Origin & description of Macassan contact with Aborigines in Arnhem Land; Aboriginal trade with Macassans; Aborigines in Celebes; introduction to tobacco & other objects to Aborigines; introduction of disease to Aborigines, murder & violence; language influences, rock art & stone arrangements illustrating Macassan features.

Explores the successive phases of Asian-Aboriginal contact in Australian's north, from the Macassan trepangers to the pearling industry and on to more recent times.

本书利用环境史的新视角整合了之前零碎保存的史料，从近代西方殖民扩张及生态变化的角度探讨澳新历史变化的特点，突破了传统国别史研究中重视政治经济话题，从而容易忽略地缘上较为次要的大洋洲区域史的局限。书中以澳新华人移民的经历与命运为线索，展现全球资本主义及西方殖民扩张中人口交流、经济发展、环境变化以及文化冲突之间的复杂互动。

Essential single-volume history of the Pacific region and the global interactions which define it.

Examines the processes which allowed economic control of Australia to pass from Aboriginal to European hands within 60 years of settlement.

The Archaeology of Difference presents a new and radically different perspective on the archaeology of cross-cultural contact and engagement. The authors move away from acculturation or domination and resistance and concentrate on interaction and negotiation by using a wide variety of case studies which take a crucially indigenous rather than colonial standpoint.

New Guinea, the world's largest tropical island, is a land of great contrasts, ranging from small glaciers on its highest peaks to broad mangrove swamps in its lowlands and hundreds of smaller islands and coral atolls along its coasts. Divided between two nations, the island and its neighboring archipelagos form Indonesia’s Papua Province (or Irian Jaya) and the independent nation of Papua New Guinea, both former European colonies. Most books on New Guinea have been guided by these and other divisions, separating east from west, prehistoric from historic, precontact from postcontact, colonial from postcolonial. This is the first work to consider New Guinea and its 40,000-year history in its entirety. The volume opens with a look at the Melanesian region and argues that interlocking exchange systems and associated human interchanges are the "invisible government" through which New Guinea societies operate. Succeeding chapters review the history of encounters between outsiders and New Guinea's populations. They consider the history of Malay involvement with New Guinea over the past two thousand years, demonstrating the extent to which west New Guinea in particular was incorporated into Malay trading and raiding networks prior to Western contact. The impact of colonial rule, economic and social change, World War II, decolonization, and independence are discussed in the final chapter.

Assumptions about the harmful nature of polygamy have left little room for debate, with monogamy coming to represent a hallmark of civil society, and polygamy the immoral alternative. Opponents have argued that polygamy is harmful to women, children, personal freedom, and even national values, and press for prosecution. Yet in this volume, eleven scholars ask whether this response is justified by examining, among other perspectives, the lived experiences of polygamous families. In essays that fearlessly explore difficult questions of love, choice, and dignity, these historians, legal scholars, political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, and religious studies scholars, some of whom are personally connected to polygamous families, seek to complicate a conversation that is more often simplified. Thoughtful and persuasive, Polygamy’s Rights and Wrongs is both a close consideration of polygamy -- its historical place and its presence in contemporary society -- and a challenging reflection on the ways in which we value family and intimacy.

The Indian Ocean World was an idea borne out by researchers in economic history and trade in the 1980s in response to the compartmentalization of specific area studies within the wider rubric of Asian civilisations and culture. Professor Kirti N. Chaudhuri’s books Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company (1978), and then Trade and Civilization in the Indian Ocean (1985), figured amongst the forefront of this new movement in historical thinking, undertaking detailed historical analysis, first of the English East India Company, and then a comparative cultural history of Asian material life and civilisation. Today, historians continue to hold on to the idea of an Indian Ocean world, although studies now follow a number of different threads, from themes like linguistics and creolization, to the seeds of national consciousness. By presenting a number of studies here, gathered into the themes of ‘Intermixing,’ ‘The World of Trade’ and ‘Colonial Paths,’ it is hoped we can render tribute to one of the outstanding historians in this field and reflect the plenitude of current research in this subject area.

In October of 2001, the Australian High Court confirmed aboriginal title to two thousand kilometres of ocean off the north coast. The decision, which was the result of a seven-year court battle, highlighted aboriginal belief that the sea is a gift from the creator to be used for sustenance, spirituality, identity, and community. This evocative study of the people of northern coastal Australia and their sea worlds illuminates the power of human attachment to place. Saltwater People: The Waves of Memory offers a cross-disciplinary approach to native land claims that incorporates historical and contemporary case studies from not only Australia, but also New Zealand, Scandinavia, the US, and Canada. Nonie Sharp discusses various issues of indigenous heritage, including land claims, concepts of public and private property, poverty, and the environment. Despite dispossession, the aboriginals of northern coastal Australia never faltered in their devotion to the sea, illustrating how profoundly such bonds are preserved in memory. Their moving story of surviving and winning a lengthy court battle provides valuable information for all countries dealing with similar issues of rights to tenure and natural resources. Sharp provides the first book-length study of an integrated statement on the many defining qualities of the cultural relationship of aboriginals, non-aboriginals, and the concept of ownership over the sea, and illustrates the wisdom that different traditions can offer one another.