Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
1,160
result(s) for
"Pacific Area History."
Sort by:
The great ocean : Pacific worlds from Captain Cook to the gold rush
The Great Ocean examines the convergence and fragmentation of Pacific worlds during a period of rapidly expanding trade, indigenous depopulation, and scientific investigations. With a particular focus on the eastern Pacific in the decades between the 1770s and the 1840s, this study uncovers world history in the coastal localities where voyagers, traders, hunters, and native peoples met one another through episodes often marked by violence and tragic outcomes. Igler reveals a vast oceanic and coastal geography that gradually became entangled with global circuits. Rather than a single ocean world, this study demonstrates how the eastern Pacific encompassed a variety of seas and a multiplicity of human communities. At the same time, The Great Ocean situates this story in the personal and intimate interactions of different groups, including indigenous \"ocean peoples, \" mainland native groups, and a diverse assortment of foreign voyagers.This story poignantly presents the individuals and the themes they embody. The American William Shaler sought wealth through trans-Pacific trade with China. Indigenous communities struggled against introduced diseases that cut through the heart of their communities. The Russian Timofei Tarakanov desired freedom from his ordeal in captivity. Mary Brewster longed for a cargo of whale oil and a safe voyage home. Kadu desired to see more of the ocean, while his European companion Adelbert vonChamisso carefully compiled his notes on natural history. Finally, James Dwight Dana pursued knowledge of the largest scale, including the origins of the earth. Their stories-and the historical themes that tie them together-offers a stunning perspective on the oceanic worlds of the eastern Pacific. Ambitious and broadly conceived, this is the first study of its kind to examine the Pacific Basin through the intersection of American, oceanic, and world history.
eBook
Pacific Worlds
Asia, the Pacific Islands and the coasts of the Americas have long been studied separately. This essential single-volume history of the Pacific traces the global interactions and remarkable peoples that have connected these regions with each other and with Europe and the Indian Ocean, for millennia. From ancient canoe navigators, monumental civilisations, pirates and seaborne empires, to the rise of nuclear testing and global warming, Matt Matsuda ranges across the frontiers of colonial history, anthropology and Pacific Rim economics and politics, piecing together a history of the region. The book identifies and draws together the defining threads and extraordinary personal narratives which have contributed to this history, showing how localised contacts and contests have often blossomed into global struggles over colonialism, tourism and the rise of Asian economies. Drawing on Asian, Oceanian, European, American, ancient and modern narratives, the author assembles a fascinating Pacific region from a truly global perspective.
eBook
Explorations and entanglements : Germans in Pacific Worlds from the early modern period to World War I
\"Traditionally, Germany has been considered a minor player in Pacific history: its presence there was more limited than that of other European nations, and whereas its European rivals established themselves as imperial forces beginning in the early modern era, Germany did not seriously pursue colonialism until the nineteenth century. Yet thanks to recent advances in the field emphasizing transoceanic networks and cultural encounters, it is now possible to develop a more nuanced understanding of the history of Germans in the Pacific. The studies gathered here offer fascinating case studies of German missionary, commercial, scientific, and imperial activity against the backdrop of the Pacific's overlapping cultural circuits and complex oceanic transits\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Sea Otters
More than any other nonhuman species, it was the sea otter that defined the world's largest oceanscape prior to the California gold rush. In addition to the more conventional aspects of the sea otter trade, including Russian expansion in Alaska, British and American trading in the Pacific Northwest, and Spanish colonial ventures along the California coast, the global importance of the species can be seen in its impact on the East Asian maritime fur trade. This trade linked Imperial China, Japan, and indigenous Ainu peoples of the Kurile Islands as early as the fifteenth century.InSea Otters: A HistoryRichard Ravalli synthesizes anew the sea otter's complex history of interaction with humans by drawing on new histories of the species that consider international and global factors beyond the fur trade, including sea mammal conservation, Cold War nuclear testing, and environmental tourism. Examining sea otters in a Pacific World context, Ravalli weaves together the story of imperial ambition, greed, and an iconic sea mammal that left a determinative imprint on the modern world.
eBook
Work, class, and power in the borderlands of the early American Pacific
This book traces the history of working people who helped established the foundation of the American empire in the Pacific from its origins after the American Revolution to its coming of age in the 1840s and 1850s. Beginning with the expeditions of the Columbia and the Lady Washington, Lampe argues that the early American Pacific can best be considered through the interaction of four major locations, connected through the networks of trade: the merchant ship, the Northwest Coast, Honolulu, and Canton (Guangzhou). In each of these locations, the labors of a diverse population of working people was harnessed in the critical labors of empire building, including the transportation of goods. The central question that the consideration of working people in the Pacific economy during this period is, Lampe argues, the role of power applied on these laborers by an international capitalist class, emerging alongside the Pacific commercial empires. Lampe also finds that this power was not uncontested and emerged in response to the activities of labor. Working people, on the ship and in the port cities, found ways to secure their piece of the profitable trade, often through illicit means.
eBook
Sea Power and the Asia-Pacific
With particular focus on the Asia-Pacific region, this book examines the rise and fall of sea powers.
In the Asia-Pacific region there has been significant expansion of sea-based economies together with burgeoning naval power. Many claim that these processes will transform the world's future economic and security relationships. The book addresses the question of to what extent the notion of 'Asia rising' is reflected by and dependent on its developing sea power. A central theme is the Chinese challenge to long-term Western maritime ascendency and what might be the consequences of this.
In order to situate current and future developments this book includes chapters which analyse what sea power means and has meant, as well as its role, both historic and contemporary, in the rise and fall of great powers.
This book will be of much interest to students of naval power, Asian politics, strategic studies, war and conflict studies, IR and security studies.
eBook