Coral Empire: Underwater Oceans, Colonial Tropics, Visual Modernity

Abstract

BEGAN ANNE ELIAS’S BOOK CORAL EMPIRE: UNDERWATER OCEANS, COLONIAL TROPICS, Visual Modernity on the same day I heard Australian Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack’s comments at the August 2019 Pacific Islands Forum, at which, among calls for urgent response to climate change, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison had declined to agree to the terms of the Pacific Nations Declaration.1 McCormack’s remark, aimed at Pacific Nations leaders critical of the Australian government’s inaction, was that it is Australian aid, along with more fruit-picking jobs, that would secure the survival of Pacific nations people. In his keynote address, the former Prime Minister of Tuvalu, Enele Sopoaga, expressed how deeply insulting these words were, with their implication that Pacific Islanders should express gratitude for Australian aid and shut up about climate change. As the ocean levels rise in height and temperature, the small-island nations are experiencing the loss of land and sea territories along with the potential loss of histories, cultures, economies, communities, traditions and way of life. Morrison, McCormack and their political allies might perceive that they stand on richer, bigger and higher ground, but their ambivalence toward these serious issues fails to address that this environmental catastrophe is global.