Strangers in the South Seas: The Idea of the Pacific in Western ThoughtRichard Lansdown University of Hawaii Press, 30/04/2006 - 496 من الصفحات Long before Magellan entered the Pacific in 1521 Westerners entertained ideas of undiscovered oceans, mighty continents, and paradisal islands at the far ends of the earth. First set down by Egyptian storytellers, Greek philosophers, and Latin poets, such ideas would have a long life and a deep impact in both the Pacific and the West. With the discovery of Tahiti in 1767 another powerful myth was added to this collection: the noble savage. For the first time Westerners were confronted by a people who seemed happier than themselves. This revolution in the human sciences was accompanied by one in the natural sciences as the region revealed gaps and anomalies in the "great chain of being" that Charles Darwin would begin to address after his momentous visit to the Galapagos Islands. |
المحتوى
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29 | |
2 The Noble Savage | 64 |
3 Dark Parts of the Earth The Voyage of the Duff 17961798 | 110 |
4 The Island as Crucible From The Great Chain of Being to Evolution | 150 |
5 How Many Adams Must We Admit? The Varieties of Man | 192 |
6 The Island as Colony From Backwater to Ocean of the Future | 231 |
7 Anthropometry Ethnology Relativism The Island for Anthropologists | 275 |
8 The Colonial Interregnum and the Second World War | 319 |
9 Disillusion From Noa Noa to the HBomb | 363 |
Works Cited | 417 |
index | 427 |