No Stranger in Paradise

 James Cook and the Exploration of the Pacific, Thames & Hudson, 2009, 276 pages, $75.

The great publishing house of Thames & Hudson has long been renowned for its output of high-quality volumes, of interest to the dedicated and discerning collector of books as much as to the general reader. It has a particularly good record in the field of books on art, architecture and history, amongst other topics. This new book is very much in that fine tradition. It is in effect a catalogue, with some related essays, of an exhibition of artefacts, manuscripts and other materials pertaining to the voyages of Captain James Cook RN in the course of which he visited the various Pacific Islands. Cook made three such voyages, in 1768–1771, 1772–1775 and 1776–1779. By the time of his death at the hands of native warriors in the then Sandwich Isles, that is, the modern Hawaiian Islands, he was no stranger to what was known as the Paradise of the South Seas. Indeed, the foreword to this book refers to the “Apotheosis” of Cook, which occurred after the news of his death reached Europe. This book is a fitting addition to an already extensive literature about Cook and his voyages and particularly his encounters with the peoples of the South Pacific and their cultures.

The book serves as the catalogue for the remarkable exhibition of the same title mounted by the German government in co-operation with the Institut für Ethnologie at the University of Gottingen and the Museum für Völkerkunde in Vienna, which ran from August 2009 to September 2010 in those places and is still running, from October 2010 until February 2011 at the Historisches Museum in Bern. As the foreword and essays make plain, this book is not uncritical in its examination of Cook’s voyages and the impact of Europeans on the Pacific Islander cultures. However, it does avoid the familiar and simply clichéd approach to this field of history, one glaring example of which is highlighted below. So often, the same old stereotypical and “colonialist” image is repeated.

That is certainly not the case with the book under review. The twenty-six essays it contains deal judiciously with relevant topics under the four main headings of “James Cook”, “Enlightenment”, “Endeavour” and “Encounter”. Starting off with Adrienne Kaeppler’s careful description of “Captain Cook’s Three Voyages of Enlightenment” including their background and incidents, the section on James Cook contains other essays ranging across the Royal Navy in Cook’s time, “A New Zealand Maori Perspective” on Cook’s three voyages to Aotearoa between 1768 and 1779, “The Australian Perspective on Cook”, “The Vanuatu Perspective on Cook”, “The Hawaiian Perspective” and “The Death of Cook”. These essays, like all the essays in the book, are short but learned. Taken together, they provide a good appreciation of the nature and the extent, and the historical significance, of Cook’s three Pacific voyages.

The section on “Enlightenment” provides a sequence of equally well-informed essays on the theme of linking Cook’s voyages to their place in, and in relation to, the “Age of Enlightenment” in Europe. There is an essay on “Communications Structures among European Scholars in the Age of Enlightenment”, on “The Enlightenment” itself, and the role of the sciences of botany and zoology in it, as well as an essay titled “Enlightened Ethnographic Collections”. Also featured in this section are essays on Joseph Banks and on John Webber as “Painter and Collector”.

Under the heading of the “Endeavour” we get essays on astronomy and the transit of Venus, on navigation in the eighteenth century, on James Cook and his place in late eighteenth-century geography and cartography, as well as an illuminating essay covering life on board HM Bark Endeavour, which was used on the first voyage, and the other ships used on the later voyages, including HMS Resolution and HMS Adventure. All of these essays provide good insights.

The section headed “Encounter” is somewhat more critical and reflective. Leading it off is Adrienne Kaeppler’s essay on “Enlightened Encounters in the Unknown Pacific” followed by a piece on (Georg) “Forster’s Observations in the South Seas”, and then an essay on “Revisioning Gender and Sexuality on Cook’s Voyages in the Pacific” (ominously titled, but informative and certainly not as “postmodern” as it sounds). Next comes “Conflicts, Tragic Moments and Violence”, a frank look at the barbarities and the violence that occurred in many of these contexts; followed by essays on “James Cook in America” and “The Artists in Cook’s Expeditions”. Hence, this book covers a wide range of topics related to Cook’s Pacific voyages and from an international perspective.

The book is of notable quality in its solid hardback binding, production and overall presentation, all of them known hallmarks of this publisher. Of particular quality and interest are the generous full-colour photographic reproductions, which are lavish and do full justice not only to the pictorial items, but also to the many cultural and ethnographic objects and artefacts comprising this major exhibition. The foreword notes that the exhibition “found the support of more than forty international lenders, fifteen from Britain alone” and it is notable also that the Historisches Museum Bern “owes the beginnings of its high-quality Cook collection to the artist John Webber [who] was a native of Bern, and served as painter and draughtsman to Cook on the third voyage”. Not surprisingly, Australia leads the list of lenders, with the National Library of Australia, Howard Freeman of Melbourne, the Australian Museum and the State Library of New South Wales all lending significant items to the exhibition.

In all, more than 600 objects toured in the exhibition. They are dealt with in 599 descriptive entries in this catalogue book; and very many of them are illustrated in colour. The objects are grouped in the catalogue under the following headings: James Cook and His Fellow Travellers; Ships and Equipment; Society Islands (Tahiti), Austral islands and Antarctica; New Zealand (Aotearoa); Australia; Tonga (Friendly Islands); Easter Island (Rapa Nui); the Marquesas; Vanuatu (New Hebrides); New Caledonia; South America; North America and Siberia; and Hawai’i. In addition the book contains maps showing the routes of Cook’s three voyages, and an extensive appendix of literature relating to the three voyages and the objects in the exhibition. Among the artefacts exhibited are many islander implements and weapons and items of handcraft and of adornment; as well as many European materials and publications dealing with Cook’s voyages, explorations and discoveries and things of ethnographic interest.

Notable among the objects illustrated are some rare and unusual examples of “ruler regalia”, particularly feather helmets and capes from Hawai’i where, as elsewhere, “red feathers were considered the most sacred material”. The book also richly illustrates various oil paintings, watercolours and drawings made of subjects observed on Cook’s voyages, and later engravings, as well as manuscripts. Among the oils are John Hamilton Mortimer’s group portrait of Captain James Cook, Sir Joseph Banks, Lord Sandwich, Dr Daniel Solander and Dr John Hawkesworth (c. 1771); Johann Zoffany’s The Death of Captain James Cook 14 February 1779 (1789); John Webber’s Poedua (1777–1785); Benjamin West’s Sir Joseph Banks (1771–72); and also Johann Tischbein’s (or Anton Graff’s) portrait of Georg Forster (end of the eighteenth century). Some of Forster’s very fine botanical drawings from Tahiti are also reproduced. John Webber’s watercolour of A Woman of Unalaska (c. 1778) and Samuel Reynolds’s mezzotint engraving (1834) after Sir Joshua Reynolds’s portrait of Omai are reproduced amongst the wide variety of illustrations. Thus and overall, this is a sumptuously made volume.

One reads this book with a sense of relief that it is quite objective in its presentation of the cultural artefacts collected on Cook’s voyages and related materials; it does not peddle the oversimplified and clichéd orthodoxy of a white colonialist invasion and despoliation of an earthly paradise in the South Seas. That kind of thing is still all too common. Multiple examples could be adduced, but space permits me to mention just one (and an egregious one at that).

In an otherwise fairly interesting book entitled (wait for it) Strangers in Paradise (1985) we are shown a very dim black-and-white reproduction of Robert Smirke’s oil of The Cession of Matavai on July 23, 1798. We are told that it depicts a scene in which “the Tahitians bow low to the superiority of gracefully attired missionaries and their families”. Never mind that this occurs in a chapter coyly entitled “The Missionary Position”. What is more telling about it is the complete disregard by the caption writer of the fact (obvious from the painting itself) that, in accord with native Tahitian custom, their queen is borne high on the shoulders of one of her subjects and the Chief Pomare stands, directly opposite Captain James Wilson, who was receiving the cession by the Tahitians of the District of Matavai “for the use of the missionaries”. The semi-kneeling figure in the left foreground of the picture is Haamanemane, the highest ranking dignitary of the arii’oi order, making the formalised gesture of cession or donation. The reproduction is also cropped, such that one does not see clearly that whilst most of the European missionaries are standing, various of the Tahitian figures sit upon the ground in native fashion, whilst indeed Mrs Rowland Hassall also sits, alongside her infant son Thomas (1794–1868). As Rev. Thomas Hassall, he was to become the first Anglican minister ordained for Australia and at one time, his parish was described as “Australia beyond Liverpool”.

I must declare here my consanguinity, but it is precisely one’s interest in the history depicted that immediately explodes the canard and the cliché of the offending caption. Moreover, it is notable that at least one or two of the European missionaries (they were not all clergymen or preachers, but also comprised many artisan missionaries) are shown wearing the native dress. Also, it was not a case of conquest, but of friendly cession.

Smirke’s oil painting, later exhibited at the Royal Academy in London, now hangs in the collection of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. The National Library of Australia has a (lesser and distressed) copy, as well as examples of the engraving made by Francesco Bartoluzzi and published in 1803. Examination of the picture itself (or of the NLA copy and engravings in the Rex Nan Kivell Collection) and the literature upon it, would (or ought to) have disabused the errant caption writer, but then maybe nothing would? Such is the strength of ideological and political “agendas” encountered in history and particularly in modern history. Many writers, including the learned Dr J.J. Eddy SJ, have done the most painstaking and detailed research on Colonial Office archival material, showing evidence of a British official policy in the South Pacific region that was discerning and careful in its approach and in its administration.

The present book has a thoughtful introductory Message of Welcome by HRH Princess Salote Pilolevu Tuita of Tonga, whose name commemorates that great and regal lady, Queen Salote of Tonga (1900–65), who not only attended the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in June 1953, but so graciously received the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh at Nuku’alofa in December of that year, on the way to their first tour of New Zealand and Australia. Indeed, the extant colour film of the royal visit to Fiji and Tonga in 1953 has much to tell us of the mutual respect and regard duly shown. Princess Salote makes the important point about the items in the Exhibition that:

Although one might be sad that these wonderful pieces are not back in their homelands, it is most important to recognize that if these pieces had not been collected during these voyages of exploration, they would have been used and finally worn out at home and discarded. They are here today for us to see and marvel at the creativity of our ancestors, because Cook and his colleagues had the foresight to trade for them and the museums and private collectors took such good care of them for more than two centuries … The sculptures, baskets, ornaments, barkcloth, mats, other garments, and tools are a revelation, as many of these things are no longer made in the islands.

This new volume on James Cook and his exploration of the Pacific is a thoroughly commendable book, which by the strength of its essays and the care with which its illustrations have been chosen and presented well transcends the usual limitations of most catalogue books of this kind. It is a wholly worthwhile addition to any library and particularly any which focuses upon the islands and peoples of the Pacific and their history.

Douglas Hassall is a frequent contributor to Quadrant on art. He discussed the painter William Frater in the March issue.