In the 400 years from Magellan's entrance into Pacific waters to 1920, the lives of the people of the South Pacific were utterly transformed. Exotic diseases from Europe and America, particularly the worldwide influenza pandemic, were deadly for islanders. Ardent missionaries changed the belief systems and lives of nearly all Polynesians, Aborigines, and those Papuans and Melanesians living in areas accessible to westerners. By 1920 every island and atoll in the South Seas had been claimed as a colony or protectorate of a power such as Britain, France or the United States. Factors aiding this imperial sweep included European outposts such as Sydney, advances in maritime technology, the work of missionaries, a desire to profit from the area's relatively sparse resources, and international rivalry that led to the scramble for colonies. The coming of westerners, as this book points out, was not entirely negative, as head-hunting, cannibalism, chronic warfare, human sacrifice, and other practices were diminished--but whole cultures were irreversibly changed or even eradicated.

SINCE BEING "DISCOVERED " IN 1767, Tahiti has faced a profound cultural upheaval. From the start, she has been branded with the irresistible dual myth of the Noble Savage's harmonious Arcadian life and of the vahine's amorous favours freely granted. People (navigators, missionaries, whalers, slavers) and events (deadly epidemics, atomic testing, and now tourism), all have contributed over time to creating the modern Tahitian quandary: trying to recover an idealized past and losing the benefits of modern life, or continuing as a cog in the French administrative system and losing her soul. Based on historical records, sailors' journals, Ma'ohi epic poetry, European paintings, folkloric events, the film industry, and novels by modern Tahitian writers, this book follows the passage from Otaheite's paradisal way of life, through the disastrous encounter with European civilization, ending with French Polynesia's modern prospects. Most remarkable of all is the enduring Ma'ohi culture's survival into the twenty-first century.

Pitcairn, a tiny Pacific island that was refuge to the mutineers of HMAV Bounty and home to their descendants, later became the stage on which one imposter played out his influential vision for British control over the nineteenth-century Pacific Ocean. Joshua W. Hill arrived on Pitcairn in 1832 and began his fraudulent half-decade rule that has, until now, been swept aside as an idiosyncratic moment in the larger saga of Fletcher Christian's mutiny against Captain Bligh, and the mutineers' unlikely settlement of Pitcairn. Here, Hill is shown instead as someone alert to the full scope and power of the British Empire, to the geopolitics of international imperial competition, to the ins and outs of naval command, the vicissitudes of court politics, and, as such, to Pitcairn's symbolic power for the British Empire more broadly.

In Life at Sea, anthropologist Monique Layton draws on her experiences on modern cruise ships to examine the evolution of sailing from the Age of Exploration to the Age of Tourism. Using historical records and the reports of people who once went to sea through necessity, curiosity, or adventure, she shows the common events that have shaped their voyages and the ingenuity, courage, and determination that characterize mankind's connection with the all-surrounding sea. The book's topics range from the dependence on the wind and manpower through the invention of devices to determine location at sea to modern maritime technology, from the devastation of scurvy and starvation on early ships of exploration and trade to the luxuries of omnipresent food, on-board medical treatment, and professional entertainment available on behemoth cruise ships. The book also delves into the deeper meaning of seafarers' rituals and their harsh lives with severe discipline and few rewards. These aspects along with the horrors of the slave trade and naval warfare, the harrowing crossings of emigrants and convicts, the ambiguities of piracy, and economics of global trade all show the contradictory elements that have consistently shaped travel by sea.

Voices from the Lower Deck examines the role of folklore as the instrument of integration and bonding for the ordinary seafarer during the Age of Sail. Mainly based on contemporary sailors narratives and historical and folkloric texts, the book evokes common themes: the harsh environment, the cruel discipline, the brutal way of life, and the release of onshore carousing and whoring, but also the coordinated work and effort of daily tasks and the tremendous pride of seeing themselves as unique men against a background of landlubbers. The psychological and physical survival of these disparate men from many origins depended on their rapid integration into the common culture––the folklore and the folkways––of what historians have called “the wooden world.”

A Brief Illustrated History of Exploration charts the history of exploration all the way from the first explorers, through to contact with the East, to the African coast, to the Northwest Passage, and through to the discovery of North America. With stunning full-color images and illustrations, this beautiful book is sure to fascinate and charm the young reader.

From the moment Balboa saw the Pacific in 1513 to 2011, this book provides a comprehensive chronology of all major events in this spectacular part of the world.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1882.