Coconuts and Rosaries: Materiality in the Catholic Christianisation of the Tuamotu Archipelago (French Polynesia)

Abstract

The Christianisation of the Tuamotu Archipelago, a large group of atolls lying between the Society and Marquesas archipelagos, was the subject of intense rivalry between several Christian denominations. This article focuses on the evangelistic practices of the Catholic missionaries of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, who settled there in 1849 after achieving great success in the Gambier Islands. In the Tuamotus, Catholic evangelisation relied on material practices (rituals, exchanges, construction of churches and secular buildings, etc.) and imported objects (rosaries, calico, medals, etc.), which were often shipped there with great difficulty. The Fathers’ accounts provide valuable insights into both the changes in material culture and social organisation that occurred during the second half of the nineteenth century and the processes of reconstruction, distortion or denial of imported practices or values––to which the missionaries also had to adapt.