Digital resources in the Social Sciences and Humanities OpenEdition Our platforms OpenEdition Books OpenEdition Journals Hypotheses Calenda Libraries OpenEdition Freemium Follow us

What does “transoceanic” mean?

With this blogpost, I would like to discuss and introduce the term “transoceanic”, which is also the name of this research blog. Four years ago, at 11th May 2018, the two scholars Juliane Braun and Benjamin Fagan gave an interview to the TRAFO research blog “Blog for Transregional Studies”. This interview was part of a larger TRAFO series “Emerging Topics. Insights from ‘Behind the Scenes’.

In this interview, they put the attention on the Conference “Transoceanic American Studies”, which would take place a week later at 18th May 2018 at the German Historical Institute Washington. They explained the concept of a transoceanic approach and highlight the differences between Atlantic and Pacific studies. While Atlantic studies are rather interested in discovering “connections between the lands and peoples that exist on that ocean’s rim”, Pacific studies tend to focus “upon the island communities scattered throughout that ocean”. In doing so, they observed, Pacific historians put more efforts into “recovering the experiences of the ocean’s indigenous communities”, instead of just emphasizing on “the people who traveled, willingly and in chains” between the continents, as Atlantic historians typically do.

The term transoceanic is insofar interesting as it understands the Oceans as a means of “creation of connections between different lands, peoples, and products”, and not a barrier. “Seafarers”, they remind, “thought of the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific oceans as ‘knit together’ because they had to traverse all of them to get to” their destination.

Putting these considerations into my research project comes along with several consequences. Firstly, this understanding of the Ocean can be surely observed in the whaling industry too. As soon as the whale populations in the Atlantic Ocean diminished in the 18th and 19th century, it was and became common and custom for whaling ships, which started in New England or London, to cross the Atlantic from Cape Hope through the Indian Ocean, or via Cape Horn in order to reach the whaling grounds of the Pacific Ocean, and to sail back. For them, the oceanic currents and patterns formed their regularly ‘way for work’.

At the same time, such connections led to the circulation of ideas, commodities, peoples and experiences. Including the experiences and understanding the perspectives of Indigenous communities means, to follow their path and patterns as well. There a plenty of examples, which clearly contradict the notion of only one-sided developments.

Tahitians went to Aotearoa/New Zealand, Māori individuals arrived in Atlantic ports such as London or Nantucket. Missionaries, on their way from London to the Bay of Islands, talk of (and pick up) stranded Māori persons on the Islands of Madeira. Whaling Captains, who pick up ruling families of the Hawaiian Islands and, on their way back to London, took a stopover in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where the Hawaiian rulers come to meet the local rulers of Rio. Whalers, with Native American background, arrive in Aotearoa/New Zealand, and were considered as Pakeha (white settlers). Brazilian seailors, who run away at Kororareka during a stopover of American whaling ships. These are just a few examples, which can be used as an example in the early 19th century.

Madeleine Miller from the GHI Washington had summarized the conference “Transoceanic American Studies“, which took place 2018 in Washington.1

  1. Miller, Madeleine: Transoceanic American Studies, in: GHI Washington, 2018, https://www.ghi-dc.org/events/event/date/transoceanic-american-studies-17-05-2018, [Last Access: 18.05.2022]. []