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Books > History > Australasian & Pacific history > General
These volumes present a comprehensive survey of the history of the
Pacific Ocean, an area making up around one third of the Earth's
surface, from initial human colonization to the present day.
Reflecting a wide range of cultural and disciplinary perspectives,
this two-volume work details different ways of telling and viewing
history in a Pacific world of exceptionally diverse cultural
traditions, over time spans that require multidisciplinary and
multicultural collaborative perspectives. The central importance of
nations touched by the Pacific in contemporary world affairs cannot
be understood without recourse to the deep history of interactions
on and across the Pacific. In reflecting the diversity and dynamism
of the societies of this blue hemisphere, these volumes seek to
enhance world histories and broaden readers' perspectives on forms
of historical knowledge and expression. Volume I explores the
history of the Pacific Ocean pre-1800 and Volume II examines the
period from 1800 to the present day.
Tracing the origins of the Hawaiians and other Polynesians back to
the shores of the South China Sea, archaeologist Patrick Vinton
Kirch follows their voyages of discovery across the Pacific in this
fascinating history of Hawaiian culture from about one thousand
years ago. Combining more than four decades of his own research
with Native Hawaiian oral traditions and the evidence of
archaeology, Kirch puts a human face on the gradual rise to power
of the Hawaiian god-kings, who by the late eighteenth century were
locked in a series of wars for ultimate control of the entire
archipelago.
This lively, accessible chronicle works back from Captain James
Cook's encounter with the pristine kingdom in 1778, when the
British explorers encountered an island civilization governed by
rulers who could not be gazed upon by common people. Interweaving
anecdotes from his own widespread travel and extensive
archaeological investigations into the broader historical
narrative, Kirch shows how the early Polynesian settlers of Hawai'i
adapted to this new island landscape and created highly productive
agricultural systems.
This book fills an important gap in the history and intelligence
canvas of Singapore and Malaya immediately after the surrender of
the Japanese in August 1945. It deals with the establishment of the
domestic intelligence service known as the Malayan Security Service
(MSS), which was pan-Malayan covering both Singapore and Malaya,
and the colourful and controversial career of Lieutenant Colonel
John Dalley, the Commander of Dalforce in the WWII battle for
Singapore and the post-war Director of MSS. It also documents the
little-known rivalry between MI5 in London and MSS in Singapore,
which led to the demise of the MSS and Dalley's retirement.
Indians now constitute a significant ethnic minority in Australia
and New Zealand. According to the most recent census figures, they
number slightly more than half a million, but represent a
successful ethnic community making significant contributions to
their host societies and economies. The histories of their
migration go back to the early colonial period, but rarely do they
find any space in the global literature on Indian diaspora,
probably because of their small numbers. This book covers their
history over the past two and half centuries, covering both the
'old' and the 'new' diaspora; the first group consisting of the
labourers who migrated under pressure of colonial capital, and the
second group representing the post-war professional migrants. But
this book is not just about the diaspora, it also looks closely at
the host societies which over this period have been receiving and
interacting with these migrants. And it looks at a few Antipodeans
too, who were going to India in the early twentieth century and
making contributions in terms of ideas and service.
In the century from the death of Captain James Cook in 1779 to the
rise of the sugar plantations in the 1870s, thousands of Kanaka
Maoli (Native Hawaiian) men left Hawai'i to work on ships at sea
and in na 'aina 'e (foreign lands)-on the Arctic Ocean and
throughout the Pacific Ocean, and in the equatorial islands and
California. Beyond Hawai'i tells the stories of these forgotten
indigenous workers and how their labor shaped the Pacific World,
the global economy, and the environment. Whether harvesting
sandalwood or bird guano, hunting whales, or mining gold, these
migrant workers were essential to the expansion of transnational
capitalism and global ecological change. Bridging American,
Chinese, and Pacific historiographies, Beyond Hawai'i is the first
book to argue that indigenous labor-more than the movement of ships
and spread of diseases-unified the Pacific World.
"Along the Archival Grain" offers a unique methodological and
analytic opening to the affective registers of imperial governance
and the political content of archival forms. In a series of nuanced
mediations on the nature of colonial documents from the
nineteenth-century Netherlands Indies, Ann Laura Stoler identifies
the social epistemologies that guided perception and practice,
revealing the problematic racial ontologies of that confused
epistemic space.
Navigating familiar and extraordinary paths through the
lettered lives of those who ruled, she seizes on moments when
common sense failed and prevailing categories no longer seemed to
work. She asks not what colonial agents knew, but what happened
when what they thought they knew they found they did not. Rejecting
the notion that archival labor be approached as an extractive
enterprise, Stoler sets her sights on archival production as a
consequential act of governance, as a field of force with violent
effect, and not least as a vivid space to do ethnography.
British Imperial Air Power examines the air defense of Australia
and New Zealand during the interwar period. It also demonstrates
the difficulty of applying new military aviation technology to the
defense of the global Empire and provides insight into the nature
of the political relationship between the Pacific Dominions and
Britain. Following World War I, both Dominions sought greater
independence in defense and foreign policy. Public aversion to
military matters and the economic dislocation resulting from the
war and later the Depression left little money that could be
provided for their respective air forces. As a result, the Empire's
air services spent the entire interwar period attempting to create
a strategy in the face of these handicaps. In order to survive, the
British Empire's military air forces offered themselves as a
practical and economical third option in the defense of Britain's
global Empire, intending to replace the Royal Navy and British Army
as the traditional pillars of imperial defense.
Here Gananath Obeyesekere debunks one of the most enduring myths
of imperialism, civilization, and conquest: the notion that the
Western civilizer is a god to savages. Using shipboard journals and
logs kept by Captain James Cook and his officers, Obeyesekere
reveals the captain as both the self-conscious civilizer and as the
person who, his mission gone awry, becomes a "savage" himself.
In this new edition of "The Apotheosis of Captain Cook," the
author addresses, in a lengthy afterword, Marshall Sahlins's 1994
book, "How "Natives" Think," which was a direct response to this
work.
The question is as searing as it is fundamental to the continuing
debate over Japanese culpability in World War II and the period
leading up to it: "How could Japanese soldiers have committed such
acts of violence against Allied prisoners of war and Chinese
civilians?" During the First World War, the Japanese fought on the
side of the Allies and treated German POWs with respect and
civility. In the years that followed, under Emperor Hirohito,
conformity was the norm and the Japanese psyche became one of
selfless devotion to country and emperor; soon Japanese soldiers
were to engage in mass murder, rape, and even cannibalization of
their enemies. Horror in the East examines how this drastic change
came about. On the basis of never-before-published interviews with
both the victimizers and the victimized, and drawing on
never-before-revealed or long-ignored archival records, Rees
discloses the full horror of the war in the Pacific, probing the
supposed Japanese belief in their own racial superiority, analyzing
a military that believed suicide to be more honorable than
surrender, and providing what the Guardian calls "a powerful,
harrowing account of appalling inhumanity...impeccably researched."
Shortlised for the Saltire Society Non Fiction Book of the Year
Award Almost every adult and child is familiar with his Treasure
Island, but few know that Robert Louis Stevenson lived out his last
years on an equally remote island, which was squabbled over by
colonial powers much as Captain Flint's treasure was contested by
the mongrel crew of the Hispaniola. In 1890 Stevenson settled in
Upolu, an island in Samoa, after two years sailing round the South
Pacific. He was given a Samoan name and became a fierce critic of
the interference of Germany, Britain and the U.S.A. in Samoan
affairs - a stance that earned him Oscar Wilde's sneers, and
brought him into conflict with the Colonial Office, who regarded
him as a menace and even threatened him with expulsion from the
island. Joseph Farrell's pioneering study of Stevenson's twilight
years stands apart from previous biographies by giving as much
weight to the Samoa and the Samoans - their culture, their manners,
their history - as to the life and work of the man himself. For it
is only by examining the full complexity of Samoa and the political
situation it faced as the nineteenth century gave way to the
twentieth, that Stevenson's lasting and generous contribution to
its cause can be appreciated.
This vivid, multi-dimensional history considers the key cultural,
social, political and economic events of Australia's history.
Deftly weaving these issues into the wider global context, Mark
Peel and Christina Twomey provide an engaging overview of the
country's past, from its first Indigenous people, to the great
migrations of recent centuries, and to those living within the more
anxiously controlled borders of the present day. This engaging
textbook is an ideal resource for undergraduate students and
postgraduate students taking modules or courses on the History of
Australia. It will also appeal to general readers who are
interested in obtaining a thorough overview of the entire history
of Australia, from the earliest times to the present, in one
concise volume.
Diese Studie widmet sich der Entwicklung des modernen Sozial- und
Interventionsstaates im Australien des 20. Jahrhunderts. Sie zeigt,
dass der australische Sozialstaat unterschiedliche historische
Einflusse amalgamiert. Die Steuerfinanzierung von Sozialleistungen,
das Versicherungsprinzip und die Sozialsteuer konstituieren bis
heute das interessante "Mischmodell" Australien. Sozialpolitik in
ihrer australischen Definition beschrankte sich nie nur auf
staatliche finanzielle Leistungen an die Burger. Die Loehne wurden
bis in die jungste Vergangenheit im "Wohlfahrtsstaat des
Lohnempfangers" von sogenannten "Schiedsgerichten" und
"-kommissionen" festgesetzt. Dazu kam das System der Schutzzoelle,
die australische Arbeitsplatze sichern und beim Aufbau einer
nationalen Automobilindustrie helfen sollten, die sich am
PKW-Modell "Holden" als dem (Status-)Symbol des sozialen Aufstiegs
festmachen lasst.
The home has been on the forefront of rapid economic, political,
social, and technological transformations for many individuals and
families across the world. As a country reliant on the exportation
of human labor to sustain its national economy, the Philippines
exemplifies a valuable case study of the impacts of a globalized
and networked society on the everyday dynamics of a transnational
family arrangement. Despite ranking among the heaviest Internet
users in the world, Filipino citizens are often left with no choice
but to navigate digital and transnational environments orchestrated
by the uneven distribution of both national and international
resources and opportunities. (Im)mobile Homes investigates the role
of smartphones, social media channels, and various mobile
applications in forging and sustaining intimate ties among
dispersed Filipino family members. Examining the digital lifeworlds
of transnational Filipino family in Australia, this volume draws on
rich ethnographic study to explore the benefits of digital
communication as well as the tensions enabled by the influences of
socio-cultural structures, socio-economic conditions, technological
affordances, and institutional policies and processes on mobile
practices. It portrays the physically distributed yet virtually
connected nature of the transnational Filipino family through
diverse contexts, such as observing family rituals, performing
intimate care, and managing crises, and foregrounds their unique
strategies in addressing the interruptions of connecting at a
distance. Ultimately, this volume underscores how mobile practices
of the transnational Filipino family negotiate the pre-existing and
broader structural systems that (re)produce marginalization in a
digital and global era. Enriched by moving stories of transnational
families, (Im)mobile Homes offers a critical lens towards
interrogating the possibilities and politics of a home from afar in
the digital era.
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