For most Australian Aboriginal people, the impact of colonialism was blunt dispossession, dislocation, disease, murder, and missionization. Yet there is another story of Australian history that has remained untold, a story of enterprise and entrepreneurship, of Aboriginal people seizing the opportunity to profit from life at sea as whalers and sealers. In some cases participation was voluntary; in others it was more invidious and involved kidnapping and trade in women. In many cases, the individuals maintained and exercised a degree of personal autonomy and agency within their new circumstances. This book explores some of their lives and adventures by analyzing archival records of maritime industry, captains logs, ships records, and the journals of the sailors themselves, among other artifacts. Much of what is known about this period comes from the writings of Herman Melville, and in this book Melville s whaling novels act as a prism through which relations aboard ships are understood. Drawing on both history and literature, Roving Mariners provides a comprehensive history of Australian Aboriginal whaling and sealing."

This book presents exciting innovations in the dynamic field of Indigenous global history while also outlining ethical, political and practical research, thereby offering the reader both an understanding of the current state of the field and suggesting new directions for the field into the future. The six thematic sections have a global spread and show the resonances of Indigenous global history for a global politics of the present and future which will be invaluable reading for undergraduate and postgraduate Indigenous history courses across the world. Considering climate change, spirituality and religious movements, gender negotiations, modernity and mobility, and the meaning of 'nation' and the 'global', it illustrates the important role of Indigenous history and Indigenous knowledges for contemporary concerns.