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Otaheite : European First Contact with Polynesia

Otaheite : European First Contact with Polynesia. 2009 map of Oceania (CIA world factbook ). More detailed view: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/australia/oceania_ref_2009.pdf Political map (2001): http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/australia/oceania_pol01.jpg. Latitude, Longitude, Time Zones.

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Otaheite : European First Contact with Polynesia

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  1. Otaheite:European First Contact with Polynesia

  2. 2009 map of Oceania (CIA world factbook). More detailed view: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/australia/oceania_ref_2009.pdf • Political map (2001): http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/australia/oceania_pol01.jpg

  3. Latitude, Longitude, Time Zones • Explanation of latitude and longitude: http://www.diffen.com/difference/Latitude_vs_Longitude • Early Maps and Ocean Travel:http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~feegi/ • Celestial Navigation:http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~feegi/astro.html

  4. Early Contact • Seeking “Spice Islands” (Maluku or Molucca islands, Indonesia) • Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition (1519-1522) • Straits of Magellan named for passage around the difficult southern pt. of S. America (Cape Horn) • Crew dying of scurvy, mutinous • Magellan killed in the Philippines—caught in local island battle • One ship returns to Spain in 1522—first circumnavigation of the globe • Left: Pigafetta, Antonio “Figure of the Five Islands Where Grow the Cloves, and of Their Tree.” (~1521) Drawn from account of Magellan’s voyage. • More 16th-18th- c. European maps of the Philippines / Spice islands

  5. First complete map of the Philippines, with red markings for Spanish churches / cathedrals. Antonio de Herrara y Tordesillas, from a Spanish manuscript world map of 1575 (~1575 - 1601).

  6. ~1500s – 1600: spice and quest for a southern continent • Spanish sail west via Americas to Philippines • Portuguese sail east (around Africa’s Cape of Good hope) to Philippines / Spice Islands • Early 1600s: Dutch capture Spice Islands, explore north and south coasts of Australia (Hollandia Nova, Tasmania)

  7. 1767: An eventful encounter • Samuel Wallis, HMS Dolphin • Ship isolated and off course--headed northward from exploration of South Pacific • Seeking fresh food! Crew suffering from scurvy (tries vinegar and sauerkraut successfully) • European first contact with Tahiti—1767. He names it for King George III • Voyage logs recorded in John Hawkesworth’sVoyages in the Southern Hemisphere, Vol. 1 (See Ch. 5) Illustration: plate xxii for John Hawkesworth’s Voyages…in the Southern Hemisphere (1773)See also Neil Rennie, Far-Fetched Facts, pp. 84-85

  8. Plate 21 for Hawkesworth’sVoyages: See Wallis’s account of the Attack by Tahitians on Wallis’s ship (HMS Dolphin)

  9. First Contact with European culture? • For Tahitians, maybe not: • Spanish and Dutch ships sight various islands in this group btw 1520s and 1720s • 1590s Spanish presence in the Marquesas islands (1,000 miles north of Tahiti) • inter-island communication, trade, and travel • HMS Dolphin is the first European ship to land here, stays about a month • Tahitians want European iron, metal • Early patterns of encounter, set by Wallis and crew: • Offers to trade / exchange • Overt sexual advances • Canoes to board ships / landing parties • Pressed too closelyguns and cannons! • Intimidation of Tahitians • Open exchange of sex for ship’s nails • “Queen” Purea or Oberea: first meeting…brings Captain Wallis ashore, has him dressed in Tahitian clothes, presents gift of a pig, and brings him back to ship. Weeps when they leave. • Possibly a political power play—angling for family control of Tahiti via allegiance with Wallis • Tahiti becomes central stopping point for French and British ships after 1767

  10. Bougainville: La Nouvelle Cythère • French expedition (Louis-Antoine Bougainville on the ship Etoile): • goal: find an unknown southern continent btw S. America and Australia • nearly wrecks on Great Barrier Reef • stops in Tahiti for 10 days in 1768 • names it “la Nouvelle Cythere” (the new Venus), and claims the “Archipelago of Bourbon” for France • Bougainville sees the island as fulfillment of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s idea of the natural man (L’HommeSauvage) • “Great Angry Sky”: Bougainville’s Iroquois name—brotherhood with Iroquois during French & Indian War against England

  11. Bougainville’s Expedition • First voyage to Pacific with a scientist on board • studies Tahitian cultural practices, botany, animals • Discovery of a French woman, Jeanne Baret, masking as a man on board…Tahitian curiosity over European women • Early Departure (10 days): • Violence—4 Tahitians shot or bayonetted by French soldiers • unsafe ports for the French ships • Bougainville leaves, nevertheless calling the island, “la véritableEutopie” (Rennie 89). • Discovers a few sailors have contracted venereal diseases… blames this on Wallis’s sailors, prior visit! • V.D. in Polynesia, a matter of international contention: Cook blames it on the French, Bougainville on the English. • Brings a Tahitian man, Aotourou, back to Paris • Arrives 1769, lives in Paris for about a year, uses a watch, attends the opera • Bougainville attempts to bring him back home to Tahiti in 1770—dies of smallpox on the voyage, buried at sea.

  12. Capt. Cook’s First Pacific Voyage • 1768-1771: HMS Endeavour • joint Royal Navy and Royal Society Expedition: • British astronomer (Charles Green) and botanists Joseph Banks, Daniel Solander (student of CarolusLinneaus), and Hermann Sporing (Finnish) (Sporing dies of dysentery on the trip back, 1771.) • Goal: to observe the Transit of Venus across the Sun, 3-4 June, 1769, from a good location—in South Pacific • Significance: earlier observations of the Transit of Venus helped to calculate distance from Earth to Sun • This particular observation wasn’t too successful, problems with documenting precise times for the transit…and Green died on the trip back, could not make a full report to the Royal Society • Four months in Tahiti (late April – August 1769)

  13. Cook’s chart of the Society Islands (including Otaheite)

  14. Cook’s First Pacific Voyage (1768-1771) • Rediscovery of “Queen” Purea / Oberea • Joseph Banks’ “ceremonial” involvements with Tahitian women • public nudity / sexual rites: accounted for as ceremonial • Thefts: of Banks’s waistcoat, of astronomical quadrant (found in pieces around the island) • Two British sailors try to stay on Tahiti with their new “wives” • Tahitians guard the sailors from arrest, until Cook threatens the lives of their chiefs • HMS Endeavour leaves Tahiti in July 1769 for points southward, with a Tahitian man, Tupuaia, and his servant boy, Taiata, on board • Serve as interpreters in contact with the Maori of New Zealand (related languages) • Both Taiata and Tupuaia die later in the voyage in Jakarta (Indonesia), 1770.

  15. Joseph Banks and Captain Cook…and a recent book on Banks, “the loves of plants,” and Banks’s role in using botany to build Britain’s mercantile empire.

  16. Cook’s Endeavour Voyage continues… • Botany Bay: landing point in Australia, named for Banks, Solander, and Sporing while the Endeavour was undergoing 7 weeks of repairs from damage on Great Barrier Reef (summer, 1770) • First English sight of kangaroos!

  17. Sydney Parkinson’s sketch of a kangaroo in 1770, Cook’s Endeavour voyage

  18. http://southseas.nla.gov.au/journals/maps/01_world.html

  19. James Cook’s Pacific Voyages: 2 of 3 Second voyage: 1772-1775: HMS Resolution and HMS Adventure Disproves myth of a continent between S. America and Australia (New Holland) • Comes close to Antarctica • Omai: comes aboard Capt Furneaux’s ship, the Adventure– carried to England (Right: Portrait of Omai by Joshua Reynolds)

  20. A Tahitian “morai” http://www.captcook-ne.co.uk/ccne/exhibits/003452/index.htm

  21. Cook’s Last Voyage: 1776 - 1780 • HMS Resolution and HMS Discovery • To Pacific by way of Cape Town (S. Africa) • Return Omai to his home island • Seek NW passage • Discovery of Hawaiian islands • Northwest coastVancouverBering Strait…blocked by ice • South again to winter in Hawaii—warm welcome during festival • Cook’s ships leave, but return unexpectedly soon for ship repairs • Conflict, theftsviolence Cook’s violent death / dismemberment on the island of Hawaii, Feb. 14, 1779 Ships return—1780. Mourning for Cook…

  22. Lost Ships, Assassination, Mutiny • Capt. Jean-Francois de la Perouse: both ships lost in a Pacific storm near Solomon islands, 1788 • William Bligh, Fletcher Christian, and the Mutiny on the HMS Bounty • Botanical mission: transport breadfruit plants from Tahiti to Caribbean (to feed slave plantations) • 5 months in Tahiti collecting breadfruit plants • Blight’s crew socializes with Tahitians, gets tattoos • First mate, Fletcher Christian takes a spouse, Maimiti • Mutiny starts at Tahiti (April 1789) • Bloodless revolt. 22 loyal crew with Bligh are sent off in the ship’s open boat • Bligh successfully navigates a long and dangerous voyage of 47 days in the open boat to the Dutch port of Coupang (near Australia). • Fletcher Christian and mutineers take the Bounty. • A group remains in Tahiti—later most are arrested by the Royal Navy and carried to England in the Pandora (held in “Pandora’s Box”) • Christian and a small group of mutineers and Tahitians sail the Bounty to Pitcairn Island, land and destroy the ship • Pitcairn’s mixed English-Tahitian colony—descendents of this group. First discovery by Mayhew Folger of the U.S. ship, the Topaz in 1809/1810… • Death of Cook, Loss of la Perouse, Mutiny…darken European views of the Pacific…

  23. Tahiti as Colony and Protectorate • 1770s – 1790s: rival missionary groups • Spanish priests vs. London missionary society • Tahitian kings: monarchy established after contact (1768) • Pomare I, II, III, IV, V • Last king of Tahiti—reigns to 1880, dies 1891 (France annexes the island group, June 29, 1880) • Sovereignty? Language? • European and U.S. interests in Polynesia: vying for commercial and cultural authority in 19th c

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