Southern and Eastern Polynesia Volume Two of Russia and the South Pacific 1696-1840

Barratt, Glynn

ISBN 10: 0774803053 / ISBN 13: 9780774803052

Published by University of Columbia Press, 1988

About this Item

302 pages, very clean text.

Seller Inventory # 015969

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Southern and Eastern Polynesia Volume Two of Russia and the South Pacific 1696-1840
• Publisher: University of Columbia Press
• Publication Date: 1988
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0774803053
• ISBN 13: 9780774803052
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition
• Condition: Good+
• Dust Jacket Condition: Good+
• Seller catalogs:
  • New Zealand

About this title

Synopsis

The second volume in Glynn Barratt’s projected quartet on the naval, scientific, and social activities of the Imperial Russian Navy in the South Pacific, this book describes Russian activities in New Zealand, the Austral Islands and Easter Island. These widely scattered areas were all visited by warships of the Russian navy and by companies of highly educated and observant officers and "gentlemen of science" in the early 1800’s.

Barratt’s annotated and careful translations of the visitors' eyewitness accounts provide fascinating, sometimes amusing, reading about the landfalls of the ships. The Russians' journals, reports, and drawings are collated with artefacts collected on the spot and with contemporaneous European data to produce a vivid picture of life and culture in these parts of the South Pacific in the early post-contact period.

Although available in Soviet archives, many of the primary sources that Barratt has examined for this book have until now been almost completely ignored by Western scholars in spite of their importance in understanding the changes that took place in post-contact Oceania. These archival holdings, as described by the author, will be of major importance to those interested in the history and ethnohistory of southern and eastern Polynesia.

About the Author

Glynn Barratt is a professor of Russian at Carleton University and the author of many books on Russia’s naval and diplomatic history.