"As my sense of the turpitude and guilt of sin was weakened, the vices of the natives appeared less odious and criminal. After a time, I was induced to yield to their allurements, to imitate their manners, and to join them in their sins . . . and it was not long ere I disencumbered myself of my European garment, and contented myself with the native dress. . . ." from "Narrative of the late George Vason, of Nottingham" As George Vason's anguished narrative shows, European encounters with Pacific peoples often proved as wrenching to the Europeans as to the natives. This anthology gathers...
"As my sense of the turpitude and guilt of sin was weakened, the vices of the natives appeared less odious and criminal. After a time, I was induced t...
This book examines a range of nineteenth-century European accounts from the Pacific that depict Polynesian responses to imported metropolitan culture, in particular its technologies of writing and print and how they were appropriated and interrogated by Pacific peoples. Examining accounts by beachcombers and missionaries, and offering a detailed discussion of the late Pacific writings of Robert Louis Stevenson, Vanessa Smith argues that the texts of contact and settlement are shaped at least as much by local contexts as by the agendas of their European authors.
This book examines a range of nineteenth-century European accounts from the Pacific that depict Polynesian responses to imported metropolitan culture,...
This unique guide to the huna mua teachings, the earliest known form of Hawaiian huna, is an in-depth exploration of the nature of the soul, body, and mind and what it means to be human.
This unique guide to the huna mua teachings, the earliest known form of Hawaiian huna, is an in-depth exploration of the nature of the soul, body, and...
When Louis Antoine de Bougainville reached Tahiti in 1768, he was struck by the way in which 'All these people came crying out tayo, which means friend, and gave a thousand signs of friendship; they all asked nails and ear-rings of us.' Reading the archive of early contact in Oceania against European traditions of thinking about intimacy and exchange, Vanessa Smith illuminates the traditions and desires that led Bougainville and other European voyagers to believe that the first word they heard in the Pacific was the word for friend. Her book encompasses forty years of encounters from the...
When Louis Antoine de Bougainville reached Tahiti in 1768, he was struck by the way in which 'All these people came crying out tayo, which means frien...
