2025/09/14 by Michael Wood · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/00223344.2025.2511331
openalex publication_date 2025/09/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23
The patrol report is an important source of data concerning the history of colonialism in PNG. However, the patrol report as a specific set of documents with their own history has not itself been subject to analysis. The textual analysis outlined in this article is one approach to developing such a history. The article highlights the importance of official instructions on how a patrol report should be written and circulated within the bureaucracy. There were persistent attempts to regulate and reduce the flow of political and social issues into the centre of the state. These attempts were difficult to stabilize as they involved both the devaluation and revaluation of different types of knowledge found in patrol reports from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. What emerges from this analysis is a history that explores bureaucratic attempts to define and organize the way knowledge is reported and circulated rather than a history based on the content of those reports.