The Pacific

Introduction

The Pacific has only very recently interested Atlantic historians. No one text treats the relationship between the two, though increasingly scholars of both fields are looking to each other in recognition of their shared emphasis on polycentric interactions among people, ideas, and things in an ever-changing historical world. Within the time span indicated in this article (1500–1900), both Atlantic history and the Pacific also share themes of exploration, idealization, missionizing, colonization, and bonded labor. The field of Pacific studies, however, emerged earlier than Atlantic history; it was a product of political decolonization from the mid-20th century; thus, it initially had more in common with other decolonization offshoots, such as African studies. Indeed, some of the earliest practitioners worked in both African and Pacific studies, and many started together at the Australian National University (ANU). It was from the ANU that the so-called godfather of Pacific history, J. W. Davidson, laid down some of the first guidelines for the field, which were chiefly to center on the islands themselves, away from European or American capitals, and preferably with active participation from the scholars in contemporary Islander issues in relevant Islander languages. Ever since, Pacific history has had a strong focus on indigenous agency relative to some other fields of oceanic study. It is, as commentator Damon Salesa recently pointed out, perhaps the most significant contribution the field can make to Atlantic history, which has not always remembered native peoples as much as it should in its investigations of population movements. On the other hand, Salesa also notes that Pacific studies might learn a lesson or two from Atlantic history’s consistent focus on its oceanic properties. It is an irony of Pacific history that not all of its component parts have been equally aware of the watery realms that connect them. Histories of the Australasian corner, in particular, often neglect the ways in which the Pacific has shaped their fate. Others have recognized the meanings of island geography but, due to an intense focus on the local, they have sometimes overlooked the larger sea that inaugurated island history. It was the sea that first carried people from Southeast Asia into the Pacific some four thousand years ago. Voyagers from the Atlantic World did not appear until the 1500s, first from Spain, then largely from the Netherlands, and then from France and Britain. These voyagers, however, did not settle in the Pacific until the late 18th century, after which they gradually added new systems of governance, worship, and work.

General Overviews

Partly as a result of the early emphasis on local islander issues in Pacific history, general surveys were slow to appear. The best text to date is Denoon, et al. 1997—certainly still influenced by the island-centered mantra—though Howe 1984 and Scarr 1990 are also valuable contributions to the field. Campbell 2003 is an accessible updated textbook and especially good on cross-cultural contact; Oliver 1989, a once classic set text, has been only partially revised, though it is still authoritative on precolonial times. Borofsky 2000 is the first broad survey to connect the field explicitly with relevant scholars in other fields, adopting a powerful postmodern approach, though some readers might find the lack of a single-authored narrative to be a critical problem. Matsuda 2012 is a recent and superb overview that uniquely includes Asian and American border histories.

Borofsky, Robert, ed. Remembrance of Pacific Pasts: An Invitation to Remake History. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2000.
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A massive volume that combines articles by many key Pacific scholars with reflections by some exemplary postcolonial scholars of other fields, including James Clifford, Richard White, Gyan Prakash, and Edward Said. A successful attempt at a postmodern survey of historiography, contact, colonialism, and decolonization.
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Campbell, Ian C. Worlds Apart: A History of the Pacific Islands. Christchurch, New Zealand: Canterbury University Press, 2003.
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An extended and revised edition of Campbell’s popular History of the Pacific Islands (1989), this version continues Campbell’s well-considered balance between island-centered history and an analysis of cross-cultural contact. There are now more chapters as well on contemporary events from a historical perspective.
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Denoon, Donald, Malama Meleisea, Stewart Firth, Jocelyn Linnekin, and Karen Nero, eds. The Cambridge History of the Pacific Islanders. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
DOI: 10.1017/CHOL9780521441957Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Probably the most authoritative history to date, it covers themes from first settlement to the postcolonial state, with good bibliographic essays in each section. A modern child of the Davidson paradigm of island-centered scholarship.
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Howe, Kerry. Where the Waves Fall: A New South Sea Islands History from First Settlement to Colonial Rule. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1984.
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One of the first histories to cover such a scale, the work has been criticized for incorporating the Davidson precepts so fully that Europeans are all but invisible. Howe’s decision to end at colonial rule is pointed, if, for many, also frustrating.
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Matsuda, Matt K. Pacific Worlds: A History of Seas, Peoples, and Cultures. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139034319Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Unusual in its breadth, which includes the Asian and American borders of the Pacific, this book has been acclaimed for its combination of grand themes and micro-biographies. It is an important contribution with a world-historical emphasis.
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Oliver, Douglas L. The Pacific Islands. 3d ed. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1989.
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The first edition (1961) was a classic and popular set text; the third edition only partly updated the scholarship. The chapters on precolonial times remain significant but the analysis of Islander agency with the onset of colonialism is limited. The updated version runs with the current fashion of excluding Australian Aborigines and naming Europeans now as “invaders” instead of as “aliens.”
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Scarr, Deryck. The History of the Pacific Islands: Kingdoms of the Reefs. South Melbourne, Australia: Macmillan, 1990.
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Generally better received by fellow Pacific scholars than Campbell’s, this survey is less accessibly written and takes less interest in social and cultural dynamics. It is, however, strong in its survey of prehistoric times and narrates well the political and economic history of colonialism in the Pacific.
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Bibliographies and Reference Works

Pacific history is served well by Pacific History Bibliographies, originally published once a year in the Journal of Pacific History but now available online via the journal’s publisher, the Australian National University. Lal and Fortune 2000 offers the best single-volume encyclopedia. Gleizal 1990 is a massive French enterprise that covers the geographic, biological, archaeological, and recent history of the region. Nile and Clerk 1996 is a handy atlas with particular emphasis on tracking human migrations.

Gleizal, Christian, ed. Encyclopédie de la Polynésie. 9 vols. Papeete, Tahiti: Christian Gleizal, 1990.
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A massive French enterprise that covers scientific as well as humanistic approaches to the Pacific past, with an emphasis on indigenous over recent newcomer history.
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Lal, Brij V., and Kate Fortune, eds. The Pacific Islands: An Encyclopedia. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2000.
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A massive and useful work, designed thematically, it covers the full human and some environmental history of the Pacific. It has a particular focus on political and social history.
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Nile, Richard, and Christian Clerk. Cultural Atlas of Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific. Surry Hills, Australia: RD Press, 1996.
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Though it covers more than needed for this field, this is a handy atlas to track human migrations over time.
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Pacific History Bibliographies.
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The Journal of Pacific History published annual bibliographies in Volume 3 of each issue from 1966 to 2007. Since 2008, the valuable bibliographies have been available online.
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Journals

The Journal of Pacific History, Journal de la société des océanistes, and the Contemporary Pacific are the three most significant journals for the field. The Journal of Pacific Studies and the Journal of the Polynesian Society have both produced invaluable articles for historians but the former has appeared sporadically and the latter has historically had a greater emphasis on anthropology. Due to its home base in the University of Hawai‘i, the Journal of World History produces more relevant articles on Pacific history than might otherwise be expected; similar comments cannot be made for the Pacific Historical Review out of the University of California, though this journal does address the coastal history of the American Northwest. The New Zealand Journal of History produces more pertinent work for Pacific history than does its counterpart Australian journals. Oceania is the oldest journal in the field, but it continues to place greater emphasis on anthropological than on historical scholarship.

The Contemporary Pacific. 1989–.
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Published twice a year by the Center for Pacific Islands Studies at the University of Hawai‘i, The Contemporary Pacific includes articles on both history and contemporary cultural and political issues. It is publicly engaged and also includes reviews, dialogues, and shorter pieces.
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Journal de la société des océanistes. 1945–.
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Published twice a year by the Centre national de la recherche scientifique and the Centre national du livre, it is the preeminent French journal on Pacific studies, with an emphasis on history. It includes reviews.
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Journal of Pacific History. 1966–.
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Published four times a year by the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University, the Journal of Pacific History is the leading journal for historians interested in the Pacific. It publishes historical and theoretical articles, reviews, and occasionally primary documents with notes.
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Journal of Pacific Studies. 1977–.
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Usually published twice a year by the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of the South Pacific, the Journal of Pacific Studies is intermittent but has a useful focus on history among its wider interests as well as on indigenous scholarship.
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Journal of the Polynesian Society. 1892–.
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Published four times a year by the Polynesian Society based at the University of Auckland, the journal’s early issues contain a rich repository of indigenous and missionary texts. Later issues have included mostly anthropological articles, but also some historical, linguistic, and sociological pieces.
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Journal of World History. 1990–.
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Published four times a year, the Journal of World History is sponsored by the World History Association and is published, not insignificantly, by the University of Hawai‘i. Its Pacific home has ensured that it has produced many relevant articles on Pacific history—usually framed in world-historical terms.
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New Zealand Journal of History. 1966–.
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Published twice a year by the Department of History at the University of Auckland, the New Zealand Journal of History has always included far more pieces on Pacific history than its Australian counterpart. It includes articles and reviews.
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Oceania. 1930–.
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Published three times a year by Oceania Publications at the University of Sydney, Oceania is largely concerned with anthropological theory and practice, but it has published material by historians involved in ethnohistorical scholarship. Chiefly publishes articles, though occasionally also reviews.
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Pacific Historical Review. 1932–.
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Published four times a year by the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association, Pacific Historical Review is concerned largely with the history of American expansion to the Pacific, but occasionally includes relevant articles on the larger Pacific. It is made up largely of reviews.
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Anthologies and Primary Sources

Hundreds of editions of primary sources exist for Pacific history. The two most useful databases are the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau, based at the Australian National University and the South Seas website hosted by the National Library of Australia. The PMB was started in 1968 in response to concerns about the preservation of handwritten materials about the Pacific. It is particularly strong on missionary texts, but it covers all types of nongovernmental documents. The South Seas website has many complete texts searchable free online, such as Cook’s journals, Banks’s journals, and some plays, memoirs, maps, and so on. Supported by the National Library of Australia, it seems to have stopped adding new material for the moment, which is a deep shame. This site has been selected instead of the famous but undigitized J. C. Beaglehole editions of many explorers’ accounts. The editions of the two Forster explorers (Thomas, et al. 1996; Thomas and Berghof 2000) have been selected for their exceptional thoroughness and value—compiled by noted anthropologists, literary critics, and linguists, they are a model of Pacific primary source presentation. The Forsters accompanied Cook’s second voyage, acting in many ways as the most acute contemporary observers of Pacific environments and peoples. The Lévesque 1992–2002 twenty-volume collection of primary sources of Micronesia is a mammoth enterprise that, sadly, has no neat parallel for other areas of the Pacific. Lamb, et al. 2000 and Lansdown 2006 are two recent shorter anthologies of mostly European writings about the Pacific—the former concentrating on the 18th century and the latter spanning 1500–2000.

Lamb, Jonathan, Vanessa Smith, and Nicholas Thomas, eds. Exploration & Exchange: A South Seas Anthology, 1680–1900. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
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A slim but useful collection, including some rare pieces, divided into three sections: “Adventurers and Explorers,” “Beachcombers and Missionaries,” and “Literary Travellers.” It contains as well a good introduction to the state of the art of Pacific history.
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Lansdown, Richard, ed. Strangers in the South Seas: The Idea of the Pacific in Western Thought: An Anthology. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006.
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This more recent anthology has a broader international sweep than others as well as a very useful introduction and bibliographic commentary. It spans Western observations from the early 16th century to 2001.
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Lévesque, Rodrigue, ed. History of Micronesia: A Collection of Source Documents. 20 vols. Gatineau, Canada: Éditions Levesque, 1992–2002.
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An extraordinarily large collection that, sadly, has no parallel for other areas of the Pacific; it contains many useful illustrations and plenty of rare manuscripts.
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Pacific Manuscripts Bureau.
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The Pacific Manuscripts Bureau copies archives, manuscripts, and rare printed material relating to the Pacific Islands, with the aim of preserving its documentary heritage. Produced by an international consortium of ten libraries out of the Australian National University, it is the most extensive collection of nongovernment primary documentation on the Pacific Islands available. The collection is searchable online.
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South Seas: Voyaging and Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Pacific, 1760–1800.
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An excellent web-based initiative hosted by the National Library of Australia, it contains many useful and searchable complete primary sources, including Cook’s journals, Banks’s journals, and some rarer pieces. The site, however, seemed to stop adding new material a few years ago.
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Thomas, Nicholas, and Oliver Berghof, eds. A Voyage Round the World by George Forster. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2000.
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This edition of Forster Junior’s book is a companion piece to the UHP edition of Forster Senior’s volume. It is twice as long, with many rich illustrations. George Forster accompanied the second Cook voyage to the Pacific, and in many ways was a more sensitive observer of Pacific peoples than was his father.
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Thomas, Nicholas, Harriet Guest, and Michael Dettelbach, eds. Observations Made during a Voyage Round the World by Johann Reinhold Forster, with a Linguistics Appendix by Karl H. Rensch. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1996.
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With extensive essays by the editors on 18th-century social theory, gender relations, and natural history as well as an excellent discussion of Forster’s linguistic research in the Pacific, this is a richly illustrated edition of the work of Cook’s foremost scientific observer.
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Origins and Boundaries

The debate about the origins of Pacific settlement has been one of the fiercest in the broad field. Europeans speculated about them since first contact. By the 20th century, most agreed that the Pacific must have been settled west to east, though many assumed this had been an accidental process. From the 1960s, scholars in archaeology, history, anthropology, linguistics, and ecology have sought to prove the “drift thesis” wrong, though the case is not entirely closed. An initial comprehensive work on the topic is Bellwood 1979; this archaeologically grounded book established the now orthodox view that Austronesian speakers migrated out of today’s Taiwan around four thousand years ago. These people settled around New Guinea, in turn encountering peoples who are now believed to have been extant in the area up to thirty-six thousand years ago (Kirch 2000). A branch of Austronesian speakers, often called Oceanic speakers, then moved east, establishing what archaeologists call the “Lapita cultural complex.” Irwin 1992 has been especially eloquent in arguing how the innovation of outrigger sailing canoes made possible this Lapita advance. Kirch has been a leading exponent of how the Lapita then kept moving east, all the way to what is known as Remote Oceania. They are said to have settled the Solomons, Vanuatu, and New Caledonia about three thousand years ago, and then Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga within the next few hundred years. Another set of voyages began later to the Society Islands, Cook Islands, and Marquesas Islands, then to both Easter Island and the Hawaiian Islands, and finally around 1200 CE to New Zealand. Bellwood, et al. 1995 presents a multiauthored perspective on this story, taking it up to the 19th century. Howe 2003 contributes a highly readable historian’s view, adding a history of how the early European explorers also speculated on Pacific origins without the benefit of carbon dating. Finney 1994 is an invaluable article-length summary. The discussion of origins has inevitably led to questions about boundaries. The Lapita-centered story suggests a rather exclusive definition of Pacific peoples, encompassing the ancient ancestors of New Guinea and the younger ancestors of the Oceanic speakers. Most historians today seem to agree that the Pacific world keeps to the boundaries marked out by Melanesian descendants and the Lapita, though modern political institutions sometimes, and variously, include the Asian, American, and Australian borders of the Pacific Ocean. Dirlik 1998 is pertinent on modern definitions, and Flynn, et al. 2002 provides a way into this debate for Atlantic or World historians.

Bellwood, Peter. Man’s Conquest of the Pacific. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.
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One of the first and still relevant surveys of Asian and Pacific prehistory together, this archaeological study did much to formulate the concept of “Austronesian speakers.” It is enhanced by more than two hundred illustrations.
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Bellwood, Peter S., James J. Fox, and Darrell T. Tryon, eds. The Austronesians: Historical and Comparative Perspectives. Canberra, Australia: ANU E Press, 1995.
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With seventeen papers on the diverse populations sprung up from Austronesian-speaking migration, this is at once a detailed and comprehensive survey—though one written from an archaeological more than a historical perspective.
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Dirlik, Arif, ed. What Is in a Rim? Critical Perspectives on the Pacific Region Idea. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998.
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This is one of the most-cited works on the slippages around the definition of the Pacific. More pertinent to modern critical studies, perhaps, than to historical studies, it is yet a useful, multidisciplinary collection that emphasizes especially the power of capital in contemporary understandings of the Pacific.
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Finney, Ben. “The Other One-Third of the Globe.” Journal of World History 5.2 (Fall 1994): 273–297.
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An excellent overview of the research detailed above as well as of the issue of Pacific boundaries, this article is invaluable as an introductory summary for teachers.
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Flynn, Dennis O., Arturo Giráldez, and James Sobredo, eds. Studies in Pacific History: Economics, Politics, and Migration. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2002.
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This work sets the Pacific explicitly as a counterpart to the Atlantic World, written with world history audiences in mind.
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Howe, Kerry. The Quest for Origins: Who First Discovered and Settled the Pacific Islands? Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2003.
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An excellent summary of the sometimes dense and inaccessible archaeological evidence. Unlike the archaeologists, Howe presents the debate over origins as one stretching from the 18th century to the present, investigating as well the cultural ramifications of its results for today’s Pacific.
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Irwin, Geoffrey. The Prehistoric Exploration and Colonisation of the Pacific. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511518225Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A prehistorian’s view of Pacific settlement, this book covers the full 35,000+ years of human life in the area, emphasizing especially the development of innovation to Lapita canoes as each migration produced new experiences and knowledge. The book thus solidifies but also complicates the now popular view that Lapita migration was an extraordinary human feat.
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Kirch, Patrick Vinton. On the Road of the Winds: An Archaeological History of the Pacific Islands before European Contact. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.
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Highly readable authoritative account by an archaeological historian, self-proclaimed to be the new Bellwood 1979. Kirch has been a generous and enthusiastic advocate in the debate surrounding origins, though some have criticized his work for being overly confident about Lapita achievements.
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Imagining the Pacific

Many literary and cultural critics have tackled this topic in the last half-century, but all stand indebted to the groundbreaking work of Smith 1989. Smith was one of the first scholars to shift from an analysis of how far Europeans had interfered with Pacific cultures to a measure of the extent to which the Pacific influenced European aesthetics and scientific methods. His emphasis on the transformative effect of encounter set the stage for many subsequent scholars of representation. Rennie 1995 offers a thorough analysis of travelers’ imaginings of the Pacific from the ancient Greeks to the 20th century. Edmond 1997 is more partial but also more invested in indigenous interaction with European representations. Lamb 2001 and Guest 2007 both focus on 18th-century imaginings but in many ways these works stand as exemplars of the general field, presenting a more complicated vision of the “Europe” under scrutiny, if not of the “Pacific” being represented. Jolly 2007 is a good overview of previous work but includes a pertinent account of indigenous representations as well as an engagement with the perennial issue of Pacific boundaries.

Edmond, Rod. Representing the South Pacific: Colonial Discourse from Cook to Gauguin. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511581854Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An engaging survey of Atlantic World imaginings of the Pacific from Cook’s voyages to Gauguin’s excursions, it includes especially good chapters on the controversy surrounding Cook’s death and on enduring Western obsessions with sexuality, tattooing, and cannibalism in the Pacific.
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Guest, Harriet. Empire, Barbarism, and Civilisation: James Cook, William Hodges, and the Return to the Pacific. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
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Although centered on a relatively narrow topic, this work is a sensitive excavation of some enduring European imaginings of the Pacific, namely those rendered by Cook’s artist, William Hodges. Guest has become one of the most admired analysts of how European imaginings of the Pacific were shaped by emerging notions of cultural difference and development.
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Jolly, Margaret. “Imagining Oceania: Indigenous and Foreign Representations of a Sea of Islands.” The Contemporary Pacific 19.2 (2007): 508–545.
DOI: 10.1353/cp.2007.0054Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A good overview of Atlantic imagining from the 18th century to today, with special emphasis on how they compare to indigenous visions. Includes as well some discussion of boundaries and historiography.
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Lamb, Jonathan. Preserving the Self in the South Seas 1680–1840. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.
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A dense work that does more than most to ground European discourse about the Pacific in recent topical themes of 18th-century European history—especially the rise of, and reaction against, commerce, but also ideas about social contract, individualism, and sentimentalism.
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Rennie, Neil. Far-Fetched Facts: The Literature of the Travel and the Idea of the South Seas. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
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Focused on real and imaginary travel accounts to the Pacific, the book ranges over three thousand years of European literature. Its value is more in its thoroughness than its originality. It is especially solid on comparing Pacific Islander emissaries to Europe, and on the Bounty’s mutiny in the context of the French Revolution.
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Smith, Bernard. European Vision and the South Pacific. 3d ed. Melbourne, Australia: Oxford University Press, 1989.
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The classic text from 1960 was updated in 1989 and remains oft-consulted and admired. Smith was one of the first scholars to show an interest in seeing how far Europe’s “rediscovery” of the Pacific informed the development of movements previously assumed to be entirely home-grown, particularly picturesque and romantic aesthetics and empirical and evolutionary scientific thought.
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An Island-Centered Pacific

A new approach to more recent Pacific history emerged alongside an archaeology of Pacific origins that explicitly rejected the melancholic imperial consensus that European contact had had a “fatal impact” (Alan Moorehead published a book with that title, The Fatal Impact, in 1966 [London: Hamish Hamilton]). The new approach was spearheaded by politically engaged empiricist historians keen to refocus attention on Islander survival despite the European presence. Led by ANU scholar J. W. Davidson, these island-centered historians did much to recover neglected sources and read against their grain to produce previously unknown stories of Islander resistance, perseverance, and everyday life since the 16th century. In some cases the passion to reverse older perspectives was so intense that the history of European intrusion became almost invisible. The new approach also had a second arm in what practitioners began to call ethnohistory. Ironically, this second string encompassed scholarship that eventually became more recognized outside of Pacific history than the Davidson model ever did. Ethnohistorical Pacific scholarship, described initially by Greg Dening in the article after Davidson’s manifesto in the inaugural issue of JPH, insisted on incorporating analysis of the largely European sources into studies of Pacific Islanders. Thus, it advocated a more reflexive scholarship that addressed the problem of cultural conjunction head-on. It was taken up at first mostly by trained anthropologists, thereby usefully connecting the historical discipline with the always more dominant presence of anthropology in Pacific studies.

Histories

Davidson 1966 constitutes a leading light in island-centered history. Maude 1968 is an enthusiastic early testament to Davidson’s ideas. Meleisea 1987 is one of the earliest monographs written by an indigenous historian in the Davidson model, although Meleisea was keen never to forget entirely the devastation wrought by the European presence. Munro and Thornley 1996 is a latter-day version of the many missionary-inflected island-centered histories, this one specifically about, indeed, Islander missionaries. Chappell 1997 is a stolid but intriguing analysis of another indigenous appropriation of European activities. Thomas 2010 is one of the latest and most sophisticated surveys of Pacific history during the period of empire from the perspective of Islanders themselves.

Chappell, David A. Double Ghosts: Oceanian Voyagers on Euroamerican Ships. New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1997.
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A much-needed account of the peculiar Islander inclination to jump onboard vessels from the Atlantic, either to journey to others parts in the Pacific—in some tribute to their Lapita ancestors—or, indeed, to travel to new worlds entirely. Though at times more antiquarian then analytic, the work uncovered a richly pertinent topic for island-centered scholarship.
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Davidson, J. W. “Problems of Pacific History.” Journal of Pacific History 1 (1966): 5–21.
DOI: 10.1080/00223346608572076Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The first article in the inaugural issue of the Journal of Pacific History, Davidson’s piece served as a summary of all that had gone before and a manifesto of how Pacific history should now proceed. It advocated a focus on islands over empires in order to move beyond “fatal impact” conclusions.
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Maude, Henry E. Of Islands and Men: Studies in Pacific History. Melbourne, Australia: University of Melbourne Press, 1968.
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An early work that has somehow stood the test of time better than Davidson’s own, this was written by a true “participant historian”—Maude served as administrator and then researcher for decades in the Pacific. The work covers many areas of the Pacific, contributing especially original insight into the multi-sited pork trade of the 19th century.
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Meleisea, Malama. The Making of Modern Samoa: Traditional Authority and Colonial Administration in the Modern History of Western Samoa. Suva, Fiji: University of the South Pacific Press, 1987.
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Samoan Meleisea has written many relevant works on Samoan history and Pacific historiography. This work combined much of his efforts into understanding how modern Samoa emerged from rule by Germany and New Zealand with an exceptionally strong chief-centered politics. Meleisea is an island-centered historian who has, nevertheless, been loath to forget the power of foreign intrusion.
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Munro, Doug, and Andrew Thornley, eds. The Covenant Makers: Islander Missionaries in the Pacific. Suva, Fiji: University of the South Pacific Press, 1996.
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While much of the early island-centered history used, in fact, European missionary texts, this innovative collection focuses on the extension of the missionary impulse to Pacific indigenes themselves. A contested topic is surveyed in a slightly uneven manner; however, this work is a useful contribution to the Davidson model.
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Thomas, Nicholas. Islanders: The Pacific in the Age of Empire. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010.
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This is the most up-to-date survey of Islander agency through the age of European intrusion. Thomas is a master of narrative, analysis, and original research into both modern European and colonial Pacific history.
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Ethnohistories

Although discussed in Dening 1966 as a new approach in Pacific studies, ethnohistory in other disciplines could reasonably be called historical anthropology, and indeed many Pacific ethnohistorians were initially anthropologists. Dening 1980 includes some of the most evocative and respected ethnohistory of the Pacific, and this work, about the Marquesas Islands, remains perhaps the author’s most impressive. Marshall Sahlins, a mentor to Dening, was already working famously on Polynesian anthropology. His innovative structuralist approach to Hawaiian cultural history was lauded for many decades before it was attacked suddenly by a postcolonial scholar of Sri Lankan culture, Gananath Obeyesekere, in 1992. Obeyesekere 1992 reads condescension in Sahlin’s claim that Hawaiians had mediated Cook’s appearance in the area in the 1770s through the “mythical reality” of the Makihiki Festival about the god Lono. Obeyesekere argued that such a claim constituted a perpetuation of Europeans’ fantasies about themselves, projected onto indigenous people. The book provoked a furor about the claims of historical anthropology, or ethnohistory, against postcolonial politics. Obeyesekere seemed to be unaware of the tradition into which he waded that had for long tried to resurrect the Pacific Islander past with the limited sources available; his conclusions, rather startlingly, suggested either that Hawaiians must have been modern pragmatic souls, such as so-called contemporary Sri Lankans, or that the Hawaiian response was forever impossible to ascertain. Sahlins 1995 marks a concerted defense against Obeyesekere’s attacks, though its dense language perhaps did little to advertise the tradition of which it was part. Thomas 1991 and Douglas 1998 are good examples of latter-generation scholars moving to ethnohistory from different bases; Thomas was an anthropologist come to history and Douglas was a historian (of the Davidson school) come to anthropology. Both their works range across several Pacific cultures during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Dening, Gregory. “Ethnohistory in Polynesia: The Value of Ethnohistorical Evidence.” Journal of Pacific History 1 (1966): 23–42.
DOI: 10.1080/00223346608572077Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Published as the second article after Davidson’s in the inaugural issue of JPH, Dening’s piece in many ways symbolized the second-ranked place of anthropological perspectives in the earliest island-centered history. Dening stressed the need for a “double-reading” of all sources in the Pacific, incorporating the significance of cross-cultural contact always within any interpretation of island history.
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Dening, Greg. Islands and Beaches: Discourse on a Silent Land: Marquesas, 1774–1880. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1980.
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An ethnohistory of the Marquesas Islands, in the far eastern Pacific, analyzing through narrative and overt authorial reflection how the original Te Enata were encountered and nearly annihilated by European explorers and settlers. It explicitly refuted the idea of “an anthropology of natives and a history of strangers,” attempting instead an ethnohistory of both.
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Douglas, Bronwen. Across the Great Divide: Journeys in History and Anthropology. Studies in History and Anthropology 24. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1998.
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A collection by one of those who self-identifies as a traveler from the “severely empiricist, anti-imperialist school of Pacific history” to the ethnohistorical approach to the Pacific past. It is a good summary of her extensive work on indigenous leadership, violence, and encounter with European religion in the Pacific.
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Obeyesekere, Gananath. The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992.
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This book began an intense academic debate about historical anthropology, or “ethnohistory,” in the Pacific. The author argues that Sahlins’s interpretation was merely a continuation of Europeans’ fantasies about themselves as gods, projected onto indigenes. Though popular with postcolonial scholars, such a thesis also had the effect of silencing Hawaiian voices in the salient history.
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Sahlins, Marshall. Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities: Structure in the Early History of the Sandwich Islands Kingdom. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1981.
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The neatest though also densest version of Sahlins’s interpretation of the Hawaiian reaction to Cook’s appearance in the “Sandwich Islands” in the 1770s. Sahlins used this event to explore the way that cultural structures transform when faced with other cultural structures. He argued that Cook’s reception in Hawaii was mediated by preexisting “mythical realities.”
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Sahlins, Marshall. How “Natives” Think: About Captain Cook, for Example. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226733715.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Sahlins’s comeback to Obeyesekere’s attack, it was disapproved of by some though lauded by others as a powerful reiteration of what had been the objective of Pacific ethnohistory for decades, which was to bring forth the historicity of Pacific Islanders even when scholars have to work with the scantiest of evidence.
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Thomas, Nicholas. Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991.
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Thomas has produced many key texts in the field, but this one inaugurated his position as an ethnohistorian. Trained as an anthropologist, Thomas here incorporates a historical perspective on two centuries of evidence about gift-giving and material culture across a span of Micronesian and Polynesian islands, showing how both outsiders and island natives are always entangled and co-productive of their pasts.
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The Atlantic World in the Pacific

This subfield has the oldest tradition in Pacific history, though in recent years it has moved from an imperial, often melancholic, look at how Atlantic cultures decimated Pacific cultures toward a more ethnographic understanding of how cross-cultural encounter often co-produced subsequent histories. Spate 1979–1988 is still the most respected overview of the topic, strong especially on the Spanish and Dutch eras. Scholarship on the French presence is underrepresented, but Dunmore 1997 is the most comprehensive while Matsuda 2005 is the most thought-provoking. Most works on the British presence focus on the racy 18th-century history, but Samson 1998 looks usefully at the 19th-century missionary and emerging political history while MacLeod and Rehbock 1988 represents the best of the scientific histories. Calder, et al. 1999 is perhaps the most dynamic collection of essays on the topic, including some well-known international scholars, on topics ranging from 18th-century perceptions to 19th-century missionaries and science. Campbell 2003 is a useful teaching overview, extracting the encounter history from his larger work. Banner 2007 is a legal history of European territorial imperialism but connects well the field to larger Australian and American historiographies. Jolly, et al. 2009 is almost as much about the indigenous reaction as the Atlantic presence but offers a useful bridge between the subfields. Salmond 2010 continues the author’s excellent run of books about encounter in the Pacific, this one centering especially on Tahiti since the 18th century.

Banner, Stuart. Possessing the Pacific: Land, Settlers, and Indigenous People from Australia to Alaska. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.
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Though largely a work of synthesis, this monograph is important for its comprehensiveness and for its connection of Pacific history to larger fields of legal, Australian, and American studies. It analyzes the various practices of land-taking by empires in the larger Pacific area, arguing that each was determined by the interpretation of local factors.
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Calder, Alex, Jonathan Lamb, and Bridget Orr, eds. Voyages and Beaches: Pacific Encounters, 1769–1840. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1999.
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An excellent collection of work from several disciplines, it contains an especially strong chapter on European meanings of encounters by J. G. A. Pocock. It also includes good chapters on science and by indigenous scholars.
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Campbell, I. C. “The Culture of Culture Contact: Refractions from Polynesia.” Journal of World History 14.1 (2003): 63–86.
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An excellent and sensitive overview of the subfield of contact in Pacific history. It discusses as well the problems of island-centered history as well as an overly European perspective. A very useful introduction for teachers.
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Dunmore, John. Visions and Realities: France in the Pacific, 1695–1995. Waikanae, New Zealand: Heritage, 1997.
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A sober yet comprehensive account of the relatively understudied French presence in the Pacific, this book has the largest temporal range of any other corresponding account. Generally sympathetic to French achievement, it also contains a good bibliographic essay.
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Jolly, Margaret, Serge Tcherkézoff, and Darrell Tryon, eds. Oceanic Encounters: Exchange, Desire, Violence. Canberra, Australia: ANU E Press, 2009.
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Though this book could also stand as an exemplary ethnohistory, it does probably attend more to the intruders than the indigenous. It is a fine instance of ethnohistorical approaches taking over what many used to consider a subfield of European history.
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MacLeod, Roy, and Philip F. Rehbock, eds. Nature in Its Greatest Extent: Western Science in the Pacific. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1988.
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Making explicit claims about the co-production of scientific knowledge through Atlantic-Pacific exchange, this collection contains excellent articles especially on French, British, and Soviet enterprises.
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Matsuda, Matt K. Empire of Love: Histories of France and the Pacific. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195162950.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A wonderful complement to Dunmore 1997, this work places more emphasis on the indigenous, the quirky, and the sensuous. Like all Matsuda’s work, it takes a broader geographic definition of the Pacific than most.
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Salmond, Anne. Aphrodite’s Island: The European Discovery of Tahiti. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.
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All of Salmond’s works are relevant to this and other categories. Her most recent work analyzes shared European and Tahitian histories, utilizing traditional sources as well as oral traditions, art, and material culture.
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Samson, Jane. Imperial Benevolence: Making British Authority in the Pacific Islands. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1998.
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Explores the more sober history of 19th-century British presence in the Pacific, after the more extravagant history of British exploration. Samson emphasizes especially the connection between the British political presence and the movements for Christianization and civilization.
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Spate, O. H. K. The Pacific since Magellan. 3 vols. Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1979–1988.
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Written by a geographer in the tradition of the French annalists, this magisterial work today seems out of step with other Pacific histories of its era. It traverses Atlantic interaction with the Pacific, suggesting in many ways that the latter existed only through contact with the former. Spate was conscious of his Eurocentricity but believed it would serve “as a basis for that which is to come.”
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Bonded Labor

Just as it was a central subject in the history of the Atlantic World, one of the key themes of Pacific history before the 20th century was that of bonded labor. After the abolition of slavery, European empires sought indentured labor as a solution to labor shortage, and, in the Pacific, paved roads both in and out via legal contract. During the last forty years of the 19th century, some sixty thousand Indians migrated to the British colony of Fiji to work primarily sugar plantations. Over the same period, somewhat ironically, nearly 100,000 Pacific Islanders—chiefly from the Melanesian Islands of the Solomons, migrated to various European colonies—mostly the British colony of Queensland. Corris 1973 is one of the first to take up the Pacific Islander labor story in modern times, arguing that Melanesian laborers played a far more active role in their indentures than previously thought. Saunders 1982 believes Corris went too far, reasserting older claims about the violent conditions that Melanesians suffered. Written by a noted economic historian, Shlomowitz 1981 is the first to apply systematic economic analysis to the data and concurs rather more with Corris 1973 than with Saunders 1982. Moore 1985 is the first really detailed study of a particular Melanesian community while Banivanua-Mar 2007 takes a linguistic approach, reading violence in the sources discursively as well as practically. Shineberg 1999 fills a gap in the French version of this Melanesian labor story. Lal 1983 exemplifies the author’s large contribution to Indian indentured labor history in Fiji, and Lal, et al. 1993 is a rich collection of studies of Melanesian, Indian, and some other groups of indentured migrants—focusing especially on ways of reading resistance within highly restricted regimes.

Banivanua-Mar, Tracey. Violence and Colonial Dialogue: The Australian-Pacific Indentured Labor Trade. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2007.
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In this densely theoretical reworking of the Melanesian indenture story in Queensland, Banivanua-Mar takes a post-structuralist view of the sources, reading violence discursively as well as practically. As with most histories in this subfield, however, there is little reference to traditions of indentured labor outside of Oceania.
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Corris, Peter. Passage, Port and Plantation: A History of Solomon Islands Labour Migration, 1870–1914. Carlton, Australia: Melbourne University Press, 1973.
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This book made quite an impact at the time for revising the longstanding “fatal impact” idea of Melanesian indentured labor. Against tales of kidnapping and brutal violence, Corris argued that most Melanesians undertook indentures willingly to explore and advance their positions in local society.
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Lal, Brij V. Girmitiyas: The Origins of the Fiji Indians. Canberra, Australia: Journal of Pacific History, 1983.
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In this work, one of the most detailed early studies of Indian indenture in Fiji, Lal incorporated statistical analysis into his otherwise social history of how migrants survived their ordeals, often through acts of noncompliance.
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Lal, Brij V., Doug Munro, and Edward D. Beechert, eds. Plantation Workers: Resistance and Accommodation. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1993.
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One of the few works that combine Indian and Melanesian indentured laborers, as well as those from other cultures, this work focuses especially on strategies for survival and even resistance.
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Moore, Clive. Kanaka: A History of Melanesian Mackay. Port Moresby: Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies and University of Papua New Guinea Press, 1985.
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The first truly detailed analysis of one small community of Melanesian laborers, this work reflects a Geertzian approach in its thick description of everyday life for the migrants, emphasizing its possibilities rather than negatives.
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Saunders, Kay. Workers in Bondage: The Origins and Bases of Unfree Labour in Queensland, 1824–1916. St. Lucia, Australia: University of Queensland Press, 1982.
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Saunders did not go as far as Corris in her revision, reminding readers of the consistent violence that yet underwrote Melanesian labor in Australia.
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Shineberg, Dorothy. The People Trade: Pacific Island Laborers and New Caledonia, 1865–1930. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1999.
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Shineberg wrote a valuable labor study in the 1960s; this book traces the Melanesian indentured labor trade into the French colony at New Caledonia (over the same period as Melanesian labor migration to Queensland). Filling a gap in the scholarship, Shineberg focused on empirical research about everyday laborer life.
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Shlomowitz, Ralph. “Markets for Indentured and Time-Expired Melanesian Labour in Queensland, 1863–1906: An Economic Analysis.” Journal of Pacific History 16 (1981): 70–91.
DOI: 10.1080/00223348108572416Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The noted economic historian, during a stint in Australian academia, applied systematic analysis to previously underanalyzed data and sided more with Corris than Saunders, concluding that Melanesians seemed to do relatively better in Queensland than once thought or in comparison to some other workers.
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Gender and Sexuality

Studies of women and gender in Pacific history have been covered by a slim but outstanding band of scholars. Margaret Jolly, in particular, has helped to generate much important work. Jolly and Macintyre 1989 is a crucial early collection about the problematic place of women under colonialism in the Pacific. Linnekin 1990 presents a slight revision to that story, arguing that, in Hawaii at least, some indigenous women fared better than indigenous men. Ralston 1992 surveys the state of the art at the time, using the author’s own integral place in it as a useful grounding device. Jolly 1994 is an acclaimed monograph about Sa-speaking women in Vanuatu experiencing complex reactions to European intrusion. Manderson and Jolly 1997 is significant chiefly for the way in which it connects Asia to the Pacific story, a connection that is often implicit in assumptions about women’s status and representation. Tcherkézoff 2008 is one of the most powerful works on women’s history in recent years, overturning longstanding ideas about Europe’s interpretation of Polynesian women with anthropological evidence to show, at least in Samoan history, a restricted and culturally mediated female sexuality. Both O’Brien 2006 and Wallace 2003 are written by literary critics of European representation, but they diverge somewhat in their assessment of what was the most anxious sexual site for Europeans. O’Brien argues that it was in heterosexual Pacific women’s bodies while Wallace argues that, rather, it was in homosexual Pacific men’s bodies.

Jolly, Margaret. Women of the Place: Kastom, Colonialism, and Gender in Vanuatu. Philadelphia: Harwood Academic, 1994.
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A celebrated ethnohistory of Sa-speaking women in Vanuatu under colonialism, this book analyzes how women were exploited under colonial rule but also how they may have benefited with perhaps greater claims to Sa identity and place.
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Jolly, Margaret, and Martha Macintyre, eds. Family and Gender in the Pacific: Domestic Contradictions and the Colonial Impact. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
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A significant early collection of feminist scholarship, it focuses especially on missionary interaction with Pacific societies. With a particular emphasis on Melanesia, the authors argue that women retained autonomy through all eras but perhaps suffered disproportionately under colonial contact.
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Linnekin, Jocelyn. Sacred Queens and Women of Consequence: Rank, Gender, and Colonialism in the Hawaiian Islands. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990.
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Looks at the position and status of women of all ranks in the Hawaiian Islands, arguing that, with the advent of colonialism, women managed territorial dispossession in some ways better than men. Linnekin takes an ethnohistorical approach.
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Manderson, Lenore, and Margaret Jolly, eds. Sites of Desire, Economies of Pleasure: Sexualities in Asia and the Pacific. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.
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Important for its recognition of the way in which Asia is often linked to the Pacific when it comes to images of women, this mixed collection offers attempts at overturning staid stereotypes in historical and contemporary ideas.
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O’Brien, Patty. The Pacific Muse: Exotic Femininity and the Colonial Pacific. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006.
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Of the subfield on European imaginings, this work centers particularly on the image of the Pacific woman. O’Brien argues that Pacific women came to symbolize most powerfully the notion of “exotic primitivism,” though her book slips in very few glimpses of a female Pacific voice in its own right.
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Ralston, Caroline. “The Study of Women in the Pacific.” The Contemporary Pacific 4.1 (Spring 1992): 162–175.
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An excellent autobiographical overview of women’s Pacific history by one of its key early players, this piece surveys the place of studying gender in all strands of island-centered scholarship. Ralston argues especially for an emphasis on ordinary people as well as of leaders.
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Tcherkézoff, Serge. First Contacts in Polynesia: The Samoan Case, 1722–1848: Western Misunderstandings about Sexuality and Divinity. Canberra: Australian National University Press, 2008.
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Taking his cue from a Sahlinsesque anthropology, Tcherkézoff argues that Samoan women, like Hawaiians with Cook, read the colonial encounter mythically. He overturns previous ideas about Samoan sexual license and replaces them with a picture of a restricted and culturally mediated sexuality.
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Wallace, Lee. Sexual Encounter: Pacific Texts, Modern Sexualities. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003.
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From a literary approach to European imaginings, Wallace argues against O’Brien that the most “sexually resonant” figure for Atlantic imaginaries was not the heterosexual Pacific woman but rather the homosexual Pacific male. Like O’Brien, Wallace attends almost exclusively to European history.
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Historiography

Ever since the 1960s, Pacific history seems to have been inordinately interested in tracking and discussing itself. After the initial catalysts by Davidson and Dening in 1966 (see Davidson 1966, cited under Histories, and Denning 1966, cited under Ethnohistories), Pacific historians continued to criticize all traces of “fatal impact” views and attempted to refine ideas about how to keep the focus on Pacific Islanders in the past despite their troubles with limited sources. Hau’ofa 1993 (cited under Before Hau’ofa) marked a definite turning point. This article, first published in a collection but then reprinted widely, argued for a redefinition of Pacific space alongside refinements to island-centered history. It was not enough, Tongan Hau’ofa implied, to conjure Islanders of the past: they also had to be reconfigured as people of a huge and important sea—Oceania—rather than inhabitants of tiny and poor (and thus trivial) nation-states. Ethnohistorians were especially quick to heed Hau’ofa’s call and, since his article’s distribution, their approach began to be the dominant mode in Pacific history.

Before Hau’ofa

Maude 1971 is one of the first key works to take stock since 1966, still overtly aligned with Davidson, with some hostility to anthropological contributions. Howe 1977 gives a good retrospective analysis of the trenchancy of “fatal impact” scenarios. Meleisea 1978 notes how indigenous researchers were yet positioned differently before “native informants”; the author also broached some concern (and especially in later pieces) about the potential for anti-fatalistic approaches to blind us inadvertently to the tragedies that had occurred in the Pacific past. Thomas 1990 is one of the first to bring island-centered histories into conversation with ethnographic approaches, using an especially post-structuralist mode to do so. Lal 1992 is in some ways yet impervious to the Thomas intervention but it remains a useful collection of discussions about how the island-centered model needed to, and, in fact, did, progress. Hau’ofa 1993, as discussed under Historiography, marks a true shift in the historiography.

Hau’ofa, Epeli. “Our Sea of Islands.” In A New Oceania: Rediscovering Our Sea of Islands. Edited by Eric Waddell, Vijay Naidu, and Epeli Hau’ofa, 2–16. Suva, Fiji: University of the South Pacific, 1993.
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Reprinted variously ever since, this article marks the most influential intervention into Pacific historiography since 1966. Hau’ofa saw that even with a focus on Islander agency, Pacific history too often underscored the smallness of Pacific Islands in both space and time. He argues instead for the area as a “sea of islands,” gigantic in both geography and historical depth.
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Howe, Kerry. “The Fate of the Savage in Pacific Historiography.” New Zealand Journal of History 11.2 (1977): 137–154.
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The best analysis of how and why the “fatal impact” view of Pacific history emerged and took such strong hold before (and after) the 1960s determination to add Pacific Islander agency to the mix.
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Lal, Brij V., ed. Pacific Islands History: Journeys and Transformations. Canberra, Australia: Journal of Pacific History, 1992.
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One of the first edited collections to reflect on Pacific historiography as it emerged from Davidson’s island-centered model, the book contains especially pertinent chapters on the problem of spiritual incommensurability, the difficulty of writing Pacific women’s history, and the self-narrated career of the first Tongan-born professional historian, Sione Latukefu.
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Maude, H. E. “Pacific History: Past, Present and Future.” Journal of Pacific History 6 (1971): 3–24.
DOI: 10.1080/00223347108572180Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The first major overview since Davidson’s manifesto, it surveys the scene from the 19th century onward and discusses especially the problem of anthropological dominance in Pacific studies.
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Meleisea, Malama. “Pacific Historiography: An Indigenous View.” Journal of Pacific Studies 4 (1978): 5–43.
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This article began a series of searching pieces about the ambivalent status of the indigenous researcher as well as about the consequences of inadvertently denying too far the grimmer aspects of the European encounter with the Pacific.
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Thomas, Nicholas. “Partial Texts: Representation, Colonialism and Agency in Pacific History.” Journal of Pacific History 25.2 (December 1990): 139–158.
DOI: 10.1080/00223349008572632Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The first major historiographical piece by the significant anthropologist Nicholas Thomas, it introduced a post-structuralist, or “culturalist,” critique of the island-centered model.
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After Hau’ofa

After Hau’ofa’s intervention, Pacific historiography has tried to be both more critical and more international. Chappell 1995, like Meleisea 1978 (cited under Before Hau’ofa) before it, critiques the older model on its tendency to avoid the worst aspects of European invasion. Munro and Shineberg 1996 is a mixed collection that is strongest in its integration of nonacademic practitioners. Hanlon 2003 discusses more directly the potential significance of nonacademic history to the scholarly field. Munro and Lal 2006 is in some ways less interesting than Munro and Shineberg 1996, but it assembles astute analyses of the classic characters of Pacific history. Munro 2009 is a monograph about those early island-centered historians who also played important roles in later Pacific politics. Matsuda 2006 is the first work to introduce many in Atlantic history to the historiography about the Pacific while Salesa 2012 gives perhaps a more complex and provocative analysis of the relationship between the two oceanic domains.

Chappell, David A. “Active Agents versus Passive Victims: Decolonized Historiography or Problematic Paradigm?” The Contemporary Pacific 7.2 (1995): 303–326.
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A brave call on the tendency of island-centered histories to overlook the worst aspects of European invasion because of a fear of the victim status they might confer. Chappell argues for more indigenous scholarship and a way of analyzing devastation without Islander erasure.
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Hanlon, David. “Beyond ‘the English Method of Tattooing’: Decentering the Practice of History in Oceania.” The Contemporary Pacific 15.1 (2003): 19–40.
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An excellent, if quirky, overview of the historiography of the Pacific islands, the article also discusses the tension between local expressions of the past with continuing academic discourse. It advocates a place for “vernacular” history alongside orthodox Atlantic forms of history.
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Matsuda, Matt. “The Pacific.” The American Historical Review 111.3 (June 2006): 758–780.
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One of the most cited historiographies of the field in recent times, it summarizes well the debates explicitly for an audience on Atlantic history. Spanning the entire 20th century, it surveys in detail most key issues in the field and in contemporary politics.
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Munro, Doug. The Ivory Tower and Beyond: Participant Historians of the Pacific. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars, 2009.
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Davidson here becomes history itself, the key figure in an analysis of some island-centered historians who also served as political actors in more contemporary Pacific events. Maude and Lal also feature strongly as scholars who worked as well for the stability of Kiribati and Fiji, respectively.
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Munro, Doug, and Brij V. Lal, eds. Texts and Contexts: Reflections in Pacific Islands Historiography. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006.
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A lavish volume with particularly fascinating chapters on Scarr, Oliver, Spate, Howe, Dening, Maude, Sahlins, and Smith, it offers perhaps the fullest review of the field available, yet it is overtly focused on Western academic historians.
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Munro, Doug, and Dorothy Shineberg, eds. Special Issue: Reflections on Pacific Island Historiography. Journal of Pacific Studies 20 (1996).
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An admirable collection that does especially well to include practitioners tangential to Pacific history as well as to academia altogether. Particularly good reflexive essays are included by Hau’ofa, Pocock, Denoon, and Chappell.
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Salesa, Damon. “Opposite Footers.” In The Atlantic World in the Antipodes: Effects and Transformations since the Eighteenth Century. Edited by Kate Fullagar, 283–300. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars, 2012.
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Explicitly written to introduce Pacific historiography in the long run to an Atlantic history audience, Salesa provides an unflinching analysis of its ups and downs. He suggests that its long-term emphasis on indigenous agency might serve as an example, though it, in turn, could still bear to learn about the value of surveys that attend carefully to oceanic space.
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