User:Vortex3427/Binoka

Binoka and Bauro. Robert Louis Stevenson, 1889

Binoka (c. 1840s – 10 November 1891) was the third uea (supreme monarch) of Abemama, Kuria and Aranuka. Binoka was the last independent ruler in the Gilbert Islands, which was declared a British protectorate in 1892. As Tembinok', Binoka is featured in Robert Louis Stevenson's In The South Seas (1896).

Background and early life

The utu n uea (royal family) of Abemama was founded four or five generations before Binoka. After consolidating his family's power through battle, Karotu annexed the neighboring islands of Kuria and Aranuka in the 1830s. He made his son Tewaia the first uea.

Baiteke succeeded Tewaia in 1850. Outside his oversight, whalers and merchants from Europe bartered for copra and prostitutes. In addition, beachcombers were residing on his territory and became perceived as a nuisance. To wrest back control of trade, Baiteke ordered the deaths of every foreigner in his realm. He confined the Europeans to a single port, allowing none of them to stay. After buying firearms and weaponry through his trade monopoly, Baiteke formed an autocracy and established a stratified society. While the rest of the Gilbert Islands came under increasing colonial influence, Baiteke's islands alone remained independent.

Born in the 1840s, Binoka was the eldest son of Baiteke. He had one brother, Timon, and two sisters, including Tea. Binoka was raised by his father's many wives, concubines, and palace favourites. He led a privileged lifestyle and became a good marksman. He also harboured a lifelong curiosity of Western civilisation and collected foreign trinkets and objects from the traders.

In 1973, Baiteke allowed Hiram Bingham, a Christian missionary, to send a mission teacher to Abemama. However, Bingham found that Baiteke strictly reserved education for his son. Binoka held the inexperienced teacher, the ill-mannered Moses Kanoaro, in contempt, but learned basic arithmetic and geography and how to read and write Gilbertese. Binoka also convinced his father to employ a German to build Abemama's first stone house.

Early reign and rebellions

Binoka was in his mid-thirties when his aging father abdicated in late 1878.

As was customary for an aging ruler, Baiteke abdicated in late 1878. In his mid-thirties, Binoka became the third uea. He retained his father's trade monopoly

Conquests

Binoka harboured lifelong ambitions to conquer all the Gilbert Islands, informed by the legends of Kaitu and Uakeia. In 1880, he attempted to invade Maiana. On 13 July 1884, a respected resident trader named Robert David Corrie recounted the events to William Usborne Moore of HMS Dart.

According to Corrie, he received a message from Binoka from his main factotum Harry Smith. He offered Corrie the position of Maiana's governor if Corrie supplied firearms to Binoka's allies. Corrie refused, and found that the people of Maiana were gradually arming themselves with rifles in preparation for the attack.

Nonouti

In 1883, Nonouti welcomed an Abaiang exile named Nimatu, who went by the name of Kalākaua, his former employer. Unlike Nimatu, who wielded a Winchester rifle, Nonouti had no firearms. They were defenceless as Nimatu and other returned labourers gradually subjugated the island. One day, a drunken Nimatu shot two of their elders. Almost one hundred canoes left Nonouti to seek shelter and aid on Abemama, Kuria, and Aranuka.

Reconstruction of the flag of Binoka in January 1884. The four stars represent the four islands he claimed

The refugees depleted the resources of Binoka's islands, which were already strained by a drought. In December 1883, Binoka asked Horatio C. Hayward,

the master of the schooner Kate McGregor, to ferry 150 forces to southern Nonouti.

They slayed the invaders but also looted the island. Initially, the people of Nonouti were grateful to Binoka for liberating it. However, Binoka treated their island as conquered territory.

He took 150 Nonoutians went aboard the Kate McGregor to become serfs. Extending his trade monopoly to Nonouti, Binoka took its copra for his own and used it to pay off debts he had incurred to Europeans.

In January 1884, Joseph Henty carried Binoka's new flag to Nonouti. Its four stars represented his four dominions: Abemama, Kuria, Aranuka, and Nonouti.

When the Kate McGregor returned to Auckland, rumours spread about its involvement in Nonouti's invasion. This became the subject of a protracted legal case heard by the High Commissioner for the Western Pacific.

Last years

“ THERE is one great personage in the Gilberts: Tembinok' of Apemama: solely conspicuous, the hero of song, the butt of gossip. Through the rest of the group the kings are slain or fallen in tutelage: Tembinok' alone remains, the last tyrant, the last erect vestige of a dead society. The white man is everywhere else, building his houses, drinking his gin, getting in and out of trouble with the weak native governments. [He] figures in the patriotic war-songs of the Gilberts like Napoleon in those of our grandfathers. ” — Robert Louis Stevenson, In The South Seas (1896), p. 329–330

Having bore no child to be his heir, Binoka adopted his nephew Bauro. His brother Timon had married a rang woman, a commoner in Baiteke's social system. At the adoption ceremony, Bauro's feet was cut to purge him of "rang blood" and Binoka announced the child now solely had royal blood. To prevent opposition from the noble inaomata, Binoka had them smear the rang blood on their foreheads to make their blood inferior to Bauro's.

In 1889, the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson asked Binoka to stay on Abemama for two months. He was accompanied by his wife Fanny Stevenson, his stepson the novelist Lloyd Osbourne, and their Chinese cook Ah Fu. Robert wrote about it in his Pacific travelogue In The South Seas (1896), which devotes nine chapters to Abemama (which he spelt Apemama), much of which is focused on Binoka (spelt Tembinok'). This depiction made Binoka known to English-speaking audiences. Robert also took photographs of Binoka and the island.

Robert devoted a chapter to Binoka's household.

Fanny designed a tricolour flag for Binoka. The horizontal red, yellow, and blue stripes represent Binoka's three islands. The uea claimed to descend from the mythical union of a woman and a shark, so Fanny put a shark with a crown over the motto "I BITE TRIPLY". The travel guide Lonely Planet claims this "silly flag" was never used. However, Sir John Thurston, the High Commissioner for the Western Pacific, visited Abemama on 4 July 1893 (after Binoka's death) and recorded the flag being flown.

Stevenson briefly saw Binoka again

While Stevenson's account of the uea was more sympathetic,

Legacy

Binoka died on 10 September 1891 of an infected abscess, which a 21st-century uea said was caused by the introduced disease of syphilis. He was succeeded by 10-year-old Bauro.

Citations

• Macdonald, P. D. (2016). "The Would-Be Empire Builder". Retrieved 30 July 2024.
• Maude, H. E. (1970). "Baiteke and Binoka of Abemama: Arbiters of change in the Gilbert Islands". In Davidson, J. W.; Scarr, Deryck (eds.). Pacific Islands Portraits. Canberra: ANU Press. ISBN 0708101666.
• Roberts, R. G. (1953). "The Dynasty of Abemama". The Journal of the Polynesian Society. 62 (3). Polynesian Society: 267–278. JSTOR 20703382.
• Stevenson, Robert Louis (1896). In the South Seas. Scribner.