The trumpet shall sound
"Melanesian islanders believe that ancestral spirits, banished by the white man's religion, will come back and bring untold quantities of trade goods ('cargo' in pidgin English). These cults began as early as 1885 in Fiji, and are still spreading. At first they were related to existing fertility rites and ancestor cults, but gradually have been transformed into a nationalistic movement, using religious and magical symbols derived from both Christianity and indigenous belief. Peter Worsley shows that the cults' apparently irrational flights from reason were, in fact, symptoms of the Melanesians' growing feeling of insecurity and bewilderment in a world of changing social and economic conditions brought about by the intrusion of the white man. In their latest stages, therefore, the cults represent an attempt by the Melanesians to come to terms with these new conditions and - in the tradition of millenarism - to assert their independence in the face of the white dominance"--Back cover.