The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean – serie

Volume I of The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean provides a wide-ranging survey of Pacific history to 1800. It focuses on varied concepts of the Pacific environment and its impact on human history, as well as tracing the early exploration and colonization of the Pacific, the evolution of Indigenous maritime cultures after colonization, and the disruptive arrival of Europeans. Bringing together a diversity of subjects and viewpoints, this volume introduces a broad variety of topics, engaging fully with emerging environmental and political conflicts over Pacific Ocean spaces. These essays emphasize the impact of the deep history of interactions on and across the Pacific to the present day.

These volumes present a comprehensive survey of the history of the Pacific Ocean, an area making up around one third of the Earth's surface, from initial human colonization to the present day. Reflecting a wide range of cultural and disciplinary perspectives, this two-volume work details different ways of telling and viewing history in a Pacific world of exceptionally diverse cultural traditions, over time spans that require multidisciplinary and multicultural collaborative perspectives. The central importance of nations touched by the Pacific in contemporary world affairs cannot be understood without recourse to the deep history of interactions on and across the Pacific. In reflecting the diversity and dynamism of the societies of this blue hemisphere, these volumes seek to enhance world histories and broaden readers' perspectives on forms of historical knowledge and expression. Volume I explores the history of the Pacific Ocean pre-1800 and Volume II examines the period from 1800 to the present day.