Pacific Ocean Worlds ID + Significance

Hawaiki ID

Hawaiki is the mythical ancient ancestral homeland 

Hawaiki Significance

An accurate term that was passed down from Ariki, giving us insight into polynesians history as multiple islands were referenced as Hawaiki.

Micronesian stick charts ID

• Micronesian stick charts are navigational tools made from coconut strips, palm strips, and cowrie shells that represent currents, waves, wind patterns, atolls, and islands.

Micronesian stick charts significance

• Master navigators would create stick charts for themselves as a way to remember all the ocean patterns they experience, and use them for training to prepare for voyages. 

ariki ID

Ariki are memory men trained in several Polynesian cultures to tell and remember their history. 

ariki significance

As Polynesian people were dying in huge numbers, European scientists and anthropologists collected oral histories from Ariki, and many of their accounts were later supported by archaeological evidence and carbon dating.  

hokulea id

Hokulea is a Polynesian double-hulled voyaging canoe that set  sail for the first time in 1976  from Hawaii to Tahiti and is still used today.

hokulea significance

The Hokulea was created to demonstrate that Polynesians deliberately sailed using advanced navigational techniques, so it sailed across the Pacific Ocean without modern navigational tools, and only traditional tools. 

nainoa thomposn id

Nainoa Thompson was the head of the Polynesian Voyaging society in Hawaii.

nainoa Thompson significance

• His work with the Polynesian voyaging canoe, Hokulea, proved their ancestors deliberately sailed using advanced navigation techniques, since they didn’t use any modern tools. 

  
  

The Great Southern Continent ID

The Great Southern Continent was a land that Europeans were convinced must exist in the Southern Pacific since antiquity. 

The Great Southern Continent Significane

The search for this continent motivated most early expeditions to the Southern Pacific, including Spanish and Dutch voyages that were quite violent and disappointed not to find the continent. 

Ahutoru ID

 Ahutoru was the son of a chief from Tahiti who joined French explorers on their voyage.

Ahutoru Significane

 He became a celebrity in France, as he served as a cultural collaborator, providing the French with details of natural history, plants, and navigation, also learning a lot about Europe in his time in France, but dies on his way back to Oceania from exposure to diseases.

Omai ID

A commoner who presented himself as a Noble, and who Captain Cook took along to London, as he was very interested in Europe.

Omai Signifiance

Europeans became obsessed with him and he was able to make it back to Oceania and learned a lot through these people-to-people interactions.

Captain Cook ID

Captain Cook was the best European navigator of his time, and he mapped the Pacific for the British Navy across three major voyages.  

Captain Cook Signifiance

 His voyages expanded European geographic knowledge and imperial mapping of the Pacific, but his crew spread diseases to Hawaiians and Polynesians that decimated the population.

Potosí ID

Potosí is a high-altitude city in the Andes that became the most important center of silver production during the Pacific Silver Trade. 

Potosi Significance

Its massive silver production fueled international interactions/trade between all the ocean worlds on an unprecedented scale, creating interactions between the Americas, Europe, and Asia while relying heavily on forced and enslaved labor. 

Manila galleon ID

Manila galleons were huge Spanish ships that carried 500 people with a shipwreck rate of 1/3, and took hundreds of hazardous round trips between Acapulco and Manila.

Manila galleon significane

• hey formed the backbone of the trans-Pacific silver trade as they transported the silver and luxury goods that were being traded, with merchants making 150-200% on each successful voyage, operating all under the Spanish government. 

manila ID

• Manila is a very international city in the Philippines that served as the hub where the Indian and Pacific Ocean worlds met. 

Manila Signifiance

As the end-point for the manila galleons, it became a bustling marketplace where silver from South America was traded for valuable Chinese silk and luxury goods.

Mita forced labor system ID

• Mita was a forced labor in Spanish America, where Andeans were counted, relocated, and forced to work in the mines for very little to no pay.

Mita forced labor system signifiance

It provided the labor necessary to sustain massive silver extraction for the Spanish Empire to participate in the Silver trade, but resulted in a high death rate due to mercury poisoning, accidents, and exhaustion. 

Zheng Zhilong ID

 Zheng Zhilong started off as a translator for the VOC before becoming a pirate who successfully allied with both the Dutch and the Chinese when it was convenient for him  and played both sides against each other.

Zheng Shilon Signifiance

The Chinese state couldn’t defeat him, so they made him an official "Patrolling Admiral,” tasking him to get rid of other, rival pirates.