Identity area
Reference code
Title
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Extent and medium
5.4 m (27 type 1 boxes)
Context area
Name of creator
Biographical history
James Wightman (Jim) Davidson was born in Wellington, New Zealand, in 1915. Davidson completed his PhD at Cambridge on trade and settlement in the South Pacific 1788–1840. In 1947 he was sent as an emissary of the New Zealand government to Western Samoa. On 1 December 1950 he became founding Professor of the Department of Pacific History at the Australian National University and Dean of the Research School of Pacific Studies. His work and publications on Samoa included Samoa mo Samoa: The Emergence of the Independent State of Western Samoa (Oxford University Press, 1967). He was a Constitutional Advisor to Samoa 1959-1961, the Cook Islands 1963, the Nauru Local Government Council 1967-1968, a Consultant to the Congress of Micronesia 1969-1973 and Constitutional Planning Committee of Papua New Guinea 1972-1973. It was during this last assignment that he died in Port Moresby on 8 April 1973.
Repository
Content and structure area
Scope and content
The series includes administrative files maintained by Davidson as Professor of Pacific History and Dean of the Research School of Pacific Studies, dealing with staff including appointments, students, the Coombs building, the New Guinea Research Unit and committees of which Davidson was a member. There are two files which include material about his death. There are also research files which include correspondence, research notes, press cuttings from the Fiji Times, South Pacific Commission papers, articles by Davidson and others, and typescript copies of his Peter Dillon biography and Samoa mo Samoa. There are also parliamentary debates from Samoa and Kiribati and photographs related to the four-volume book 'Pacific Islands' published in 1943-1945.
Accruals
System of arrangement
Conditions of access and use area
Conditions governing access
Restricted access to some files relating to staff and students
Conditions governing reproduction
Language of material
- English
Script of material
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Finding aids
Allied materials area
Existence and location of originals
Existence and location of copies
Related units of description
National Library of Australia: MS 5105, Davidson papers
Notes area
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Description control area
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Dates of creation revision deletion
Prepared by Maggie Shapley on 21 September 2007; revised 26 February 2010
Language(s)
- English