CAPTAIN JAMES COOK & HAWAII.   Term Paper ID:23592 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Cultural discoveries & accounts of 18th Cent. explorer in Hawaiian Islands.... More...

8 Pages / 1800 Words 8 sources, 20 Citations, APA Format $32.00 Return to List of Papers

Paper Abstract: Cultural discoveries & accounts of 18th Cent. explorer in Hawaiian Islands. Paper Introduction: Hawaii today is the farthest west state in the Union. It is also the most unusual state in the United States, for it consists of 132 islands and atolls extended across some 1,600 miles of ocean. The eight major islands in the chain are what are usually referred to as Hawaii, and of these, seven are permanently inhabited--Kahoolawe is not (Kyselka & Lanterman, 1980, 1-10). As is true of many parts of the world, the Hawaiian Islands were actually "discovered" more than once. The islands were first discovered by the Polynesians who came to inhabit the region. The West discovered the islands centuries later when they were explored by Captain Cook, a rather controversial figure in Hawaiian history and in the history of exploration and discovery. The first contact with Western ideas and technology came when Captain James Cook accidentally visited the islands with hi Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Hawaii: A Bicentennial history. On his third voyage he sailed north toward the Bering Sea insearch of the fabled Northwest Passage. Tabrah, R.M. None of those who arrived that day in 1778 had any idea that theseislands existed, for they did not appear on any known charts but onlyexisted in legends and memories in Tahiti and the Marquesas. New York: William Morrow. In thelegends, the islands were known as Havaiki. The Polynesian ancestors of contemporary Hawaiianssettled the islands more than a thousand years ago (Tabrah, 198 , 4).Captain Cook was surprised to find the islands where they lie because hebelieved there was no land in those waters. Hawaii: A Bicentennial history. They alsoconsider the history of the islands thereafter, from the coming of thePolynesians to the era of European rule. Tabrah (1983) tells the story in terms of dissensionbetween the Europeans and the islanders over the issue of sex, and theruling chief at Kealakekua, Kalaniopuu, saw the British as preoccupied withsex. The people of both Hawaii and Tahiti andenvirons have a rich mnemonic literature of chants that has been handeddown from one generation to the next and that convey much of the history ofthe people. There was no collective namefor the islands, and Cook supplied one by calling the group the SandwichIslands after his patron, the First Lord of the British Admiralty, the Earlof Sandwich. Captain James Cook. Captain James Cook. This started a general attack with stones.The warrior had seen the lack of effect of the first shot and did not notethe results of the second, so they were not afraid of the guns. Kyselka, W. The northern island ofkauai and its small neighbor, Niihau, were ruled by one chief. Villiers, A. Price, A.G. & R. The socialstructure was rigid, and brutal punishment was often meted out to thoseseen as wrongdoers. Lanterman (198 ). Villiers, A. When they arrived in Hawaii and Kauai, perhaps asearly as 7 A.D., they had with them pigs, dogs, fowl, and the beginningsof their basic food plants, including coconut, taro, breadfruit, andbananas. This first visit by Captain Cook would be followed by asecond. She focuses on the reaction of thetwo cultures to the meeting and emphasizes that both sides made discoveriesin this exchange. Though the islanders were all one people and had a common language,ancestry, and religion, warfare was a routine aspect of life. From the point of view of the islanders, the arrival mighthave been the two floating islands predicted by the god Lono. The warrior laughed and rushed him,and Cook fired and killed him. New York:William Morrow. References Dale, P.W.(1969). It was on this voyage when Cook discovered the HawaiianIslands and was killed in a skirmish with the natives. & R. Englewood Cliffs,New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. Hough dramatizesthe events of the voyage and tells the story in an objective yet near-novelistic manner, and the book is rich in detail but not on referecnes tosource material, which is barely mentioned at all in the narrative. Seventy north to fifty south. Hough, R. Lanai and Kahoolawe were ruled byMaui, and this chief was often at war with the fourth chiefdom to thesouth, that of Havaiki, which over time became known as Hawaii (Tabrah,198 , 14-15). Cook facedthe crowd down and did not reload. Also present in this society were strong elements ofsharing and mutual concern, of communal living, and of human solidarity(Kent, 1983, 13). (1959). Tabrah doesaddress the discovery of the islands first by the Polynesians and then byCook, and she gives particular attention to the reign of Kamehameha, thechief who ruled in the era after Cook. (198 ). (1979). The authors of this book provide a very good description of theislands and of their pre-history and how they developed, how the differentislands are related, and how they have evolved over time. The book is especially valuable forwhat it says about the period of Cook's death and after as others took overthe ships and the completion of the journals, and their view of whathappened to Cook is interesting because they were on the site at the time. New York: CharlesScribner's Sons. (1987). (1983). New York:Monthly Review Press. He then turned to make for the boatsand ordered a cease fire, and a warrior then rushed him from behind andclubbed him violently (Villiers, 1969, 265-267). The third chiefdom was found in thethree islands stretching south along the ocean bottom rift from which thewhole set of islands had developed. The passengers on these early voyages included priests and expertprofessionals of every art and skill, and this was a theocratic societythat needed these leaders. The voyage of Captain James Cook that found the Hawaiian Islands wasone of several he made across the Pacific region. References Dale, P.W.(1969). Kent, N.J. The long voyages back and forth between Tahiti and Hawaiicontinued until the 15 s, and the reason they ceased at that time is notknown. Maui: How It Came to Be.Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii. As Cook reeled and cried out in pain the Hawaiians shouted that if he could be hurt, he must not be a god. He was heir to the initial thrust of the Industrial Revolution, an age of unprecedented, undreamed of change and innovation in which technical miracles were the order of the day (Kent, 1983, 11-12). Tabrah has written a number of books about Hawaii and the people ofHawaii. Thechiefs, or alii, offered what was sometimes harsh rule. Voyages of discovery: Captain Cook and theexploration of the Pacific. Withey, L. He does not indicate his sources clearly in the text, but heprovides an extensive biography of all the important sources on Cook andhis voyages with comments on what is most comprehensive and where the workscan be found. It is also themost unusual state in the United States, for it consists of 132 islands andatolls extended across some 1,6 miles of ocean. The islands were so farfrom the routes usually taken by early explorers that they had remainedundiscovered by Europeans over two centuries of Pacific voyaging. The islands were firstdiscovered by the Polynesians who came to inhabit the region. Hough, R. New York: William Morrow. Hawaii today is the farthest west state in the Union. Price, A.G. Hough is a writer with a particular interest in maritime history. Inaddition, it was becoming a strain to entertain these guests. The era of explorationfor Europe was the culmination of a larger process in Western society, aprocess of expansion and emergence from the economic and social breakdownof the early feudal age, leading to the rise of an urban civilization witha market economy geared to generating demands for scarce commodities,valuable minerals, and the far-off lands where these could be found. Cook's second voyage and wrote down the names of the island as besthe could hear them with his European ears. Their ignorance about everything they saw indicated that till now they had never been visited by Europeans nor been acquainted with any of our commodities except iron; which, however, it was plain they had only heard of, or had known it in some small quantity brought to them at some distant period (Dale,1969, 18 ). Theislands were like New Zealand in that they had been settled from centralPolynesia, probably by a population from either the Society Islands or theMarquesas, around A.D. In this account, there is a more general fracas than is impliedin the above story: Accounts of the fracas which followed are naturally confused, but it is clear that, by confronting the mob, Cook reached the waterside, and was not struck down until he turned, first to address Phillips, and then to order the launch and pinnace either to draw in, or to cease fire to save Hawaiian life (Price, 1959, 256). He had previously visited Tahiti, charted the North and Southislands of New Zealand, and had been the first to explore the AntarcticOcean and to predict the existence of Antarctica. Hewrites about the last voyage of Captain Cook, a man then recognized for hisearlier voyages. This book is useful in telling the story of Cook's life andis not as overly dramatized as some of the books on this subject. Tabrah, R.M. They struck him with more blows, and Captain James Cook, mortal as he was, fell into the shallows at the rocky edge of the bay, dead (Tabrah, 1983, 21). Captain Cook reported on this first meeting in his journal andoffered his impressions of the impact the coming of the Europeans had made: In the course of my several voyages, I never before met with natives of any place so much astonished as these people were upon entering a ship. The book gives a good backgroundon Hawaii and how the different islands are governed, populated, andcommercially exploited. In this book, Dale brings together some of Cook's journals and otherprimary sources and arranges them with comments to tell the story of Cook'slast voyage, the voyage on which the Hawaiian Islands were discovered.Cook's journal is presented as written, with commentary by Daleinterspersed among the passages to provide context and explain elements ofthe journal not clear as written. Lanterman (198 ). Villiers (1969) gives an account in which Cook changed his mind aboutkidnapping the chief and told Philips that they had to leave the chiefbehind or they would have bloodshed. (1967). Hawaii: Islands under the influence. The Polynesians were expertnavigators and roamed thousands of miles across the Pacific in great mat-sailed double canoes. Kent, N.J. New York: TheHeritage Press. Cook staggered for several yards, and fell onto a hand and knee, his musket rattling onto the rocks beside him (Hough, 1979, 227).Hough says this blow did not kill Cook and that another native murderedhim, the muscular Chief Ku'a, who stabbed Cook in the back of the neck.Even this did not kill the captain: Ku'a leapt upon him again, stabbing him repeatedly while others who had joined the murderer attempted to hold him down under the water (Hough, 1979, 227).Cook rises from the water once more and is finally clubbed to death, afterwhich the corpse was mutilated. Thefishermen who first saw the ship saw the masts as leafless trees, while thesails were the white tapa banners of Lono (Tabrah, 1983, 15-16). Seventy north to fifty south. This death isdeemed unpremeditated by Price (1959), who finds that King tells the storyof how Cook wanted to take the chief hostage for the return of thelongboat. Withey, L. New York: CharlesScribner's Sons. New York:William Morrow. (1959). As is true of many parts of the world, the Hawaiian Islandswere actually "discovered" more than once. (1979). The chief nowsaw the presence of the Europeans as an imposition. Cookand his companions were British, and this is important because England hadover the previous two centuries become a prominent European and worldpower: Hence the James Cook who disembarked in Hawaii in 1778 carried a most significant inheritance. New York:Monthly Review Press. Cook left,but one week later the ships returned because of a storm. (198 ). The shelters on these twin-hulled vessels contained the ti, withlong, broad leaves that were used in a number of ways, including inreligious ceremonies. He explored the coastsof Australia and made his way through the scattered atolls and islands ofOceania. Young chiefslearned the art of war, but each year the waging of war was stopped forseveral months for religious purposes. When he first sighted land, Cookassumed that he was about to make contact with a previously unknown islandracial group. These different accounts differ in details, and some of the morelurid accounts suggest that the author is trying to add drama to the eventrather than simply to describe it. Oahu andMolokai constituted a second kingdom. A hapu system was in placeimposing strict prohibitions, and this system guided the lives of thepeople. Hough (1979) embellishes the story in a different way and has Cookturning away from the Hawaiians and "walking with the stately dignity healways assumed among the Polynesians" (Hough, 1979, 227). This was three thousand milesnorth of Tahiti, and because of the way the people reacted, Cook believedthat they had never before encountered Europeans. Withey presents a biography that is said to be more than a biographybecause of its use of recent scholarship in history, anthropology, arthistory, and literary criticism to place Cook in a broader context coveringall of Pacific exploration in his era. Cook kept a journal on his voyages, and that journal was finished bya man named King who reported what he knew of Cook's death. Life moved in harmonious patterns around the cycles of field andsea. The explorations of Captain James Cook in thePacific as told by selections of his own journals 1768-1779. For a thousand years, Hawaii had been isolated from the outside world(Kent, 1983, 14). She portrays Cook as often hot-tempered, which helpsexplain the way he treated the natives and how that may have contributed tohis death at their hands in a confrontation over a stolen longboat.----------------------- 1 At that time, the population of the islands was totally Hawaiian(Tabrah, 198 , 3). However, it was often the case that theSpanish would make discoveries and then not make the information public, soany knowledge of the islands was effectively lost to future generations.When Cook arrived, the Hawaiians showed an immediate interest in iron,which may indicate that they had had some earlier contact with Europeans,though the residents of the island had no oral tradition about suchcontact. When Cook went ashoreto complain about the theft of a longboat, he intended to take Kalaniopuuhostage: The tragedy described in most histories as the murder of Captain Cook occurred when he tried to do just this and a warrior protecting his chief struck Cook a heavy blow. From 15 to 1778, the people of Hawaii lived in isolation.However, there had been occasional accidental visitors, castaways withwhite skin whose appearance was striking enough that a word came intobeing, haole, as part of the Hawaiian vocabulary to refer to thesestrangers (Tabrah, 198 , 12-13). This is a good selection of sections of the journals of Captain Cook,interspersed with commentary by Price. The last voyage of Captain James Cook. The result wasmuch as described elsewhere, though Hough adds to the drama of thesituation: Then one native broke from the crowd following him, advanced with a club, withdrew for fear he might turn, advanced again, raised the club and struck him a fearful blow. The Westdiscovered the islands centuries later when they were explored by CaptainCook, a rather controversial figure in Hawaiian history and in the historyof exploration and discovery. A warrior menaced Cook, and when hemade ready to fling a stone, Cook fired with small shot that bounced offthe tough mat the warrior was wearing. Hawaii: Islands under the influence. Villiers writes a good biography of Captain Cook, concentrating onhis life at sea from the time he was a seaman to his death on the HawaiianIslands. The eight major islandsin the chain are what are usually referred to as Hawaii, and of these,seven are permanently inhabited--Kahoolawe is not (Kyselka & Lanterman,198 , 1-1 ). New York: W.W.Norton. (1983). The Hawaiians in fact told the Europeans that they and obtainediron from pieces of driftwood that had washed up on their shores (Withey,1987, 36 ). She does work in a historical society and also in educationalaffairs throughout the islands. New York: W.W.Norton. (1987). The explorations of Captain James Cook in thePacific as told by selections of his own journals 1768-1779. WhileCook considered himself the first European to find these islands, there issome evidence that Spanish explorers found the Hawaiian Islands in themiddle of the sixteenth century on one of their regular voyages betweenLatin America and the Philippines. The first contact with Western ideas and technology came when CaptainJames Cook accidentally visited the islands with hi British expedition in1778-1779. The eight islands were governed atthe time as four separate independent chiefdoms. The Hawaii of that time was far removed from England in every way.The economy of the islands was based on subsistence agriculture andfishing. The customs and language of the peopleremained remarkably similar to those of Tahiti and its neighbors. Voyages of discovery: Captain Cook and theexploration of the Pacific. Political authority devolved on a monopoly of chiefs, and the mostpowerful of these controlled large areas covered whole islands. The people also brought the shrubs mamake and wauke,a mulberry and a fig plant with pliant bark that made excellent tapa cloth. Kent treats the discovery of Hawaii by Captain Cook as only thebeginning of the exploitation of the islands and their people, and hebegins with Cook and then details the ways in which Europeans ever sincehave exploited the islands and changed the culture that Cook originallyfound there, shaping it into something more in keeping with the aspirationsof the West. Englewood Cliffs,New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. Thesecrops were exchanged for food from the sea. (1967). Kyselka, W. Taro and other crops were grown on elaborate terraces and were fed bya complex irrigation system that carried water from high above. Maui: How It Came to Be.Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii. New York: TheHeritage Press. He does not see Cook's arrival as an accident but as theculmination of a policy of discovery and exploitation that was especiallystrong in England. Cook would not survive this visit, and his death hasgenerated considerable controversy as to the reason for it and the methodby which it occurred. The story she tells is weighted to the eraafter Cook's voyage, for it is after that time when the rest of the worldwould become familiar with Hawaii and her people and customs. 1 . The last voyage of Captain James Cook. He tried to prevent the abuse of island girls, but to no avail. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.