Oceanic Encounters

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgements

Contributors

List of Figures and Tables

List of abbreviations and acronyms

1. Oceanic Encounters: A Prelude

Prior Indigenous Encounters: Language, Culture and Power

Before the Brush of Bodies – European Visions

Oceanic Visions

Double Visions and Alternative Senses

The Passage of Time: Contingent Chronologies, Not Teleological Temporality

The Unsettled Ground of Knowing: Histories and Ethnographies

Reading “Against the Grain”: Partial Truths?

Graphic Materialities and the Violence of Exchange

The Place and Time of Oceania

References

2. Linguistic Encounter and Responses in the South Pacific

Introduction

Language Distribution in the Pacific

The Vectors of Pacific Encounters with Outsiders

Pre-Contact Encounters and Linguistic Responses

Post-Contact Encounters and Linguistic Responses

Globalisation and the Modern World

References

3. The Sediment of Voyages: Re-membering Quirós, Bougainville and Cook in Vanuatu

Introduction: An Archipelago of Names

First Contact and the Beach: The Limen of Colonialism

Pedro Fernández de Quirós, 1606: Salvation, Treasure and Phantasmagoria?

The “Season of Observing”: Nature, Enlightened Explorations and Imperial Power

Louis de Bougainville, A Voyage Round The World, 1768: “Such an Abuse of the Superiority of our Power”

Captain James Cook, 1774 – Distantiation or Incorporation of the “Other”?

“Monboddo’s Monkeys” and the “Ghosts of their Forebears”

Green Boughs, Salt Water and Tumora, Towmarro

Pacifying Exchanges and “The Power of our Jus Canonicum”

On the Beach, Unsettled Colonies and “Dancing With Strangers”

References

4. A Reconsideration of the Role of Polynesian Women in Early Encounters with Europeans

Western “Knowledge” About Pre-Christian Samoan and Tahitian “Customs” Relating to Adolescence and Marriage

Samoan Facts: The Scene Observed by La Pérouse

Ethnographic analysis and extrapolating backward

Tahitian Facts: The Scenes of April 7–9 (According to Nassau and Fesche)

“Tahitian Marriages” (Fesche)

“Without Asking For Any Reward”: From Ritual to Sexual Commerce (Fesche)

Beyond Tahiti And Samoa: Also Forced Presentations of Young Girls?

Conclusion (I): One Thing is Certain: Neither Love nor Pleasure

Conclusion (II): A Hypothesis: Virginity, Conception of the First Child

Conclusion (III): European Male Vision

References

5. Uncertain Times

Introduction: How the South Sea Islands Were “Invented” Before They Were Discovered

Missionary Fervour

First Mission, First Setbacks

Beachcombers and Castaways: Mercenaries, Wreckers and … Teachers

Learning to Read with the Bible

The Role of Literacy in the First Missionary Successes

Conclusion

References

6. In the Event: Indigenous Countersigns and the Ethnohistory of Voyaging

Introduction

Tale of a Voyage

“By Their Conduct Toward Us” – Admiralty Islands, July–August 1792

“Men So Close to Nature” – Van Diemen’s Land, February 1793

“Hypocritical and Treacherous”/ A “Fine Race of Men” – Tongatapu, March–April 1793

“Ferocious Savages” – New Caledonia, April–May 1793

Race

Conclusions

References

7. Watkin Tench’s Fieldwork: The Journal of an “Ethnographer” in Port Jackson, 1788-1791

Watkin Tench and his “Journal”

Chronicles of the Encounters between British and Aborigines

Tench’s Ambivalence: General Considerations on Aboriginal Society

Encounters with “People”: The Fieldwork of Watkin Tench

References

8. The Art of Encounter: Verisimilitude in the Imaginary Exploration of Interior New Guinea, 1725–1876

Encounters, Factual and Fictional

Verisimilitude in the Fictional Encounter – A Brief History

New Guinea, the “Last Unknown”

The Premised Land: Imagining Interior New Guinea

Moral Redemption: Louis Trégance Among the Orangwŏks

Parodic Precision: The Wanderings of John Lawson

The Last Colonial Imaginary

References

9. Black Powder, White Magic: European Armaments and Sorcery in Early Mekeo and Roro Encounters

Background

Luigi d’Albertis – “White Magician of the Mountain”

C.A.W. Monckton – “Charmer of Rifles”

After d’Albertis, Before Monckton

Bramell’s Stockade, Sorcerers, Deadly Snakes and Monckton’s Charmed Rifles

Contested Burials, Toothless Gums and Dirty Water

Conclusion

References

10. A Measure of Violence: Forty Years of “First Contact” Among the Ankave-Anga (Papua New Guinea)

Few Sources, So What?

Gold and Order: The General Context of the Explorations among the Anga (Kukukuku)

Europeans in Ankave Country

Fragments of Ankave Memories

Violence and Shells: A Process of Selective Remembrance?

“Killers in Bark Capes”: Epitomising Stone Age Cannibals

Violence is Good for the Others

Conclusion

References