Category Archives: Pacific

Dumont d’Urville’s epic tale of the noble New Zealander

Inspired by Bougainville’s accounts of Tahiti, Jules Sébastien César Dumont d’Urville sought out a mission to explore the south. His first commission was in the Aegean, where he ‘discovered’ the Venus de Milo. In 1822 he was part of an expedition south, when it was still considered possible that France might recover some its recent [...]

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Tahiti – Time to eat time!

Around 1,000 years after Tahiti was first settled by Polynesians, the English sailor Samuel Wallis arrived to claim the territory as ‘King George the Third’s Island‘. The Tahitians attempted to repulse the intruders, but the superior weaponry of the English made an unequal match. When the French explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville arrived the following [...]

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The idea of South: Australia’s global positioning

Issue 44 of Australian Humanities Review contains a number of important contributions to debate about Australia’s uncertain position in the South. Margaret Jolly reflects on Raewyn Connell’s Southern Theory. She contests the use of South as a theoretical position: In my view, use of the language of the cardinal points of cartography to describe inequalities [...]

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