Beyond the Bounty
“A tide is rising in Pacific studies,” says history professor Tillman Nechtman. Though he’s riding that tide, his latest re- search project sometimes leaves him feel- ing “afloat on the sea by myself.” Nechtman always has a lot of ground —and a lot of ocean—to cover, consider- ing that his specialty is the British Em- pire. There are still 14 pieces of it, and he was thinking of writing a book about the persistence of empire in small remnant states like Bermuda, the Falklands, and Gibraltar. But when his attention fetched up on Pitcairn Island, he knew that’s where it would stay awhile. A remote islet in the South Pacific, Pitcairn was where the Bounty mutineers took up residence with their Tahitian women. Much has been written about the 1789 incident, but Nechtman’s focus is postmutiny—specifically the fraudu- lent administration of Joshua Hill, who posed as an official British representative and ruled the island from 1832 to 1840. What was to be a mere chapter in a book on empire is growing into The Last Refuge of Scoundrels: Pitcairn Island and the Dicta- torship of Joshua Hill—The True Story of the Man Who Would Be King Among the Bounty Mutineers. It’s a topic that Nechtman has pretty much all to himself. While it may seem a small story of a small
HISTORIAN TILLMAN NECHTMAN IS NO SAILOR, BUT HIS MARITIME STUDIES COVER THE NORTH ATLANTIC TO THE SOUTH PACIFIC.
PITCAIRN HAS IT ALL— SOUTH-SEA ADVENTURE, CLASS AND RACE,
place, he finds it disproportionately sig- nificant to an understanding of 18th- century British imperialism in the Pacific. Pitcairn has it all—a narrative of south- sea adventure, issues of class and race, redemption and reform, overseas power and colonial control.
The island sparked the ambitions of Joshua Hill, an enigmatic zealot who be- came obsessed with saving Pitcairners from the alcohol and immorality that
REDEMPTION AND REFORM, AND COLONIAL CONTROL.
tended to come ashore with maritime adventurers. Denied any official authori- ty there (and dismissed by history as a madman), Hill went to Pitcairn anyway, presented an extravagant resume of trav- els and connections with everyone from European royalty to New York’s Seneca In- dians, declared himself in charge, and pro- ceeded to rule with an iron fist.
Since Hill lied about his rights to gov- ern the island, scholars have assumed he also lied about his background. Necht - man took a different tack: what if the stories were true? So began a global archival manhunt, which has in fact confirmed many of Hill’s claims. With that, Nechtman says, the ques- tion became “Why? If you had those kinds of connections, why would you go to Pitcairn, this two-mile by one-mile is-
land with about 60 people on it?” The answer he proposes is that with British imperial might in the Pacific being threatened by the French, Russians, and Americans, Hill saw in Pitcairn a model for a form of imperialism that had great progressive and evangelical potential— but only in the hands of the British. It was, says Nechtman, “the perfect stage for a colonial administrator, sane or oth- erwise, who wanted to stand in the glob- al imperial spotlight.”
He adds, “The detective-story aspect of this is really fun, though I didn’t know this little island would take up so much of my life.” While he may never set foot on Pitcairn—“very difficult to reach, and very expensive”—Nechtman is charting a research trip that would in- clude stops in Hawaii, Tahiti, Fiji, and Australia. Not bad, he allows: “How many people can say they have to go to Tahiti for work?” —KG
4 SCOPE SPRING 2013
GLENN DAVENPORT
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