Australia considers the Southwest Pacific of vital strategic importance and the ADF is playing an active role in what is seen as an increasingly unstable region. This course will provide students with an understanding of the cultures and causes of tension in West Papua, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji. It will begin with the geography and settlement of the region, and then discuss the development of Indigenous social structures, modes of production and exchange, and attitudes to power, force, and dispute resolution in each of these areas. It then deals with the impact of colonisation and the importation of alien social, economic, and political ideas, before exploring the ways in which the different communities of Melanesia are navigating a world of accelerated change. This course may be taken as part of a major or minor in History or Geography.