Paradise Found and Lost: The Pacific since and 50 similar items

Birkitts Books presents ... Paradise Found and Lost: The Pacific since Magellan, Volume III ISBN: 0080344003 Author: Spate, O. H. K. Publisher: Australian Natl Univ Pr Release Date: 1990 Seller Category: History Qty Available: 1 Condition: Used: Very Good Sku: 250316031 Notes: Jacket has wear to the edges, light rubbing, binding sound, internally clean. With world attention focusing more and more on the Pacific, Oskar Spate's third volume of the Pacific since Magellan provides a timely and invaluable background to present-day events. This volume maintains that unique blend of distinguished scholarship, delightful style and ironic wit for which the author is already widely known and admired. Paradise Found and Lost opens with a comprehensive description of the Oceanic Pacific, its lands and people, before the arrival of foreign scientific and exploratory expeditions which were inevitably to inflict lasting changes on the island paradises, those lands of the Good and Noble Savage. Commencing with Byron in 1764, Spate retraces the British, French and Spanish voyages of discovery in the Pacific, all of which were overshadowed by the three epic journeys of Captain James Cook. The relative significance of scientific and imperialistic motives behind these voyages is discussed, and there are two long chapters on relations between indigenes and intruders, and on the images of the Tahitian Venus and the Noble Savage in an era when the South Seas made an important input into European thinking about humankind, and especially the rise of romanticism. The action then moves to the North Pacific where exploration is overtaken by exploitation with the beginnings of the sea otter trade and in-fighting for possession of the north-west coast of America. By 1846, the Pacific rim, except for southernmost Chile, is occupied by Asian, Russian, British, American and Spanish American interests, and the Islands of the Pacific are about to 'become the small change of Euroamerican empires'. Paradise had been found and lost. Don't forget to check out other great deals in our Store!!