Strangers in the South Seas

Strangers in the South Seas PDF Author: Richard Lansdown
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824864484
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 449

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Book Description
Long before Magellan entered the Pacific in 1521 Westerners entertained ideas of undiscovered oceans, mighty continents, and paradisal islands at the far ends of the earth. First set down by Egyptian storytellers, Greek philosophers, and Latin poets, such ideas would have a long life and a deep impact in both the Pacific and the West. With the discovery of Tahiti in 1767 another powerful myth was added to this collection: the noble savage. For the first time Westerners were confronted by a people who seemed happier than themselves. This revolution in the human sciences was accompanied by one in the natural sciences as the region revealed gaps and anomalies in the "great chain of being" that Charles Darwin would begin to address after his momentous visit to the Galapagos Islands. The Pacific produced similar challenges for nineteenth-century researchers on race and culture, and for those intent on exporting their religions to this immense quarter of the globe. Although most missionary efforts ultimately met with success, others ended in ignominious retreat. As the century wore on, the region presented opportunities and dilemmas for the imperial powers, leading to a guilty desire on the part of some to pull out, along with an equally guilty desire on the part of others to stay and help. This process was accelerated by the Pacific War between 1941 and 1945. After more than two millennia of fantasies, the story of the West’s fascination with the insular Pacific graduated to a marked sense of disillusion that is equally visible in the paintings of Gauguin and the journalism of the nuclear Pacific. Strangers in the South Seas recounts and illustrates this story using a wealth of primary texts. It includes generous excerpts from the work of explorers, soldiers, naturalists, anthropologists, artists, and writers--some famous, some obscure. It begins in 1521 with an account of Guam by Antonio Pigafetta (one of the few men to survive Magellan's circumnavigation voyage), and ends in the late 1980s with the writing of an American woman, Joana McIntyre Varawa, as she faces the personal and cultural insecurities of marriage and settlement in Fiji. It shows how "the Great South Sea" has been an irreplaceable "distant mirror" of the West and its intellectual obsessions since the Renaissance. Comprehensively illustrated and annotated, this anthology will introduce readers to a region central to the development of modern Western ideas. "This is a carefully conceived anthology covering an excellent range of subjects. The selections are well chosen and interesting, and the introductory materials are both scholarly and accessible. It should be widely used in university courses dealing with almost any aspect of the Pacific." —Rod Edmond, University of Kent at Canterbury

Strangers in the South Seas

Strangers in the South Seas PDF Author: Richard Lansdown
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824864484
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 449

Get Book Here

Book Description
Long before Magellan entered the Pacific in 1521 Westerners entertained ideas of undiscovered oceans, mighty continents, and paradisal islands at the far ends of the earth. First set down by Egyptian storytellers, Greek philosophers, and Latin poets, such ideas would have a long life and a deep impact in both the Pacific and the West. With the discovery of Tahiti in 1767 another powerful myth was added to this collection: the noble savage. For the first time Westerners were confronted by a people who seemed happier than themselves. This revolution in the human sciences was accompanied by one in the natural sciences as the region revealed gaps and anomalies in the "great chain of being" that Charles Darwin would begin to address after his momentous visit to the Galapagos Islands. The Pacific produced similar challenges for nineteenth-century researchers on race and culture, and for those intent on exporting their religions to this immense quarter of the globe. Although most missionary efforts ultimately met with success, others ended in ignominious retreat. As the century wore on, the region presented opportunities and dilemmas for the imperial powers, leading to a guilty desire on the part of some to pull out, along with an equally guilty desire on the part of others to stay and help. This process was accelerated by the Pacific War between 1941 and 1945. After more than two millennia of fantasies, the story of the West’s fascination with the insular Pacific graduated to a marked sense of disillusion that is equally visible in the paintings of Gauguin and the journalism of the nuclear Pacific. Strangers in the South Seas recounts and illustrates this story using a wealth of primary texts. It includes generous excerpts from the work of explorers, soldiers, naturalists, anthropologists, artists, and writers--some famous, some obscure. It begins in 1521 with an account of Guam by Antonio Pigafetta (one of the few men to survive Magellan's circumnavigation voyage), and ends in the late 1980s with the writing of an American woman, Joana McIntyre Varawa, as she faces the personal and cultural insecurities of marriage and settlement in Fiji. It shows how "the Great South Sea" has been an irreplaceable "distant mirror" of the West and its intellectual obsessions since the Renaissance. Comprehensively illustrated and annotated, this anthology will introduce readers to a region central to the development of modern Western ideas. "This is a carefully conceived anthology covering an excellent range of subjects. The selections are well chosen and interesting, and the introductory materials are both scholarly and accessible. It should be widely used in university courses dealing with almost any aspect of the Pacific." —Rod Edmond, University of Kent at Canterbury

In the Strange South Seas

In the Strange South Seas PDF Author: Beatrice Grimshaw
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Islands of the Pacific
Languages : en
Pages : 506

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Book Description


In the South Seas

In the South Seas PDF Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Polynesia
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Book Description


Exploration and Exchange

Exploration and Exchange PDF Author: Jonathan Lamb
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226468464
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description
This anthology places the works of such well-known figures as Captain James Cook and Robert Louis Stevenson alongside the writings of lesser-known explorers, missionaries, beachcombers, and literary travellers who roamed the South Seas from the late 17th through the late 19th centuries.

The Sea-wreck Stranger

The Sea-wreck Stranger PDF Author: Anna Mackenzie
Publisher: Penguin Random House New Zealand Limited
ISBN: 1877460583
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
Riveting post-apocalyptic YA fantasy, this is an award-winning thriller you can't put down. Winner of the Honour Award at the 2008 New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards, joint winner of the 2008 Sir Julius Vogel Awards and awarded the prestigious White Raven Award for outstanding children's literature. Ness is imaginative and independent. She questions and seeks meaning in a world that her elders would drain of all variety and joy. She lives on Dunnett Island, where people are in constant fear of all things that come from the sea, having lost many to the ocean’s toxins. They have been toughened by fear, loss and superstition and live a restricted, hard-working life. However, Ness, Ty and Sophie defy orders and explore in a concealed cove, where they discover a body washed ashore; a man who has been shipwrecked. Ness realises that his very existence heralds the possibility that there are other lands, other survivors, and also the possibility that the world’s seas are healing. She undertakes a foolhardy, courageous gamble when she decides to keep the stranger concealed and alive. All too soon, she risks everything, including her own life, to help him escape when her close-minded, ‘witchhunting’ community discovers her secret.

Cumner's Son and Other South Sea Folk — Complete

Cumner's Son and Other South Sea Folk — Complete PDF Author: Gilbert Parker
Publisher: Good Press
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
"Cumner's Son and Other South Sea Folk — Complete" by Gilbert Parker is a collection of captivating tales set in the South Seas. Parker's rich storytelling brings to life the vibrant cultures, landscapes, and characters of the South Pacific. From tales of love and betrayal to adventure and tragedy, this collection provides a nuanced portrayal of the complexities of human relationships and the allure of the exotic South Seas.

The Face

The Face PDF Author: Tash Aw
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1632060450
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 80

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Book Description
A whirlwind personal history of modern Asia, as told through his Malaysian and Chinese heritage

Intimate Strangers

Intimate Strangers PDF Author: Vanessa Smith
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139788620
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
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 arrival of the Dolphin in Tahiti in June 1767, through Cook's and Bligh's voyages, to early missionary and beachcomber settlement in the Marquesas. It unpacks both the political and emotional significances of ideas of friendship for late eighteenth-century European, and particularly British, explorations of Oceania.

Strangers and Pilgrims

Strangers and Pilgrims PDF Author: Catherine A. Brekus
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807866547
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 484

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Book Description
Margaret Meuse Clay, who barely escaped a public whipping in the 1760s for preaching without a license; "Old Elizabeth," an ex-slave who courageously traveled to the South to preach against slavery in the early nineteenth century; Harriet Livermore, who spoke in front of Congress four times between 1827 and 1844--these are just a few of the extraordinary women profiled in this, the first comprehensive history of female preaching in early America. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Catherine Brekus examines the lives of more than a hundred female preachers--both white and African American--who crisscrossed the country between 1740 and 1845. Outspoken, visionary, and sometimes contentious, these women stepped into the pulpit long before twentieth-century battles over female ordination began. They were charismatic, popular preachers, who spoke to hundreds and even thousands of people at camp and revival meetings, and yet with but a few notable exceptions--such as Sojourner Truth--these women have essentially vanished from our history. Recovering their stories, Brekus shows, forces us to rethink many of our common assumptions about eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American culture.

Mother of Strangers

Mother of Strangers PDF Author: Suad Amiry
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0593316568
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Set in Jaffa in between 1947 and 1951, this “fable-like historical novel of young love ... darkly humorous and touching” (Oprah Daily) is based on a true story during the beginning of the destruction of Palestine and displacement of its people. Based on the true story of two Jaffa teenagers, Mother of Strangers follows the daily lives of Subhi, a fifteen-year-old mechanic, and Shams, the thirteen-year-old student he hopes to marry one day. In this prosperous and cosmopolitan port city, with its bustling markets, cinemas, and cafés on the hills overlooking the Mediter­ranean Sea, we meet many other unforgettable charac­ters as well, including Khawaja Michael, the elegant and successful owner of orange groves above the harbor; Mr. Hassan, the tailor who makes Subhi’s treasured English suit, which he hopes will change his life; and the very mischievous and outrageous Uncle Habeeb, who insists on introducing Subhi to the local bordello. With a thriving orange export business, Jaffa had always been a city welcoming to outsiders—the “Mother of Strangers”—where Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived peacefully together. Once the bombardment of the city begins in April 1948, Suad Amiry gives us the grim but fascinating details of the shock, panic, and destruc­tion that ensues. Jaffa becomes unrecognizable, with neighborhoods flattened, families removed from their homes and separated, and those who remain in constant danger of arrest and incarceration. Most of the popula­tion flees eastward to Jordan or by sea to Lebanon in the north or to Egypt and Gaza in the south. Subhi and Shams will never see each other again. Suad Amiry has written a vivid and devastating ac­count of a seminal moment in the history of the Middle East—the beginning of the end of Palestine and a por­trait of a city irrevocably changed.