European Impact and Pacific Influence: British and German Policy in the Pacific Islands and the Indigenous Response

Description

British and German ambitions have clashed in the Pacific at many times in the last two centuries. This is a study of those episodes, and their effects on the European powers and the Pacific Islanders involved. It throws light on the activities of missionaries in Micronesia, head-hunters in New Guinea, Law-makers in Tonga and the influence of the British and Germans in the region. The book considers: European perceptions of Pacific islanders and vice versa; the ecological effect of European intervention, both on the environment and its inhabitants; the efforts to impose a European rule of law in the South Pacific; the area of sexuality as a specific form of Pacific-European interaction where cultural differences between European and traditional behaviour was at its most marked.

Hermann J. Hiery is Chair of Modern History at University of Bayreuth, Germany. John MacKenzie is Emeritus Professor of Imperial History at University of Lancaster, UK. His books include: The Partition of Africa (1983), Propaganda and Empire (1984), The Railway Station, a Social History (jtly, 1986), Imperialism and Popular Culture (ed, 1986), Imperialism and the Natural World (ed, 1990), Popular Imperialism and the Military (ed, 1992), Orientalism: History, Theory and the Arts (1995), David Livingstone and the Victorian Encounter with Africa (ed, 1996), The Victorian Vision (ed, 2001), Peoples, Nations and Cultures (ed, 2005), The Scots in South Africa (2007), Museums and Empire (2009), Scotland and the British Empire (ed, 2011), European Empires and the People (ed, 2011), Scotland, Empire and Decolonisation in the Twentieth Century (ed, 2015).