PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY, 1930-1970

Part 1: Issues for 1930-1954

Publisher's Note

In Part 1 we bring together a complete run of the Pacific Islands Monthly, 1930-1954.

This important periodical was founded in Sydney by R W Robson, a New Zealand born journalist. His object was to provide a news exchange for residents of the South Pacific Islands. The first issue, which appeared in August 1930, was in newspaper format and consisted of 12 pages. It remained in that format, but with an increasing number of pages, until the seventeenth issue (December 1931) when a magazine format was adopted.

By September 1941 (Vol 12 No 2) it had grown to 64 pages per issue and covered a wide range of political, social, economic and cultural news for the region. By this period standard contents included:

• The Pacific News Review
• Lots of advertisements and illustrations
• War news, jungle campaigns and the amphibious operations in the Pacific theatre
• Reports from the different islands
• Mining News
• Section for Women
• Copra and Rubber Prices
• Reviews of New Books

Each month there was a wide range of specific feature articles including items on:

• South Seas Travellers
• Cassava
• Sugar industry in Fiji
• Oil
• A History of the Pacific’s Equatorial Islands
• Political and Economic Developments in New Guinea

For indexes to contents of the Pacific Islands Monthly please see:

• Woodhouse, M (comp) Cumulative index to the Pacific Islands Monthly ... August 1930 to July 1945 (Sydney: Pacific Publications, 1968)
• Langdon, R. (ed) Cumulative index to the Pacific Islands Monthly ... August 1945 to July 1955 (Canberra: PMB 1984)
• Langdon, R. (ed) The PMB book of Pacific indexes (Canberra: PMB, 1988)

All documents were filmed by the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau.

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