Oceanic Encounters
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Oceanic Encounters
Exchange, Desire, Violence
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
FILMOGRAPHY
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
Samoa
Tahiti
Samoan Facts: The Scene Observed by La Pérouse
Internal distinction: Description and interpretation
Ethnographic analysis and extrapolating backward
The “girls” and the “sacrifice”: Comparison with Samoan ceremonies of the period 1830–1850
“The blinds lowered”: Comparison with ethnography of the 1930s to 1980s
The presence of the “women” and “very young girls”
Tahitian Facts: The Scenes of April 7–9 (According to Nassau and Fesche)
Nassau, April 7, 1768
Fesche on April 7
In the following days: Bougainville and Nassau
“Tahitian Marriages” (Fesche)
A forced encounter
The youth of the victims and the ceremonial framework
The question of virginity in the French accounts: The girls’ very young age, deflowering and tears
“Without Asking For Any Reward”: From Ritual to Sexual Commerce (Fesche)
Beyond Tahiti And Samoa: Also Forced Presentations of Young Girls?
The explicit nature of the French journals
Hamilton in Tonga, 1791
J.R. Forster in Aotearoa, 1774
Captain Marchand in the northern Marquesas, 1791
Wallis in Tahiti, 1767
Conclusion (I): One Thing is Certain: Neither Love nor Pleasure
Conclusion (II): A Hypothesis: Virginity, Conception of the First Child
The child of the god
The three partners involved in conception
“Very young age”: The question of the threshold of pubescence
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
First Contacts
Tench as an Ethnographer?
Discrepancies of Description: Phillip’s Spearing
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
Table 10.1 Administrative patrols in or around Ankave country (1929–72)
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
FILMOGRAPHY