Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Maps
- Acknowledgments
- Map
- Introduction: Encircling the ocean
- 1 Civilization without a center
- 2 Trading rings and tidal empires
- 3 Straits, sultans, and treasure fleets
- 4 Conquered colonies and Iberian ambitions
- 5 Island encounters and the Spanish lake
- 6 Sea changes and spice islands
- 7 Samurai, priests, and potentates
- 8 Pirates and raiders of the Eastern seas
- 9 Asia, America, and the age of the galleons
- 10 Navigators of Polynesia and paradise
- 11 Gods and sky piercers
- 12 Extremities of the Great Southern Continent
- 13 The world that Canton made
- 14 Flags, treaties, and gunboats
- 15 Migrations, plantations, and the people trade
- 16 Imperial destinies on foreign shores
- 17 Traditions of engagement and ethnography
- 18 War stories from the Pacific theater
- 19 Prophets and rebels of decolonization
- 20 Critical mass for the earth and ocean
- 21 Specters of memory, agents of development
- 22 Repairing legacies, claiming histories
- Afterword: World Heritage
- Notes
- Index
15 - Migrations, plantations, and the people trade
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Maps
- Acknowledgments
- Map
- Introduction: Encircling the ocean
- 1 Civilization without a center
- 2 Trading rings and tidal empires
- 3 Straits, sultans, and treasure fleets
- 4 Conquered colonies and Iberian ambitions
- 5 Island encounters and the Spanish lake
- 6 Sea changes and spice islands
- 7 Samurai, priests, and potentates
- 8 Pirates and raiders of the Eastern seas
- 9 Asia, America, and the age of the galleons
- 10 Navigators of Polynesia and paradise
- 11 Gods and sky piercers
- 12 Extremities of the Great Southern Continent
- 13 The world that Canton made
- 14 Flags, treaties, and gunboats
- 15 Migrations, plantations, and the people trade
- 16 Imperial destinies on foreign shores
- 17 Traditions of engagement and ethnography
- 18 War stories from the Pacific theater
- 19 Prophets and rebels of decolonization
- 20 Critical mass for the earth and ocean
- 21 Specters of memory, agents of development
- 22 Repairing legacies, claiming histories
- Afterword: World Heritage
- Notes
- Index
Summary
The Sophia was a 537-ton teak and yellow metal cargo ship built in 1819 in Calcutta, India, regularly chartered for work between Europe and the Pacific. In late 1828, she began two years of voyages unremarkable for exploring, yet which traced out the circuit of Pacific worlds increasingly drawn together. Launching from Dublin, her holds were filled with almost two hundred shackled male convicts, tossed on the months-long passage to the British prison colony in Australia. In Sydney harbor, the Sophia was chartered to Tonga by Captain Samuel Henry, who picked up another human load, this time laborers he recruited to sail with him to Melanesia, the island of Erromanga in the New Hebrides, to harvest sandalwood.
With its cargo, the Sophia sailed north to Hawai‘i, where news of the valuable wood excited the attention of the Oahu governor, Boki, who launched his own ill-fated expedition to conquer Erromanga, as sandalwood had already disappeared in Polynesia. He and most of his force perished at sea or died of malaria. The Sophia also returned to Erromanga, but by now found the risks and returns unprofitable and sailed back to England through the New Hebrides, Singapore, and Manila. The ship's surgeon, George Bennett, returned to Plymouth with a young Erromangan girl, Elau, a chambered nautilus, and a gibbon, all of which he conflated as examples of primeval nature, contributing to Victorian debates about natural history and the possibility of educating savages.
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- Pacific WorldsA History of Seas, Peoples, and Cultures, pp. 216 - 232Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2012
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