How Did Captain Cook Influence The Ways See And Understand The Modern World
How Captain Cook influenced the ways see and understand the modern world
‘I had ambition not only to go farther than any man had been before, but as far as it was possible for a man to go’James Cook. So Captain Cook was born in 1778 originally a apprentice in Whitby before becoming a sailor and in time a British naval officer a veteran of the seven year war. Cook is unquestionably known for his three voyages of expiration and discovery that took place in the Pacific. The first voyage was between 1768 and 1771 the second between 1772 and 1775, the third between 1776 and 1780 although on the final voyage the journey ended prematurely for Cook since he died.
View image 1 Cook voyages laid down the foundations to what we know as the Pacific today. He mapped the coast of Australia paving the way for British colonisation also indirectly paving the way for the near elimination of the Aboriginal population, as with the Columbus exchange Captain Cook …show more content…
voyages to Australia restructured the biodiversity by introducing alien species such as cows and sheep paving the way for Australia’s huge cattle and wool industry, although there was a penal colony already established.
Equally significant Cook mapped out New Zealand and also paved the way for colonisation, also in his voyages cook discovered the mythical continent of Terra Australis didn’t exist as well as helped to dispel the idea of a north west passage going through western Canada which Europeans were obsessed for centuries plus being the first European to describe the ideas of Hawaii along with being the first captain to keep his crew successfully free of scurvy.
Not too long ago I got the opportunity to visit Cook’s childhood home of Whitby, went to the Captain Cook Memorial Museum. I was examining the photos and painting in when suddenly I was taken back when I saw a portrait of a Māori person indigenous to New Zealand had numerous tattoos on his person. I was told when the sailors first sore these tattoos they were fascinated by the artistry. This encounter laid down the foundation for the popularity of the tattoos in Europe but first being adopted by these sailors.
Cook and his successors were part of the middle wave of European colonisation after the one which took place in the Americas but before the conquests began on the African continent. Besides huge territorial gains and increased wealth, exploration of the pacific contributed to Europeans already strong fascination with science. Cooks voyages were one example of this romantic fascination, in the 18th and 19th century where Europeans became obsessed with mapping, charting and classifying the world around them. Maybe not romantic in the sense of dinner on the Eiffel tower but if you think about going to never before seen lands and bringing back strange and exotic species its comparable to the fascination and romanticism of space exploration we have today.
But the controversy around his death is something that’s not looked upon more, the story goes cook landed in Kealakekua Bay in early 1779 to travel around the island. When they went to shore they were greeted by Hawaiian. But then in early February they set sail and left to continue their voyage but ship had troubles plus with a storm taking place Cook was forced to return to Hawaii to wait the storm out. Although during this second visit on the island cook had troubles with the Hawaiians who were welcoming before but a encounter happen which left cook dead killed by at least one Hawaiian we know this by journals kept by crew men but the controversy which followed the details and interpretation of his death, Why in short was captain James Cook killed?
The traditional belief is Cook was killed for some religious purpose a well known account comes from anthropologist Marshall Sahlins in his novel Islands of History. In the Hawaiian religious system Kou the god of war and human sacrifice rules from January to September then replaced by the fertility god Lono for October to December. The Hawaiian festival Makahiki falls under the time of Lono rule the Hawaiian king who’s ritually involved with Kou is defeated. During the Makahiki the image of Kou tours the island gets worshiped and at the end of the Kou period Lono is defeated and returned to his native Tahiti, the saying goes because Cook arrival in the middle of the Makahiki period the Hawaiians perceived him as Lono so Cook participated in the rituals and sacrifices made during Waikiki and in Sahlins view cook was kill in a ritual murder to mark the end of Waikiki,for Kou to return for the festival to end and begin the normal political order to be restored. Lono had to be defeated and killed so with Sahilians Cook’s death fits perfectly with the ritual structure of the Hawaiian culture.
The problem with this interpretation is there 's a lot of inconsistencies with the story if the Hawaiians would have actually seen Cook in this way critics of Sahlins say his interpretation is looking more like a Europeans myth than a Hawaiian ritual, he argues that cook himself would not be easily confused with Lono, in fact if he was taken for a god it would likely be instead Kau, what 's more arguing that native Hawaiians would see a European and mistake him for a god many troubling implications one being native Hawaiians are very naive? Plus nothing in Hawaiian religion has any of their gods being ritually sacrificed. The truth is less dramatic where cook was probably killed during a maylay where Hawaiians were also killed.
The idea of the Hawaiian 's seeing Cook as a god has ended up in a good number of accounts of his death why?
One explanation is it fits in with other stories of explores meeting indigenous people, you’ve heard before the Aztecs and Tinos mistook Cortés and Columbus as gods and this puts Captain Cook in a long line of Europeans thought to be gods by people who the Europeans thought were savages. Depicting cook as a god also sets up a stark contrast between the idea of the enlightened Westerners and in this case primitive Polynesians because Captain Cook often appears in books as a brave intelligent man sure he barely had any formal schooling but his voyages were about increasing our knowledge by scientific exploration and having him killed by the hands of a people so backwards to think him a god makes a arguments to the superiority of the Europeans to this primitive superstitious
people.
But whenever a story fits so well in a frame work we need to ask ourselves who’s telling it the reason we know so much about captain cook is because there’s a huge select of records dedicated to him but there all nearly exclusively Europeans when the Hawaiian records of cook we have been influenced
But the debate in of authenticity brings up something important that we need to keep in mind very often we make statements about people who haven’t written their own stories whether its aboriginals Indians or working-class people and we try to imagine were seeing the world the way they’ve seen it but the best we can really do is offer a approximations. So is it really possible to offer a Hawaiian version of captain cooks death? And most importantly is the inability to escape are biased a good excuse for not trying?
Bibliography:
Cook, J., Beaglehole, J., Edwards, P. and Cook, J. 1999. The journals of Captain Cook. London, England: Penguin Books.
Film Australia. (20). captain cook obsession and discovery. Available: http://www.filmaust.com.au/programs/teachers_notes/cook_TN.pdf. Last accessed 5th Dec 2013.
Hordern House. (2007). captain james cook and his pacific legacy. Available: http://www.hordern.com/hh/pdf/catalogues/CooksPacificLegacy.pdf. Last accessed 6th Dec 2013.
Marshall Sahlins (1987). Islands of History. America: University Of Chicago Press. 200.
Scott Cunningham (1995). Hawaiian Religion & Magic. America: Llewellyn Publications. 231.
Vanessa Collingridge (2003). Captain Cook: The Life, Death and Legacy of History 's Greatest Explorer. 5th ed. UK: Ebury Press. 480.
‘I had ambition not only to go farther than any man had been before, but as far as it was possible for a man to go’James Cook. So Captain Cook was born in 1778 originally a apprentice in Whitby before becoming a sailor and in time a British naval officer a veteran of the seven year war. Cook is unquestionably known for his three voyages of expiration and discovery that took place in the Pacific. The first voyage was between 1768 and 1771 the second between 1772 and 1775, the third between 1776 and 1780 although on the final voyage the journey ended prematurely for Cook since he died.
View image 1 Cook voyages laid down the foundations to what we know as the Pacific today. He mapped the coast of Australia paving the way for British colonisation also indirectly paving the way for the near elimination of the Aboriginal population, as with the Columbus exchange Captain Cook …show more content…
voyages to Australia restructured the biodiversity by introducing alien species such as cows and sheep paving the way for Australia’s huge cattle and wool industry, although there was a penal colony already established.
Equally significant Cook mapped out New Zealand and also paved the way for colonisation, also in his voyages cook discovered the mythical continent of Terra Australis didn’t exist as well as helped to dispel the idea of a north west passage going through western Canada which Europeans were obsessed for centuries plus being the first European to describe the ideas of Hawaii along with being the first captain to keep his crew successfully free of scurvy.
Not too long ago I got the opportunity to visit Cook’s childhood home of Whitby, went to the Captain Cook Memorial Museum. I was examining the photos and painting in when suddenly I was taken back when I saw a portrait of a Māori person indigenous to New Zealand had numerous tattoos on his person. I was told when the sailors first sore these tattoos they were fascinated by the artistry. This encounter laid down the foundation for the popularity of the tattoos in Europe but first being adopted by these sailors.
Cook and his successors were part of the middle wave of European colonisation after the one which took place in the Americas but before the conquests began on the African continent. Besides huge territorial gains and increased wealth, exploration of the pacific contributed to Europeans already strong fascination with science. Cooks voyages were one example of this romantic fascination, in the 18th and 19th century where Europeans became obsessed with mapping, charting and classifying the world around them. Maybe not romantic in the sense of dinner on the Eiffel tower but if you think about going to never before seen lands and bringing back strange and exotic species its comparable to the fascination and romanticism of space exploration we have today.
But the controversy around his death is something that’s not looked upon more, the story goes cook landed in Kealakekua Bay in early 1779 to travel around the island. When they went to shore they were greeted by Hawaiian. But then in early February they set sail and left to continue their voyage but ship had troubles plus with a storm taking place Cook was forced to return to Hawaii to wait the storm out. Although during this second visit on the island cook had troubles with the Hawaiians who were welcoming before but a encounter happen which left cook dead killed by at least one Hawaiian we know this by journals kept by crew men but the controversy which followed the details and interpretation of his death, Why in short was captain James Cook killed?
The traditional belief is Cook was killed for some religious purpose a well known account comes from anthropologist Marshall Sahlins in his novel Islands of History. In the Hawaiian religious system Kou the god of war and human sacrifice rules from January to September then replaced by the fertility god Lono for October to December. The Hawaiian festival Makahiki falls under the time of Lono rule the Hawaiian king who’s ritually involved with Kou is defeated. During the Makahiki the image of Kou tours the island gets worshiped and at the end of the Kou period Lono is defeated and returned to his native Tahiti, the saying goes because Cook arrival in the middle of the Makahiki period the Hawaiians perceived him as Lono so Cook participated in the rituals and sacrifices made during Waikiki and in Sahlins view cook was kill in a ritual murder to mark the end of Waikiki,for Kou to return for the festival to end and begin the normal political order to be restored. Lono had to be defeated and killed so with Sahilians Cook’s death fits perfectly with the ritual structure of the Hawaiian culture.
The problem with this interpretation is there 's a lot of inconsistencies with the story if the Hawaiians would have actually seen Cook in this way critics of Sahlins say his interpretation is looking more like a Europeans myth than a Hawaiian ritual, he argues that cook himself would not be easily confused with Lono, in fact if he was taken for a god it would likely be instead Kau, what 's more arguing that native Hawaiians would see a European and mistake him for a god many troubling implications one being native Hawaiians are very naive? Plus nothing in Hawaiian religion has any of their gods being ritually sacrificed. The truth is less dramatic where cook was probably killed during a maylay where Hawaiians were also killed.
The idea of the Hawaiian 's seeing Cook as a god has ended up in a good number of accounts of his death why?
One explanation is it fits in with other stories of explores meeting indigenous people, you’ve heard before the Aztecs and Tinos mistook Cortés and Columbus as gods and this puts Captain Cook in a long line of Europeans thought to be gods by people who the Europeans thought were savages. Depicting cook as a god also sets up a stark contrast between the idea of the enlightened Westerners and in this case primitive Polynesians because Captain Cook often appears in books as a brave intelligent man sure he barely had any formal schooling but his voyages were about increasing our knowledge by scientific exploration and having him killed by the hands of a people so backwards to think him a god makes a arguments to the superiority of the Europeans to this primitive superstitious
people.
But whenever a story fits so well in a frame work we need to ask ourselves who’s telling it the reason we know so much about captain cook is because there’s a huge select of records dedicated to him but there all nearly exclusively Europeans when the Hawaiian records of cook we have been influenced
But the debate in of authenticity brings up something important that we need to keep in mind very often we make statements about people who haven’t written their own stories whether its aboriginals Indians or working-class people and we try to imagine were seeing the world the way they’ve seen it but the best we can really do is offer a approximations. So is it really possible to offer a Hawaiian version of captain cooks death? And most importantly is the inability to escape are biased a good excuse for not trying?
Bibliography:
Cook, J., Beaglehole, J., Edwards, P. and Cook, J. 1999. The journals of Captain Cook. London, England: Penguin Books.
Film Australia. (20). captain cook obsession and discovery. Available: http://www.filmaust.com.au/programs/teachers_notes/cook_TN.pdf. Last accessed 5th Dec 2013.
Hordern House. (2007). captain james cook and his pacific legacy. Available: http://www.hordern.com/hh/pdf/catalogues/CooksPacificLegacy.pdf. Last accessed 6th Dec 2013.
Marshall Sahlins (1987). Islands of History. America: University Of Chicago Press. 200.
Scott Cunningham (1995). Hawaiian Religion & Magic. America: Llewellyn Publications. 231.
Vanessa Collingridge (2003). Captain Cook: The Life, Death and Legacy of History 's Greatest Explorer. 5th ed. UK: Ebury Press. 480.