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"