Sailors and Traders : A Maritime History of the Pacific Peoples

Written by a senior scholar and master mariner, __Sailors and Traders__ is the first comprehensive account of the maritime peoples of the Pacific. It focuses on the sailors who led the exploration and settlement of the islands and New Zealand and their seagoing descendants, providing along the way new material and unique observations on traditional and commercial seagoing against the background of major periods in Pacific history. The book begins by detailing the traditions of sailors, a group whose way of life sets them apart. Like all others who live and work at sea, Pacific mariners face the challenges of an often harsh environment, endure separation from their families for months at a time, revere their vessels, and share a singular attitude to risk and death. The period of prehistoric seafaring is discussed using archaeological data, interpretations from interisland exchanges, experimental voyaging, and recent DNA analysis. Sections on the arrival of foreign exploring ships centuries later concentrate on relations between visiting sailors and maritime communities. The more intrusive influx of commercial trading and whaling ships brought new technology, weapons, and differences in the ethics of trade. The successes and failures of Polynesian chiefs who entered trading with European-type ships are recounted as neglected aspects of Pacific history. As foreign-owned commercial ships expanded in the region so did colonialism, which was accompanied by an increase in the number of sailors from metropolitan countries and a decrease in the employment of Pacific islanders on foreign ships. Eventually small-scale island entrepreneurs expanded interisland shipping, and in 1978 the regional Pacific Forum Line was created by newly independent states. This was welcomed as a symbolic return to indigenous Pacific ocean linkages. The book’s final sections detail the life of the modern Pacific seafarer. Most Pacific sailors in the global maritime labor market return home after many months at sea, bringing money, goods, a wider perspective of the world, and sometimes new diseases. Each of these impacts is analyzed, particularly in the case of Kiribati, a major supplier of labor to foreign ships.

In this convincing and provocative study, Rebecca Suter aims to complicate our understanding of world literature by examining the creative and critical deployment of cultural stereotypes in the early novels of Kazuo Ishiguro. "World literature" has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years: Aamir Mufti called it the result of "one-world thinking, " the legacy of an imperial system of cultural mapping from a unified perspective. Suter views Ishiguro's fiction as an important alternative to this paradigm. Born in Japan, raised in the United Kingdom, and translated into a broad range of languages, Ishiguro has throughout his career consciously used his multiple cultural positioning to produce texts that look at broad human concerns in a significantly different way. Through a close reading of his early narrative strategies, Suter explains how Ishiguro was been able to create a "two-world literature" that addresses universal human concerns and avoids the pitfalls of the single, Western-centric perspective of "one-world vision."

Setting his first two novels, A Pale View of Hills (1982) and An Artist of the Floating World (1986), in a Japan explicitly used as a metaphor enabled Ishiguro to parody and subvert Western stereotypes about Japan, and by extension challenge the universality of Western values. This subversion was amplified in the third novel, The Remains of the Day (1989), which is perfectly legible through both English and Japanese cultural paradigms. Building on this subversion of stereotypes, Ishiguro's early work investigates the complex relationship between social conditioning and agency, showing how characters' behavior is related to their cultural heritage but cannot be reduced to it. This approach lies at the core of the author's compelling portrayal of human experience in more recent works, such as Never Let Me Go (2005) and The Buried Giant (2015), which earned Ishiguro a global audience and a Nobel Prize. Deprived of the easy explanations of one-world thinking, readers of Ishiguro's two-world literature are forced to appreciate the complexity of the interrelation of individual and collective identity, personal and historical memory, and influence and agency to gain a more nuanced, "two-world appreciation" of human experience.

Like All Others Who Live And Work At Sea, Pacific Mariners Face The Challenges Of An Often Harsh Environment, Endure Separation From Their Families For Months At A Time, Revere Their Vessels, And Share A Singular Attitude To Risk And Death.--jacket. Introduction: A Seafaring Perspective -- Sailors, Myths And Traditions -- The First Pacific Seafarers -- Settlements, Territories And Trade -- The Arrival Of Foreign Ships -- Pacific Commercial Shipowners -- Under Foreign Sail -- Dangers, Mutinies And The Law -- Companies, Colonies And Crewing -- Island Protests And Enterprises -- Contemporary Local And Regional Shipping -- The Global Pacific Seafarer -- Epilogue: Some Contemporary Resonances. Alastair Couper. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 237-251) And Index. Contents Acknowledgments Nautical Glossary and Abbreviations Introduction: A Seafaring Perspective Chapter one. Sailors, Myths, and Traditions Chapter two. The First Pacific Seafarers Chapter three. Settlements, Territories, and Trade Chapter four. The Arrival of Foreign Ships Chapter five. Pacific Commercial Shipowners Chapter six. Under Foreign Sail Chapter seven. Dangers, Mutinies, and the Law Chapter eight. Companies, Colonies, and Crewing Chapter nine. Island Protests and Enterprises Chapter ten. Contemporary Local and Regional Shipping Chapter eleven. The Global Pacific Seafarer Epilogue: Some Contemporary Resonances Notes Bibliography Index