In 1896 the first Deutsche Kolonialausstellung, German colonial exhibition, was held in Berlin. In line with the large international exhibitions of the nineteen century, the aim of this exhibition was to showcase the economic and political power of the German empire through the products and potential of the colonies. After political unification in 1871, it had become a formal colonial power from 1884. This exhibition was to showcase the advancements made in the first decade of German colonial rule.
Among the objects exhibited were works from the Protestant missionary groups operating in the German colonies. These included the large German missionary groups such as the Berlin Mission, the Bethel Mission, the Leipzig Mission and the mission of the Moravian Church. The exhibit also showcased the work of non-German missionary societies that worked within the German colonies, such as the Australian Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society. The British Wesleyans had worked in New Guinea since 1857, long before the colonisation of the area by European states. From 1869 the Australian Wesleyans had taken over the mission work from the British sending out three European missionaries to work amongst peoples in Neu-Pommern, Neu-Lauenburg und Neu-Mecklenburg. Or, known by their English names, New Britain, Duke of York Island and New Ireland—part of the Bismarck Archipelago that would be placed under German colonial administration from 1884, first under the auspices of the New Guinea Company and from 1891 under formal German colonial control. By 1896 there were three local pastors and 117 local helpers working in the Wesleyan circuit on the Bismarck Archipelago. (Exhibition catalogue, p. 127).[1]
The objects on display in the Protestant mission section of the Berlin colonial exhibition in 1896 were texts or images, but explicitly no ethnographical objects, as it was assumed that other groups would display such items. In the catalogue, the Berlin-based missionary enthusiast and colonial propagandist Alexander Merensky, who had worked for the Berlin Mission in Southern Africa, wrote of the contributions of the Wesleyan mission in the Bismark Archipelago:
“Two extensive lexicons and grammars in the dialects of New Pomerania and New Lauenburg, written by Mr. Rickard and Mr. Brown, testify to the diligence that the missionaries had devoted to linguistic work. In both dialects there were reading books, hymn books, catechisms, translations of the Gospels and, in the Lauenburg dialect, the first two books of Moses.”[2]
The Brown referred to was the Englishman George Brown, who had lived a rather itinerate life before becoming a missionary for the Wesleyans, first in Samoa (1860-1874), where tensions between the Wesleyans and the London Missionary Society were high, and then in the Bismarck Archipelago from June 1875. He was accompanied by his wife, children and Fijian and Samoan teachers. Amongst the LMS and the Wesleyans it was a common strategy to take converted peoples from one island group to another in order to convert the populations of further islands to Christianity. This policy was in order to save money and European lives, and it also contributed to indigenous mobilities throughout the region.[3]
According to The book of a Thousand Tongues (1938/1972), which contains a list of all known bible translations, in part or in full, we read for the Duke of York Island that the language was spoken in Duke of York Island, in the New Britain group. That the first publication was St Mark’s Gospel in 1882 at Sydney by the BFBS and was translated by George Brown, of the Australian Wesleyan Missionary Society. In 1886, St. Matthew’s Gospel with portions of the Gospel of St. Luke and St. John and the Psalms were translated by Benjamin Danks and Isaac Rooney. In the same year, 1886, the Acts was printed in Brisbane from a translation by R.H. Richard.
The translation of St. Mark occurred before the German colonial incursion into the Bismarck Archipelago, but this was not a matter that was explicitly noted in the catalogue, nor were the names of the local contributors to the bible translation.[4] As our project has demonstrated, the translation of the bible was only possible with the help of local people, however they are often not explicitly stated in official documentation, such as the Book of a Thousand Tongues.
Yet we know that local people were involved. In the minutes of the New South Wales Auxiliary of the British and Foreign Missionary Society in Sydney from 1882, a request is noted from the Wesleyan missionary society in which they ask if the “native Pandit [Pundit] from New Britain” could be paid for his work on the translation of the Bible into the language of the Duke of York island.[5] The request was not approved by the NSW BFBS, rather was deferred to the London BFBS.
Both the historians Helen Gardner and Margaret Reeson have independently named Peni Lelei as the man who was involved with Brown in the translation of the Gospel of Mark.[6] Brown himself notes that Peni Lelei was “my best pundit, and gave me great help in the work of translation.”[7] Yet his name is not mentioned in either the 1938 or 1972 version of the Book of a Thousand Tongues. During the 1880s, the third white missionary in what would become German New Guinea was Benjamin Danks, who worked there from 1878 until 1887. In his diary entry from 27 June 1879, he lists 20 male and 6 female students that he was teaching: the first name on the list is Peni Lelei.
Peni Lelei was from the village of Molot on the Duke of York Island; he was baptized on 8 December 1878 and was raised to the position of lay preacher in April 1880.[8] Together with Timot and George Brown, he worked on the Bible translation of the Duke of York language.[9] He died in February 1895.[10]
Tracey Banivanua Mar has noted that indigenous mobility between Pacific Islander and Australia was more frequent than commonly expressed, partly because there are only snippets of information available in the archives that point to the mobility of Indigenous peoples.[11] The same may be said for Melanesian language workers for the mission. Through his association with the mission, Peni Lelei with his wife and child departed for Sydney in January 1881 with Brown and his wife and child.[12]
The reason why Brown was recalled to Sydney was to explain his actions to the mission board, as he had led a punitive expedition in 1878 to revenge the murders of four Fijian mission teachers and pastors, including his travel companion Peni Luvu.[13] As Heinz Schütte has noted, these men were murdered and eaten by a Tolai alliance under the Big-Man Talali. The event subsequently changed the power balance in the area, alerted potential colonial administrations to the difficulties of the area and placed the assertive missionary endeavour in question.[14] The estimate of the number of people killed in the raids varies greatly, with Schütte suggesting between 90 to 100 people were killed in retribution, and Brown himself stating that not more than 10 people died.[15] Brown was eventually exonerated for his part in the punitive expedition and despite the disciplinary actions that could have come out of the meeting for Brown, he focused on mission work using the opportunity to work on the Duke of York translation.[16] Timot, another New Britain man, had also accompanied his, as too did Itione and wife, a Samoan couple, all arriving in Sydney in February 1881.[17] Brown wrote of the events:
“As soon as we were settled I began the work of translating one of the Gospels into the Duke of York language, I was very anxious indeed that this should be done, not only for the spiritual benefit of the people to whom it would be sent, but also as recording the results of our first studies of the language. I found Peni very useful in this work. He had, fortunately, some knowledge of English, and was also remarkably quick and intelligent. It was a great joy to me when this translation of the Gospel of St. Mark, the first one which had ever been made into any of the languages or dialects of New Britain, was in the hands of the natives, and it was also a great joy to me to receive from teachers and others testimonies as to its value.”[18]
This quote speaks both to the religious aims of translation as also to the scientific use that such a translation may be put to. Although Peni Lelei died in 1895, it is possible that an image of him, with his wife and child, was displayed in Berlin in 1896 amongst the 90 images that George Brown provided for the exhibition. Brown was known as a photographer, having purchased photographic equipment from a member of a naturalist expedition in 1875.[19] His images are to be found in the Ethnographical Museum in Berlin and also in the State Library of New South Wales, where one of his extant albums includes photographs including Duke of York Island, New Britain and New Ireland (Papua New Guinea), Samoa, Fiji and Tonga. The photos from the album in Sydney date from 1875 to 1881 and thus were taken prior to the Berlin colonial exhibition. The album consists of 90 images, including number 74 of “Peni Lelei and wife, Duke of York Island”.[20]
[1] https://ia801304.us.archive.org/1/items/deutschlandundse00deut/deutschlandundse00deut.pdf
[2] Arbeitsausschuss der Deutschen Kolonial-Ausstellung, ed., Deutschland Und Seine Kolonien Im Jahr 1896. Amtlicher Bericht Über Die Erste Deutsche Kolonial-Ausstellung (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer, 1867).: German original: „„Von den Fleiss, denn die Missionare auf sprachliche Arbeiten verwendet hatten, zeugten zwei umfangreiche Lexika und Grammatiken in Dialekten Neu-Pommerns und Neu-Lauenburgs, verfasst von den Herren Rickard und Brown. In beiden Dialekten waren vorhanden Lesebücher, Gesangbücher, Katechismen, Uebersetzungen der Evangelien und im Lauenburger Dialekt auch die ersten beiden Bücher Mosis.“
[3] Doug Munro and Andrew Thornley, eds., The Covenant Makers. . Islander Missionaries in the Pacific (Suva, Fiji: Pacific Theological College and the Institute of Pacific Studies at the University of the South Pacific, 1996).
[4] Moore Theological College [MTC], Samuel Marsden Archives [SMA], Sydney, AU AU-MTC 204-207/1, Minutes of the New South Wales (NSW) Auxiliary of the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS), NSW BFBS, Monthly Committee Meeting held on 19 April 1882.
[5] MTC, SMA, NSW BFBS Monthly Committee Meeting held on 19 April 1882.
[6] Helen Bethea Gardner, Gathering for God: George Brown in Oceania (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2006). p. 84. She states that Peni Lelei from the Duke Islands, helped translate the Gospel of St. Mark. (she does not give a footnote)]; See also: Margaret Reeson, Pacific Missionary George Brown, 1835-1917. Wesleyan Methodist Church (ANU Press: Canberra, 2012),
[7]George Brown, Pioneer-missionary and explorer, an autobiography; a narrative of forty-eight years’ residence and travel in Samoa, New Britain, New Ireland, New Guinea and the Solomon Islands Brown (Hodder and Stoughton: London, 1908), 378
[8] Margaret Reeson, Pacific Missionary George Brown, 1835-1917. Wesleyan Methodist Church (ANU Press: Canberra, 2012), 129; Brown, Pioneer-missionary and explorer, 378.
[9] Margaret Reeson, Pacific Missionary George Brown, 1835-1917. Wesleyan Methodist Church (ANU Press: Canberra, 2012), 166ff.
[10] Margaret Reeson, Pacific Missionary George Brown, 1835-1917. Wesleyan Methodist Church (ANU Press: Canberra, 2012), 220; cf. Australian Methodist Missionary Review, 5 February 1895
[11] Tracey Banivanua Mar, “Shadowing Imperial Networks: Indigenous Mobility and Australia’s Pacific Past”, Australian Historical Studies 46:3 (2015), 340-355.
[12] Brown, Pioneer-missionary and explorer, 194, 406.
[13] Brown, Pioneer-missionary and explorer, 236.
[14] Schütte, Heinz. “The Six Day War of 1878 in the Bismarck Archipelago.” The Journal of Pacific History 24, no. 1 (1989): 38–53. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25168980.
[15] Schütte, Heinz. “The Six Day War of 1878 in the Bismarck Archipelago.” The Journal of Pacific History 24, no. 1 (1989): 38–53. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25168980, 43; “The Blanche Bay Massacre. REV. GEORGE BROWN’S STATEMENT”, The Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser (NSW) Thursday 2 June 1881 – Page 3
[16] Brown, Pioneer-missionary and explorer, 194, 406.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Reeson, Pacific Missionary George Brown, 85.
[20] Reverend George Brown: Album of photographs including Duke of York Island, New Britain and New Ireland (Papua New Guinea), Samoa, Fiji and Tonga, ca. 1875-1881, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales: https://archival.sl.nsw.gov.au/Details/archive/110316387
