Context (Field collection)
Collected Dr Alison Clarke, Research Associate Pacific Presences Project, at the 2017 Union Jack festival commemorating the arrival of HMS Royalist. The creation of the British protectorate ended a hierarchical chiefly social system which has largely seen as beneficial for the whole village of Taratai.

Event Date 2017
Author: rachel hand

Context (Analysis)
'The Union Jack festival at Taratai is held in June each year with a date chosen based on the tides. It is well known throughout the Islands and was started by the father of Raakai Curry, a current festival committee member, who petitioned the British High Commission on behalf of Taratai village to commemorate the centenary of the arrival of the British in 1992. The British High Commission agreed to the festival, and donated solar lights, a volleyball net (almost every village in Kiribati has one), two flag poles, a plaque commemorating the arrival of the British in 1892 and a small boat called the Royalist in order to allow people from Taratai no longer living in the village to attend the festival at Taratai,which is only accessible by boat'. Clark 2018.271
Event Date 2018
Author: rachel hand

Context (Analysis)
Object collections made aboard HMS Royalist can be found in museums in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, with 20 objects currently housed in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge (MAA). Clark 2018: 266-7
Event Date 2018
Author: rachel hand

Context (References)
'In 2017, I participated in the festival and it was claimed that I was the first British person to have attended the festival since its inauguration in 1992. This inaugural festival was the first and the last time that the British High Commission, which no longer has offices in Kiribati, attended. In addition to raising money for the festival through a crowd-funding campaign, I was also asked to give a speech at the festival on the history of HMS Royalist in Kiribati. As a British researcher, looking into the legacy of this historical encounter I have become inadvertently entangled in, what could be argued is, a delayed exchange relationship between the community at Taratai and the British.
Alison Clarke (2018). History and Cultural Identity: Commemorating the Arrival of the British in Kiribati, in Carreau et al (eds.) Pacific Presences: Oceanic Art and European Museums, Vol. II
Event Date 2018
Author: rachel hand

Context (Acquisition Details)
In 1892 HMS Royalist, an Australian station third class cruiser, commanded by Irish Captain (later Admiral)Edward Henry Meggs Davis (1846- 1929) was sent to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands (now known as Kiribati and Tuvalu) to forestall possible annexation by Germany, and to control there recruitment of labour, the sale of guns and liquor, and to end growing turbulence in the islands. Davis declared the Gilbert Islands a British Protectorate
Event Date 9/11/2021
Author: rachel hand

Description (Physical description)
A T-Shirt from the 2017 Union Jack festival commemorating the arrival of HMS Royalist
Event Date 5/5/2022
Author: rachel hand

Description (Physical description)
A T-Shirt from the 2017 Union Jack festival commemorating the arrival of HMS Royalist. White T-shirt with central logo reading 'TARATAI 125th aniversary'
Event Date 8/9/2022
Author: Louise Puckett