The Vailala Madness was a social movement in the Papuan Gulf, in the Territory of Papua beginning in the later part of 1919 and petering out after 1922. It is generally accepted as the first well-documented cargo cult, a class of millenarian religio-political movements, although the expression cargo cult itself dates from the mid 1940s.
Read more about Vailala Madness: Name, Return of The Ancestors, White Ancestors, Regulation of Life After Colonial Fashion, Strict Moral Code, Abandonment of Ceremonies, Source of These Beliefs, Observers and The End of The Movement
Famous quotes containing the word madness:
“How can anyone be interested in war?—that glorious pursuit of annihilation with its ceremonious bellowings and trumpetings over the mangling of human bones and muscles and organs and eyes, its inconceivable agonies which could have been prevented by a few well- chosen, reasonable words. How, why, did this unnecessary business begin? Why does anyone want to read about it—this redundant human madness which men accept as inevitable?”
—Margaret Anderson (1886–1973)