Papua New Guinea at 50: the papers of Francis West

Earlier this month, on 16^th September 2025, Papua New Guinea celebrated the 50^th anniversary of its independence. Prior to 1975, the Territory of Papua and New Guinea was administered by Australia. Its colonial administrative history is complex, reflecting a period of heightened European imperial competition in the Pacific, and elsewhere, in the latter part of the 19^th century. A newly catalogued collection recently donated to the Royal Commonwealth Society (RCS) collection from the papers of the late Professor Francis J. West sheds light on Papua New Guinea’s colonial past.

Papua New Guinea is a large island state, one half of the island of New Guinea, sharing a single land border with the Indonesian province of Papua (formerly Irian Jaya) to the west. The eastern half of the island was previously split between German New Guinea in the north and British New Guinea in the south. British New Guinea was placed under the administration of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1905, and was known thereafter as the Territory of Papua. Following the First World War, German New Guinea was administered separately by Australia as a League of Nations Mandate and later as a United Nations Trust Territory, known as the Territory of New Guinea.

Francis James West (1927-2025), a Cambridge-trained medievalist who had previously worked on the Norman administration in Anglo-Saxon England, was the author of a biography of the first Australian Lieutenant-Governor of Papua, Sir Hubert Murray (1861-1940). West had left Trinity College in 1952 to join the Research School of Pacific Studies at the newly established Australian National University in Canberra. He was intrigued by the idea of ‘alien rule’, and apparent parallels between the Norman conquest of England in the 11^th century and contemporary colonial administration in the Pacific, firstly in Papua and New Guinea, and then more widely across Polynesia. 

The archive comprises the products of West’s first forays into fieldwork in Papua in the mid-1950s as well as material accumulated for his biography on Hubert Murray. Murray was one of three Commissioners appointed in 1919 to consider the future of the Territory of New Guinea. An account of the work of the Royal Commission by Atlee Hunt is among West’s papers. West worked closely with the Murray family, and later edited a selection of Hubert Murray’s letters. His long-planned book on administrative control in Papua was postponed as a result of these projects, and a subsequent invitation to produce a biography of Murray’s younger brother, the Oxford classicist and Regius Professor of Greek, Gilbert Murray (1866-1957). The archive thus contains further Murray family material, and West’s research notes from the vast Gilbert Murray papers held at the Bodleian.

Later in his career, West was also increasingly tied up in university administration, with senior administrative roles at Deakin University and the University of Buckingham, amongst others. In retirement in Cambridge, West returned to his investigation of ‘alien rule’ in Papua, and several draft chapters or sections towards this book are included in the archive. Ultimately, the work was never completed but West maintained a lifelong interest in Papua New Guinea. From historian to biographer, medievalist to Pacific commentator, West’s wide-ranging craft is drawn out in a draft of his unpublished memoirs, titled Errant Historian, edited and prepared for inclusion in the archive by his widow, Dr Margaret A. Rose.

Selected bibliography of Professor Francis J. West:

• Political Advancement in the South Pacific:  A Comparative Study of Colonial Practice in Fiji, Tahiti and American Samoa (Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1961)
• Hubert Murray (Great Australians Series) (Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1962)
• Hubert Murray: The Australian Pro-Consul (Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1968)
• (ed.) Selected Letters of Hubert Murray (Oxford University Press, 1970)
• Gilbert Murray:  A Life (Croom Helm, London & St Martin’s Press, New York, 1984)

The Francis West collection on Papua New Guinea is available to consult in the Special Collections Reading Room at Cambridge University Library. For further information please contact rcs@lib.cam.ac.uk. A large collection of West’s personal papers, including correspondence and material relating to his academic roles is held at the National Library of Australia.

With special thanks to Dr Margaret A. Rose and Professor Mark Goldie.