Dumont d'Urville's oceania

Journal of Pacific History

Volumn 38, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 155-161

  Clark, Geoffrey ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 11044220048     PISSN: 00223344     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/0022334032000120503     Document Type: Review

References (29)

1. With an area of 155 million square kilometres, the Pacific Ocean is almost twice as big as either the Atlantic Ocean or the Indian Ocean.
2. J.-S.-C. Dumont d'Urville, 'Sur les îles du Grand Océan', Bulletin de la Société de Géographie, 17 (1832), 1-21.
3. For instance, Nicholas Thomas, 'The force of ethnology: origins and significance of the Melanesia/Polynesia division', Current Anthropology, 30 (1989), 27-41;
4. R.C. Green, 'Near and Remote Oceania: disestablishing Melanesia in culture history', in Andrew Pawley (ed.), Man and a Half: essays in Pacific Anthropology and Ethnobiology in honour of Ralph Bulmer (Auckland 1991), 491-502.
5. J.-S.-C. Dumont d'Urville, Voyage de la corvette l'Astrolabe executé par ordre du Roi, pendant les années 1826, 1827, 1828, 1829, sous le commandement de J. Dumont d'Urville, capitaine de vaisseau, philologie par M. d'Urville, 5 vols (Paris 1830-33). Although dated 1830, vol. 2, pp. 611-30, contains ' "Notice sur les îles du Grand-Océan" (lue à la Société de Géographie de Paris, dans sa séance du 5 janvier 1832)'. Pers. comm. Bronwen Douglas.
6. Nor, of course, is there translation of many important papers from English to French.
7. The French text of Dumont d'Urville's 1832 paper is expected to be published in the future.
8. See Nicholas Thomas, 'Dumont d'Urville's anthropology', in S. Hunt, M, Terry and N. Thomas (eds), Lure of the Southern Seas: the voyages of Dumont d'Urville 1826-1840 (Sydney 2002), 53-70. The order in which Dumont d'Urville's 'provinces' are given in the text should not be interpreted as a hierarchical structure in the mind of the present author.
9. See, e.g., Jacques Guillon, Dumont d'Urville, 1790-1842 (Paris 1986).
10. Researchers of Pacific Island heritage as well as of European background.
11. A survey of Pacific Islander views would also be useful.
12. Donald Walker, 'Biogeographical markers', in RJ. May and H. Nelson (eds), Melanesia: beyond diversity, vol. 1 (Canberra 1982), 11-15;
13. R. Gerard Ward, 'Widening worlds, shrinking worlds? The reshaping of Oceania', Pacific Distinguished Lecture, Centre for the Contemporary Pacific, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies (The Australian National University 1999), 1-38.
14. Peter Buck, The Vikings of the Sunrise (New Zealand 1954), Front-paper;
15. Edwin G. Burrows, 'Western Polynesia, a study in cultural differentiation', Ethnological Studies, 7 (1938), 1-192.
16. Either in academic writing or in popular texts. There are clearly cultural, economic and political contexts where the use of Dumont d'Urville's terms by Pacific Islanders has strategic value, for instance as a distinctive brand label in tourism (e.g. Polynesian Air), or as a category fostering regional political co-operation following European decolonisation in the 1960s and 1970s. G.E. Fry, 'Melanesia and South Pacific regional polities', in R.J. May and H. Nelson (eds), Melanesia: beyond diversity, vol. 2 (Canberra 1982), 651-73.
17. Walker, 'Biogeographicalmarkers', 11-15;
18. William L. Thomas Jr, 'The Pacific basin: an introduction', in Andrew P. Vayda (ed.), Peoples and Cultures of the Pacific (New York 1968), 3-26;
19. P.J. Coleman (ed.), The Western Pacific: island arcs, marginal, seas, geochemistry (Perth 1973).
20. Palau and Yap.
21. Dumont d'Urville claimed that Melanesians were closer to a barbaric state than Polynesians and Micronesians: Dumont d'Urville, 'Sur les îles', 11.
22. An excellent example of such an approach is Michael D. Lieber (ed.), Exiles and Migrants in Oceania (Honolulu 1977).
23. A recent example is the suggestion that aid was slow to arrive on Tikopia after Cyclone Zoe because the Solomon Island Melanesians were unsympathetic to the needs of the Polynesian Tikopians. Michael Field, Herald Sun, 31 Dec. 2002.
24. Like that of Grégoire-Louis Domeny de Rienzi. See Ward, 'Widening worlds', Fig. 1.
25. Recent debate about area studies in the social sciences highlights Polynesia as a coherent regional entity, while the validity of Melanesia and Micronesia is contested. See, e.g., P.V. Kirch and R.C. Green, Hawaiki, Ancestral Polynesia (New York 2001). Much of the confusion in area studies appears to stem from an expectation that the divisions of Oceania represent equivalent cultural units. However, Dumont d'Urville clearly thought the distinguishing traits of a culture area resulted from the distinctive origins, antiquity of occupation and amount of inter-island culture contact in each.
26. Recent criticisms of cthnohistorical records in the Pacific include a claim of fabrication and recognition of observational bias resulting from the uneven voyaging schedules of early European arrivals. G. Obeyesekere, 'Narratives of the self: Chevalier Peter Dillon's Fijian cannibal adventures', in B. Creed and J. Hoorn (eds), Body Trade: captivity, cannibalism and colonialism in Australia and the Pacific (Sydney 2000), 69-111;
27. G. Clark, 'Adzes of interaction: Samoan basalt artefacts in Fiji', in S. Bedford, C. Sand and D. Burley (eds), Fifty Years in the Field (Auckland 2002), 227-38;
28. Margarct Jolly, ' "Ill-natured comparisons": racism and relativism in European representations of ni-Vanuatu from Cook's second voyage', History and Anthropology, 5 (1992), 348-56.
29. In relation to the tapu, for instance, Malinowski commented: 'The tabu, the Polynesian word and the Polynesian custom, has served as prototype and eponym to similar regulations found among all the savage and barbarous as well as civilised races'. B. Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (London 1922), 514.