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"

\