Oceanic Encounters

A Prelude

Bibliographic Data

ID20076741
AuthorsMargaret Jolly (0000-0003-3454-3436, University of New Caledonia), Serge Tcherkezoff (0000-0003-0712-6282, Centre de Recherche et de Documentation sur les Amériques)
Year2009
Publication date2009-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeCHAPTER
VenueOceanic encounters (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherANU Press (PUBLISHER • AU)
DOI10.22459/oe.07.2009.01
OpenAlexW646307532
ISBN9781921536281
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited13

This volume explores encounters, those encounters between indigenous peoples of the Pacific and foreigners during that longue dure of exploration, colonisation and settlement, from the sixteenth century to the twentieth century. By highlighting the idea of encounter we hope to stress the mutuality inherent in such meetings of bodies, and of minds. This is not to say that such encounters were moments of easy understanding or pacific exchanges. As many of the chapters in this volume attest, such encounters, from Quirs' sojourn in Espiritu Santo in 1606 (see Jolly 2007) to Australian patrols in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea from the late 1920s, were often occasions of tumultuous misunderstanding and extreme violence. But, even in the midst of massacre and revenge, there was a meeting of meanings, of bodies and minds, whereby pre-existing understandings, preconceptions from both sides of the encounter, were engaged, brought into confrontation and dialogue, mutual influence and ultimately mutual transformation. We thus prefer the notion of "encounter" to the more common sobriquet -"first contact" -for several reasons (see

Astrobiology · Biology · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · History · Maritime and Coastal Archaeology · Travel Writing and Literature · Geology

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