
graphic province linked by interdependent trade routes. This much he

25 M. K. Gilmour had come to British New Guinea in 1901 and lived for a few
years at the Losuia mission station on Kiriwina, In view of his extraordinarily long
experience of the Massim (he finally retired in 1933) it is a pity that following
his brief report on Trobriand trading (1905) Gilmour wrote nothing of any
anthropological significance.

17
Why did MaLinowski go to the Trobriand Islands?

could have and probably did learn from Gilmour and Bellamy as well as
from his native informants (see Malinowski 1922:500n; 1932:xxv-xxvi).
But if he had read Murray's book carefully he would have noted that he,
too, refers to a trading circuit, in what is probably the first statement to
appear in print that the 'native wealth' moved in a circle:
. . . the best of these ornaments [i.e. armshells] have names and
travel in a regular circle from island to island, so far, I believe as
Panaieti and back again, being constantly exchanged in regular
routine from one island to the other (1912: 125).
Again, it is likely that Gilmour was Murray's source, for he had been
visiting (if he were not actually stationed on) most of the islands in the
Kula circuit since 1901.
That Malinowski was still serious about his plan to work in the Mam-
bare is evident from the same letter to Seligman: 'I am going by the next
boat to the Mambare district where I shall stay for at least six months
- then if I feel very seedy I'll go south again'. This plan he confirmed
in a letter to Atlee Hunt, written in the middle of August:
I am at present working here, in Kiriwina, waiting for a boat for
the North Division - the 'Misiana' has failed to make her usual
trip for two' months running. The conditions of work here are ex-
tremely favourable . . . I am working with remarkably good native
informants and I am able to collect relatively useful material. On
this account I may remain here for another month. Then I intend
to go to the Mambare District and spend there as least six months
going inland, as planned before. After this I should like to go South
in order to bring my material into shape. If the war still lasts, I
should like very much to return to Papua again having finished my
library work in Australia (16-8-15.AA).
In a postscript, Malinowski states: 'I need hardly add that I am paying
special attention to Land Tenure, native authority and law and in general
questions which may perhaps be of some practical interest'.
Unbeknown to Malinowski, this letter provoked a flurry of official
correspondence. Hunt took the letter as tantamount to an application for
further funding for 1916, and accordingly approached his minister, who
in turn sought Murray's advioe. Murray had already advised against
extending Malinowski's 'contract' beyond the end of 1915, and recom-
mended that 'the present arrangements be not continued' (15-10-15. AA).
He had always felt that since Malinowski was being paid from Papuan
funds he should be subject to his control; as it is, he protested. 'at present
it is only by accident I hear where he is or what he is doing' (16-8-15.
AA). The upshot was that although Malinowski was to receive no further
subsidy from the Papuan Government, he would be permitted to return
the following year.
In September, when he had been in Kiriwina about three months,
Malinowski wrote to Seligman informing him of his revised plans. Bel-
lamy had gone and the Rev. Copland King had left Mambare. Malinowski
is apologetic for still being in Kiriwina:
I am not a little cross with the fact that I am working here on a
field which you have done before. I was, as you know, practically
pushed into it by circumstances. Did I tell you in my last letter that
Copland King, with whom I have made definite arrangements, has
been called for three months to Dogura as Henry Newton has gone

18
 Michael W. Young

to be Bishop of Carpentaria ...? So I am stopping till November

here (24-9-15. SP).
It is not at all clear why circumstances required him to stay in the
Trobriands, unless he regarded Copland King's personal introduction to
Mambare as essential. The boat he was waiting for had presumably
come and gone by this time, and it seems odd that he should have been
so dependent upon the movements of Anglican missionaries. Of course,
if he were simply seeking an excuse for not proceeding to the Mambare
then the failure of his missionary connection would have been an excellent
one, given that Seligman, not to mention Haddon and Rivers, had them-
selves depended so much on their missionary contacts.
Malinowski felt some uneasiness, however, for 'working' a field which
his own supervisor had done before, and he is at pains to explain how
it might payoff:
I am getting such damned good stuff here though, that you will
forgive me anything I hope. I am beginning to talk Kiriwinan quite
sufficiently to work in Kiriwinan though I have an excellent inter-
preter at hand . . . The Kiriwinans are absolutely necessary if I
want to deal (as I intend next time) with the Misima and Sudest and
Rossel people . . . I have been getting here lots of stuff which
absolutely smashes my views about kinship and proves the imbecility
of some of my seriously and elaborately constructed views (ibid).
He enumerates for Seligman the number of significant events he has
witnessed (garden magic '60% as an eye-witness', three deaths, over a
dozen sagali, two milamala etc.) as if to suggest the quality of the material
he is collecting by staying longer than Seligman was able to. As a further
palliative he adds: 'Next year will do Rossel as you and Haddon seem
to have a wierd predeliction for the place. Jenness did only Goodenough.
I should have to do Dobu and the Amphletts in connection with Kiri-
wina'.26
It took at least two months for mail to cross the world in 1915, and
it was December 2nd before Seligman replied to this letter; but regarding
Malinowski's misgivings about working in the Trobriands, Seligman is
magnanimous.
It is a most important area and I am delighted that you are working
there: the fact that I lightly scratched the soil has nothing to do with
it. Please get out of your head any idea about 'encroaching' on my
stuff; the whole of my Massim work was the merest preliminary
survey, and I shall not feel in the least sore if even much of it
does not hold. Your business is to go ahead and publish the right
stuff, no matter whom you may contradict (2-12-15. SP).
He ends the letter: 'Very glad indeed to hear that there is a chance of
your getting to Rossel sometime soon'.
Long before he had received this reassurance, however, Malinowski is
writing to Seligman again with further apologies for being in Kiriwina:
I hope I hear soon from you. I have still some pangs on working
in the Trobriands without your explicit sanction, but I think that

26 Diamond Jenness worked on Goodenough and western Fergusson Island in

1911-12 (see Jenness and Ballantyne 1920). He too had ambitions at the time to
work on 'trade relations' between the islands, including the Trobriands and Rossel
(field programme dated 27-5-11, Jenness' papers, UDC/C/2/4. Bodleian Library,
Oxford).

19
Why did Malinowski go to the Trobriand Islands?

the results will whitewash me in your eyes. I think I wrote to you

in my last letter that I determined to put the whole of my time in
here and return South a little bit sooner than I originally intended.
Next year if the war lasts and I get the means to get out here I
should like to go to the Northern Division, and then to the Southeast
and Rossel. I must say I would like for my own sake to get a glimpse
of the mainland pure Papuans, as the Mambare people undoubtedly
are. If Copland King proves really willing and sufficiently intelligent
I would propose him to do joint work, so that I could do the work
in a much shorter time. I have some misgivings about joint work,
especially with a Missionary (19-10-15. SP).
He almost apologises for having sacked his interpreter ('who was excellent
in his professional capacity but a bloody scoundrel in personal relations'),
but he hastens to reassure his supervisor that he has now 'got so much
Kiriwinan' that for the past three weeks he had scarcely used pidgin
at all, and 'having extremely intelligent natives to deal with' he is 'always
able to get out of the difficulty' of having no interpreter.
In what is the last letter of the series to survive, Seligman replies at
length, consoling Malinowski regarding his 'nerves' ('get South for a bit
and get some decent grub, see the magazines and talk to people at the
club'), commenting on his way with languages ('I wonder if there is any
actual macroscopical difference in your left temporal convolutions'), and
again approves of what he is doing.
Of course you are quite right to work in the Trobriands, but remem-
ber I am really keen on your getting to Rossel sometime. Probably
when you do go you may see something of the Louisades. Woodlark
would be an important place, but I suspect it has been absolutely
spoilt by now ... If you get the chance of seeing the pure Papuans
of the Mambare by all means take it. Make the chance if you like
so long as you don't neglect Rossel for it (20-12-15. SP).
And right at the end of his letter: 'Don't forget plenty of measurements
and photographs of men at RosseI'.

AUSTRALIAN INTERLUDE
Malinowski returned to Australia at the end of March 1916, having
spent nine consecutive months in the Trobriands. He was interviewed
by Hunt in Melbourne soon after he arrived, and reported himself to the
Intelligence section of the Department of Defence. He had satisfied Hunt
of his Polish origin and education, and Hunt wrote to the appropriate
authority requesting, on Malinowski's behalf, that he be 'freed from the
necessity of reporting himself to the Police each week during his stay in
Australia'. Hunt added a personal testimony:
On the various occasions on which I have seen Dr Malinowski he
has expressed strong anti-German sympathies. Judging from my
personal intercourse with him during the numerous interviews that
he has had from time to time, I have no reason to doubt his sincerity
(31-3-16. AA).
The exemption was granted. Further good news was in store for Malin-
owski. Through Seligman's advocacy the University of London, adminis-
tering the Robert Mond fund, granted him £150, and Baldwin Spencer,
Director of the National Museum in Melbourne, secured him another
£100 from the Commonwealth Government (27-6-16. AA). Spencer

20
 Michael W. Young

had praised his work highly ('the best of its kind yet done in Papua'),
though Murray, when asked for his recommendation, was far less positive.
He had 'heard disquieting rumours as to his moral character', and he
doubted 'the sincerity of Dr Malinowski's expression of sympathy with
the allies'. Nevertheless, Murray did not feel justified in raising any
objections to Dr Malinowski's return to Papua', but thought that if he
did return he should 'be confined to the Trobriands, and the terms of his
stay should be limited - say to twelve months'. He concluded ; 'There
would be the strongest objection to the payment by the Papuan Govern-
ment of any part of Dr Malinowski's salary or expenses' (29-6-16. AA).
Malinowski settled down in Melbourne to write his Baloma article and
a rough draft of his monumental book on the Kula. In addition, he used
this 18 month respite from fieldwork to embark upon a serious study
of linguistics. He tells us that the 'miscarriage' of his attempt to write a
Kiriwina grammar during this time led to 'a good deal of linguistic reading
and reflection'." Clearly, the remarkable accomplishment of his in-depth
ethnography during his final year in the Trobriands owed much to this
period of linguistic preparation.
Copland King had written to him just before he left Papua, sending
him a Binandere grammar and a translation of St Luke. King explained
that he would be on his travels again in June, 'but even if we cannot
arrange a stay here for you in that month, some other opportunity may
turn up'. He suggested: 'Gawara near the Mamba [Mambare] mouth
should be a good village for your investigations. Youcan get there men
who talk English, and yet the place is practically untouched by mission
teaching' (3-2-16. MPY, Box 4:326).
As late as May 1916, Malinowski apparently still entertained a vague
plan to collaborate with Strong, who wrote to him from Port Moresby
offering to pay £50 to £100 towards an expedition they might undertake
to Sudest or Mambare. They had even agreed to publish under their
joint names.
As regards whether Sudest or Binandere I would be guided largely
by your feelings, I fear I might not be able to help as much with the
Sudest as the Binandere. I saw the Rev. King a short while back
and he seemed quite willing to assist you. I did not of course mention
any possibility of joint work. Still there is less likelihood of the
Binandere people or their culture .dying out than there is of the
Sudest (7-5-16. MPY, Box 7:595).
But this plan, like the tentative arrangement with Copland King, faded
away as Malinowski fixed his thoughts even more firmly on his Trobriand
research, and there is no further reference to Mambare or Binandere in
the correspondence. Indeed, when next in Port Moresby Malinowski was
at loggerheads with Strong, who 'did not conceal his irritation' when,
uninvited, Malinowski importunately camped on his verandah (1967:
108).
In September, having been informed of the conditions under which
he would be allowed to return to Papua, Malinowski outlined his latest

27 Malinowski 1920:73-4. See also his comments on the use of the vernacular
as an 'instrument of inquiry', on the collection of texts and 'ethnographic documents',
and his acknowledgement of A. H. Gardiner's encouragement (1922:23-4). I thank
James Urry for underlining this point for me.

21
Why did Malinowski go to the Trobriand Islands?

plans to Baldwin Spencer, his intermediary, in the attempt to extract

further concessions from the authorities:
I must go through my field notes before I set out again to the Tro-
briands. I may be able to set out about the beginning of December
1916 or later. I could not stay longer than 12 months, because even
with the Government grant my funds would not be sufficient for a
longer period . . . I propose to go straight to the Trobriands but
what I have to do may be finished in 3-4 months. I have the honour
to enquire whether I would be allowed then to proceed to Rosse1
Island. Professor Seligman, under whose instructions I am working,
as far as the University of London is concerned, gave me definite
advice to do research work in Rosse1 Island, if possible . . . Rossel
lies, moreover, in the same administrative Division as the Trobriands
(6-8-16. AA).
Here Malinowski uses Seligman's 'instructions' as leverage to obtain for
himself a little more freedom of movement than Murray had stipulated.
Hunt cabled Murray to ask if he had any objections to Malinowski work-
ing in Rossel, Murray replied: 'Strongly urge arrangements be adhered
to and that he leave Papua on completion of his work at Trobriands'.
To this cable Atlee Hunt's deputy, Quinlan, attached a dry memo: 'The
Lt.-Gov. has always been an uncompromising opponent of concessions
being given to Malinowski' (11-9-16. AA).
Nevertheless, some weeks later Malinowski tried another negotiating
tack:
I understand that I shall not be allowed to proceed to Rossel Is.,
but that I am to confine studies to the Trobriand District. I have
the honour to enquire, whether, in case I had the opportunity, I
shall be allowed to visit the islands to the North of Dawson Straits:
Dobu (Goulvain Is), Sanaroa and the Amphlett group. These places
are lying on the way from Samarai for the Trobriands and from the
ethnological point of view, their study is quite essential as a comp-
lement to any work done in the Trobriands proper (29-10-16. AA).
Chronic ill-health (and an interesting social life) kept Malinowski in
Australia far longer than he had originally intended, but by March 1917
he was arranging to leave for Papua in June. The question of whether
he would be allowed to work in places other than the Trobriands was
raised again. In a memorandum to Murray, Hunt asked on Malinowski's
behalf for permission to: (a) Proceed to Dawson Strait (Dobu) and
Woodlark Island as well as the Trobriands; (2) Stay not more than one
month in each place, with the option of going from Samarai 'according
to investigations on arrival there'; (3) Report to the Resident Magistrate
only when changing his address; (4) Carry a camera and revolver and
'sign on such boys as are necessary for his work'. Murray approved
these requests but on condition that Malinowski's stay in Papua did not
exceed six months (29-5-17. AA).
It was not until October 1917, however, that he was ready to leave
Australia, and it is the 5th November when he writes to Hunt: 'I have
arrived in Papua at last' and thanks him fulsomely for his support
(5-11-17. AA). After a three weeks' wait in Samarai carving tortoise-
shell combs and dreaming of love, Malinowski reached the Trobriands
on 2 December (1967:141). Toward the end of the month he wrote to
the government secretary in Port Moresby (with a copy to his patron

22
 Michael W. Young

Hunt), asking permission for his stay to be extended 'till about October
1918'.
I find myself in the middle of the wet season and there is a con-
siderable difficulty in shifting camp and moving about. Some of the
most important native seasonal activities, which take place in August-
October, were completely finished when I arrived. I find too that
I underestimated very much the gaps in my ethnographic information.
If I went away by April next, my work must remain incomplete
and the short extension of my leave, for which I ask, would make
all the difference. Moreover, my health is not very strong and I
should be afraid to come out of the Papuan summer right into the
somewhat chilly winter of Melbourne, when I have to go, if I go
South (26-12-17. AA).
By invoking every excuse that was left to him, Malinowski did indeed
secure Murray's reluctant permission to extend his stay in Papua an extra
six months, probably through Hunt's intercession with the minister. 'It
is very desirable', Hunt concluded his recommendation, 'that the work
which is being performed by the Doctor should be completed (18-1-18.
AA).

CONCLUSION
The story of the limiting conditions of Malinowski's Trobriand field-
work need not be pursued beyond this point. He did, as we know from
his introduction to Argonauts and from the entries in his Diary, spend
a few weeks in the Amphlett Islands, but he failed to visit Woodlark
again or Dobu, and he spent all of the rest of the ten months of his third
and last expedition in the Trobriand Islands. Close reading of his Diary
suggests that he meant to spend at least a few days in Dobu, that he
proposed a trip to the Marshall Benett Islands, and even dreamed of
doing research in Sariba, an island near Samarai (1967: 113, 124, 130,
229). Like all boat-bereft visitors to the Massim, he found that travel
was simple in theory, difficult in practice; it is easier to stay put. When
Malinowski did get away to do a fortnight's work in the Amphletts it was
like a holiday. He is struck by the 'charm' of survey work 'a la Rivers'
and 'the encompassing of broad areas as a single whole ... This kind of
work - superficial, without going into details - is much lighter and
more amusing than the work on Kiriwina' (1967:229-30).
But it was his work on Kiriwina that put an end to an era. There
is an irony in the almost apologetic way he had written to his 'patron
saint of fieldwork', Rivers, in October 1915:
I am doing 'intensive work' in the Trobriands and my linguistic
facilities are of some use to me in this, though my experience has
shown me that it is possible to do almost as good work with an
interpreter, though one looses [sic] much time; when one begins' to
understand the natives talking among themselves, the old men dis-
cussing your questions, or the people gossiping in the evening, lots
of things crop up automatically (15-10-15. He, 12055).
There is almost an air of surprise about this observation; and as his
inquiries deepened it must have seemed to him that he had indeed
'discovered' intensive fieldwork as he learned to inhabit the vernacular.
For although Haddon and Rivers had proposed it as a new method or
technique, it was Malinowski who self-consciously improvised and applied

23
Why did Malinowski go to the Trobriand Islands?

it, apologizing the while to his mentors for doing so. Being the first, he
did not know how long or how deep was to count as 'intensive'. His
genius for languages played a crucial part of course, for it enabled him
to get intensive-type results fairly quickly without the discouragements
that less gifted neophytes suffer. There are parallels in other fields of
investigation: a hypothetical procedure is proposed by one scientist whose
pupil carries it out to discover there are unforeseen benefits and compli-
cations, requiring a new kind of theory to cope with the data the new
method yields.28 With every month that passed, it seemed, Malinowski's
commitment to the Trobriands deepened, and with it further discoveries as
to what 'intensive fieldwork' meant.
Why he went to the Trobriands on his second expedition is therefore
a key question. I have shown how his decision to go there was largely
adventitious, and his decision to stay during the first crucial six months
w~s scarcely less so. He missed several other excellent opportunities,
though we might imagine that had he gone to Mambare (or even Rossel)
instead of the Trobriands, he would have found conditions less congenial
and moved on after the usual period of three to six months. And even
if he had then gone to the Trobriands, his stay would have been corres-
pondingly shorter and less fruitful; his functional anthropology would
have been that much less fanatical, his monographs that much less detailed
and influential . . .
The 'ifs' pile up. There were also the factors of his temperament and
training, his ambition and impatience with amateurs. We cannot imagine
Haddon, Rivers or Seligman staying in the Trobriands as long as Malin-
owski if they had half as many chances to go elsewhere too. As for
Malinowski's contemporaries, Landtman, Jenness and Williamson, each
of whom had opportunity to practise intensive fieldwork in Papua, only
Landtman succeeded - though his failure to learn the vernacular vitiated
it (see Malinowski 1929: 111 ). The other two ethnographers remained
firmly tied to their missionary connections. But Gunnar Landtman was
no academic impresario and could not have celebrated the Kiwai Islanders
the way that Malinowski did the Trobrianders (see Stocking 1979).
There was the important factor, too, of his anomalous status vis-a-vis
the Papuan Government in wartime, for while Malinowski was in no sense
'interned' in the Trobriands as myth has it, his movements became in-
creasingly hedged with restrictions onerous to circumvent. By the time
of his last expedition, he had made his bed in the Trobriands, as it were,
and found himself obliged to lie on it. Even this factor was not deter-
minate, and had he cultivated better relations with Governor Murray -
who was profoundly mistrustful of Malinowski - he could surely have
won more of those 'concessions' to his freedom of movement. Then,
perhaps, he might well have spent less time in the Trobriands and more
time dabbling in survey work 'a la Rivers' ...
Finally, there was the serendipity factor - but this would be the
subject of another essay. Taking everything into consideration, it was
still a matter of the right man being in the right place at the right time

28 This theory Malinowski set out in his famous Introduction to Argonauts (see
Urry n.d, for an account of its historical significance). For his own part, Malinowski
then became the heroic exemplar of the new practice. As Stocking puts it 'we
might say that he provided the mythical charter for the social institution of fieldwork
--or, in Kuhnian terms, the concrete exemplar of practice around which the new
paradigm could be institutionalized' (1979: 111).

24
 Michael W. Young

that the 'intensive study of restricted areas' (in Haddon's phrase) truly
began with Bronislaw Malinowski's serendipitous fieldwork in the
Trobriand Islands.

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SP. C. G. Seligman Papers, British Library of Political and Economic
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JRAI. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.
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