Jimmy Stevens

Who is Jimmy Stevens?

Jimmy Stevens, also known as Moses Jimmy Stevens, was a ni-Vanuatu political leader on the island of Espiritu Santo best known for founding and leading the Nagriamel movement. Nagriamel emerged in the 1960s as a grassroots kastom movement opposing the seizure of customary land by foreign planters and settlers, blending traditional land-rights activism with a distinctive kastom ideology of its own. As Vanuatu approached independence from the Anglo-French Condominium of the New Hebrides in 1980, Stevens, with backing from certain foreign business interests, led an armed uprising on Espiritu Santo that declared a short-lived breakaway state, the Republic of Vemarana, in an attempt to block the incoming national government led by Walter Lini. The rebellion, later called the Coconut War, was suppressed within weeks by Papua New Guinean troops deployed at the request of the newly independent Vanuatu government. Stevens was arrested, tried, and imprisoned for his role in the uprising, serving roughly a decade before his release. He remained a controversial figure in Vanuatu's national memory, seen by some as a defender of customary land and by others as a separatist who nearly derailed independence. He died in 1994.

Sources: John Beasant, "The Santo Rebellion: An Imperial Reckoning" (Heinemann, 1984) · Howard Van Trease, "The Politics of Land in Vanuatu: From Colony to Independence" (Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific, 1987)