Pacific beach communities of the nineteenth century

Abstract

The historical study of areas such as the Pacific Islands, where the indigenous peoples have been in contact with Europeans for all or most of the period covered by documentary records, has undergone a marked change of emphasis during recent years. Once visualized as essentially a branch of Imperial history, the focus has now moved to the islands themselves; to studies of the change and development which have occurred in the Pacific under the stimulus of introduced and indigenous cultural forces; political, economic, religious and social. The pioneering work in the reorientation of Pacific history was Professor J.W. Davidson’s Ph.D. thesis submitted to Cambridge University in 1942, entitled, 'European Penetration of the South Pacific, 1779-1842’, which for the first time detailed the advent and activities of early Europeans in the South Pacific and analyzed the consequential changes effected in the island communities.