Cook's great voyages marked the end of an era in world history. As he sailed into Hawaii in January 1778 he made contact with the last of the human civilizations to grow up independently of the rest of the world. But equally for the Polynesians and Melanesians of the Pacific, Cook's arrival in their midst merely marked a further (if disastrous) twist in diverse histories already many centuries old.In this immensely enjoyable and absorbing book Cook's journeys are reimagined, attemp...

The extraordinary sixty-thousand-year history of how the Pacific islands were settled.'Takes readers on a narrative odyssey' Wall Street Journal, Books of the Year'Highlights a dizzying burst of new research' The Economist'A refreshing addition to the canon of literature that contemplates Oceanic navigation' Noelle Kahanu'I would not be surprised if, after reading this masterpiece, many read...

Paul Gauguin is commonly regarded as one of the greatest modern artists. He is renowned for resplendent, mythic imagery from Oceania, for a life of restless travel and for his supposed immersion in Polynesian life. But he has long been regarded ambivalently, and in recent years both Gauguin's sexual behaviour, and his paintings, have been considered exploitative.Gauguin and Polynesia offers a fresh view on the artist, not from the perspective of European art history, but f...

Over the last twenty years museums have proliferated, attracting new audiences and assuming new prominence in public life. The Return of Curiosity offers a fresh perspective on museums and what they may now be good for. Nicholas Thomas argues that what is special about museums are their collections, which are not just rich resources for reflection, but creative technologies that enable people to make new things in the present.Reflecting on art galleries, science and histor...

The arts of Africa, Oceania and native America famously inspired twentieth-century modernist artists such as Picasso, Matisse and Ernst. The politics of such stimulus, however, have long been highly contentious: was this a cross-cultural discovery to be celebrated, or just one more example of Western colonial appropriation?This revelatory book explores cross-cultural art through the lens of settler societies such as Australia and New Zealand, where Europeans made new nations, displ...

Bloomsbury presents Gauguin and Polynesia written and read by Nicholas Thomas.The Post-Impressionist artist and writer Paul Gauguin led an extraordinary, troubled and restlessly itinerant life; he came late to painting and spent most of his last decade in the Pacific islands of Tahiti and the Marquesas, where he produced paintings loosely based on Polynesian tradition that heralded the emergence of primitivism and would exert a profound influence on modernist artists from Picasso a...

An award-winning scholar explores the sixty-thousand-year history of the Pacific islands in this dazzling, deeply researched account.One of the Best Books of 2021 — Wall Street JournalThe islands of Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia stretch across a huge expanse of ocean and encompass a multitude of different peoples. Starting with Captain James Cook, the earliest European explorers to visit the Pacific were astounded and perple...

Published in 1999, this book is designed to provide the reader with a detailed understanding of Hong Kong’s social and political development. It offers a contemporary, holistic understanding of Hong Kong, which will not only complement existing works but also provide the reader with a solid foundation for understanding future developments in the territory. The book is divided into three sections: Identity, Civil Society and Politics. The first two sections provide a discrete understanding ...

An award-winning scholar explores the sixty-thousand-year history of the Pacific islands in this dazzling, deeply researched account.One of the Best Books of 2021 — Wall Street JournalThe islands of Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia stretch across a huge expanse of ocean and encompass a multitude of different peoples. Starting with Captain James Cook, the earliest European explorers to visit the Pacific were astounded and perple...

This is a deeply personal life story and situations that have made me the unique individual I am in life. These short poems touch on many parts of life that are disturbing and are hard to deal with. The only way to express them was to write them down in these poems and hope people would one day read them and experience emotional change for the betterment of their lives

It is striking that in many Pacific nations, 'national' narratives are subordinate to other fundamental historical imaginings, such as those concerning local political dynasties and conversion to Christianity. While leaders in Pacific states have frequently sought to legitimate new nations through local 'tradition' and 'custom', these constructions of identity frequently mask divisions arising from gender, hierarchy, and other social relationships. These studies from Papua New Guinea, Vanu...

In Voyagers, the distinguished anthropologist Nick Thomas charts the course of the seaborne migrations that populated the islands between the Americas and the western coast of Asia from late prehistory onwards: firstly the colonization by speakers of Austronesian languages of the western Pacific littoral, from around 3000 BC, of the Philippines, Indonesia, Micronesia and Melanesia; followed by the later settlement, by Polynesian peoples, of Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Tahiti, the Marquesas, Easter...