Chapter 22 - Reading 2

• Captain James Cook consolidated the role of science in advancing the expansion of the British empire.
  • Joseph Banks was aboard the Endeavour
  • Added the Hawaiian Islands to Europe's map
  • Major role in the settlement of Australia
• Cook and Banks were aided by Tupaia, a Tahitian high priest
  • Knew several Polynesian languages
  • Came from a family of navigators, supplemented Cook with his local knowledge of winds and currents
  • Helped Banks understand Polynesian cultural practices
• Miscommunications
  • Small items went missing
  • Important astronomical equipment went missing
• Theft among the British
  • Sailors stole nails from the ship to trade with the islanders
  • Cook made an example of a sailor who stole nails to trade for an iron axe
  • Invited Tahitian chiefs to witness
    • Tahitian views of property and punishment were different, less focuses on exclusive ownership, never use corporal punishment for theft
  • Cook had a utilitarian attitude: make observations, get supplies, move on
• Tension caused by Cook's attempts to stop sailors from trading iron nails for sex
  • Protect Hawaiians from diseases from his ship
  • Hawaiians treated Cook with great respect
• Cook departed on good terms; returned after a storm damaged the ship's mast
  • Tension when they stepped ashore
  • Arguments escalated to violence
  • Islander stabbed Cook to death
  • Nothing could help navigate cross-cultural communications
• Polynesians suffered and died in great numbers
  • No immunities for Afro-European diseases
  • Tupaia died from dysentery within two years after his first encounter with Europeans
• Changing economies, new technologies, and imported Christianity undermined the existing order of island societies
• Joseph banks & Australia
  • Botany Bay, where Banks undertook a recon of eastern Australia's plant life
  • Major role in the foundation of the New South Wales colony in 1788
• New South Wales Colony
  • Bagan as a penal colony
  • Prisoners, mostly Irish & male, had little to lose from resettling halfway around the world
  • Convicts knew little on how to survive in foreign terrain and could not get help from the aboriginal population
    • Aboriginals kept their distance but then launched a series of attacks
  • Economy was strengthened when the merino sheep was introduced in 1805
    • Descendants of the same sheep that Joseph Banks imported from Spain to Kew Gardens
    • Grassland in New South Wales was ideal for grazing
    • Wool exports financed the developments of a colonial society
    • Settlers became immigrants rather than convicts
  • 1817: name Australia was given to the collection of Colonies
• British settlement had a devastating impact on the original inhabitants of the continent
  • Aboriginal Australians had rich and complex religions and artistic traditions
  • No metal tools, no hierarchical political organization, no immunity to Afro-Eurasian diseases
  • More than half died in the 19th century
  • Survivors fled
  • Joseph Banks had little interest of those displaced by "progress"

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