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
With this new blogpost, I would like to introduce you a new format of postings. During my research, I regularly encounter fascinating journal articles and monographs, which I consider as very relevant or useful, but sometimes I approach also titles, which will not find their way into my dissertation manuscript at the end of the day.
In future similar posts, I will give selected topics, research questions and titles a platform in order to introduce them and to approach the topic from my point of view. It might be important to mention here, that I do not have any experience with reviewing titles yet, and therefore, I consider it as an opportunity for myself to learn this too. Thus, if you have comments, useful advices or instructions on reviewing academic monographs for me, I am happy to read your comment or E-Mail.
For this blogpost, I decided to begin with the following monograph: Caroline Ralston (1977):”Grass Huts and Warehouses, Pacific Beach Communities of the Nineteenth Century”, Canberra: Australian National University Press.
Ralston analyzes specifically the background, the role, the influence and the impact of individual Beachcombers on a set of five different places and Indigenous communities across the Pacific Ocean. Throughout the 19th century, the vivid Pacific islands and cities of Honolulu (Hawai’i), Pape’ete (Tahiti) , Apia (Samoa), Levuka (Fiji) and Kororareka at the Bay of Islands (Aotearoa/ New Zealand) gained increasing interest and attention of various regional, European and American agencies due to their geographical locality, their harbour or the abundance of or their proximity to natural resources.
In eight chapters and an Epilogue (chapter 9), she structures her monograph from the first “Contact and Early Trade” (1), then she jumps to “Beachcombers” (2),”First Pacific Beach Communities” (3) , “Early Beach Community Development” (4), before she devotes a general chapter on the “Consuls, Missionaries and Company Traders” (5), followed by “The Pattern of Daily Life”, (6); “Later Years” (7), and “Race Relations in the Beach Communities” (8).
The publication of the journals of Cook’s three voyages to the Pacific, together with those of his forerunners, nevertheless revealed trading and whaling resources awaiting development, and the explorers’ own experiences proved that the basic pre-rerequisites for establishing commercial relations with some groups of islanders did exist.
Ralston 1977, p. 8.
As you can imagine, I have read and scanned the publication with a specific focus on two pre-dominant aspects: on the development of the whaling industry in the Pacific Ocean as well as on Kororareka as a famous harbour for whaling ships. In her first chapter, Ralston summarizes the rise of the whaling industry. She describes the migration patterns of whales and the areas, which became increasingly famous for whaling ships.
During the first two decades of the nineteenth century whaling activities were concentrated on the western coasts of North and South America and the eastern coast of Australia, but with the discovery of the Japanese and equatorial whaling grounds in the early 1820s, whaling vessels were drawn into the midst of the island world and were eager to find places to refresh and refit there.
In the northern Pacific Honolulu became the unchallenged centre for the whaling industry, while in the south whaling captains could choose between Papeete, Kororareka, Apia, the southern islands of Fiji, or the Marquesas to refresh and refit at, depending on which was most convenient.
Despite their seeming aimlessness whalers did not roam casually round the Pacific, but worked through the different whaling grounds systematically according to the migration patterns of the whales, and their arrival at different port towns could be estimated fairly accurately.
Ralston 1977, p. 16.
Today, over 50 years later, we can read studies, who have analyzed hundreds of whaling logbooks in order to visualize their migration patterns, but also to show the favoured ports and islands for stopovers. With these technical skills, the study confirmed many research results of Ralston.1
Due to the hard-working conditions and danger of the whaling industry or due to conflicts on board, seamen did regularly leave ships during these long voyages. Today, one considers them as Beachcombers. Beachcombers, who left the ships and tried to seek safety among Indigenous communities, are defined by Ralston as “being temporarily of permanently detached from one group, enters the web of social relations that constitutes another society and comes under the influcence of its customs, ideas and values to a greater of lesser extent.”2 The total dependency on hospitality and goodwill shaped their interaction with Indigenous communities. When it came to contact situations, beachcombers formed as important translators and mediators and so were able to demonstrate their importance towards both sides.
Campbell, however, criticized this aspect in a review of 1978:
“By overestimating the quality of the communication between beachcombers and islanders over aspects of European culture (p 33) Ralston makes the exaggerated claim that ‘the beachcombers were largely instrumental in the early processes of island acculturation’ (p 42); and surely the beachcomber era was too early, and the beachcombers themselves too few and too sparse for one to be able to speak of ‘race relations’, far less to claim for them credit in establishing egalitarian race relations (p 45).”3
For each of the mentioned Pacific ports, Ralston explains the economic activities, but also the land-transactions of individuals with Indigenous communities. She reminds that Māori did understand that they sell their land, as the early deed of sales of land demonstrate. Ralston is impressed about the fact that these deeds “contained surprisingly detailed descriptions of the land to be transferred and emphasise[…] that the Māori had relinquished all rights to the land. It is impossible to know how much the Māori understood of these transactions, but few of the Kororareka sales were later disputed. Perhaps twenty years’ experience of the missionaries’ insistence on private property had had some effect.”4
In these land transactions, she notices a high degree of Māori agency, when it came to the price of land throughout the 1830s:
“With the growing number of foreigners moving into Kororareka, the Māori were quick to appreciate the rising value of land and put up their prices accordingly. However, they would at no time (not even just after annexation when prices were sky-high) contemplate selling the land on which their pa was built.”4
In the past few months, I had the opportunity to dive into the history of the Church Missionary (CMS) stations and settlements in Aotearoa/ New Zealand in the early nineteenth century, and in this brief post, I would like to share some observations. Reading and thinking about the Church Missionary stations on the Northern Island of Aotearoa/ New Zealand in the period 1815-1840, I realized not only 1) the importance of the sea for missionaries, but also 2) the maritime background of missionary members, who were sent to Aotearoa/ New Zealand.
As soon as the first Māori persons worked and travelled onboard of colonial whaling ships in the early 1800s or visited Port Jackson such as the Māori rangatira Te Pahi, missionary efforts have been done to establish a CMS settlement on the Islands of Aotearoa/ New Zealand. The first efforts came from Marsden, after he had meet Te Pahi for the first time in 1805. Reverend Samuel Marsden, who had settled already in 1794 in the New South Wales colony and later joined the CMS, was so impressed of him, that he urged the CMS to establish a settlement in Aotearoa/ New Zealand too.
Formed in 1799, the members (and ideas) of the Church Missionary Society quickly spread by establishing mission stations across the world and in the Pacific Ocean.
The ´institutional infrastructure´ of the CMS consisting of a ´headquarter´ based in London and the increasingly growing number of mission stations outside the British islands enabled the circulation of letters, correspondences, goods, and people from one place to another. From 1813 onwards, the CMS office in London forged and brought the local report of each mission station together into Annual periodicals, printed every year, which were then distributed again across the mission stations. These, (highly processed), annual periodicals are today online accessible at the website of the Yale University Library.
In the following 10 years, it were ships, which enabled contacts and interactions between young Māori men, who travelled and worked onboard of European vessels and went across the oceans and as far as London. Te Pahi visited 1808 Port Jackson onboard of European ships in order to complain about the violent behaviour of sailors. Marsden, who was at this time in London, met Ruatara 1809 in a port of London and sailed with him back to Sydney.
During a stopover in Rio de Janeiro onboard of the Missionary ship ACTIVE, William Hall informs Samuel Marsden in a letter, that he had picked up a Person from New Zealand on the Islands of Madeira, in order to bring him back home.1
When he and Thomas Kendall arrived on a ship in Sydney 1810 in order to sail further to the Bay of Islands to install a CMS settlement, they learnt of the so-called Boyd Massacre – named after the ship BOYD, which came under attack during a stopover in Aotearoa/ New Zealand. 2
The Boyd incidence delayed any missionary settlement effort and it took several years until in November 1814, the missionary ship ACTIVE (Capt. Hanson), brought a group of 35 persons to the Bay of Islands. Marsden recorded in his Journal of his first visit from Sydney to Aotearoa/ New Zealand:
On Monday the 28th [Nov. 1814] we weighed Anchor, and got out to sea, the number of persons on board (including women and children), were thirty-five – Mr. Hanson, Master, his wife and son, Messr. Kendall, Hall, and King with their wives and five children; – 8 New Zealanders, – two Otaheitans and four Europeans belonging to the vessel, besides Mr. Nicholas, myself, two Sawyers, one Smith, and one runaway convict (as we found him to be afterwards).
Marsden’s First Visit to New Zealand, p. 41-42.
The diversity of the first missionary settlement as well as the fact that it came under the patronage of several Māori rangatira at Oihi shows that the settlement was included in various networks. Angela Middleton has observed several systematic similarities but also differences among other CMS Stations throughout the Pacific Ocean:
“[1] They all depended on the patronage and support of powerful indigenous people like the Pomares in Tahiti, Kamehameha in Hawaii, and in New Zealand, Ruatara and Hongi Hika. […]
[2.] In all these cases, the missions were reliant to a large extent on the local population for much of their food supplies, as well as labour for building and maintaining the missions.
[3.] The distances between missions and “home” societies in England meant that there were huge delays and difficulties in communication, with replies to letters and requested supplies taking up to 2 years to be received.
[4] Missionaries in these locations found themselves caught up in local wars and internal conflicts and politics.”3
Map of the Bay of Islands, drawn in a letter of William Williams to CMS Secretary, in Cadbury Research Library Birmingham, CMS/B/OMS/C/ N O 95/ 23/ p. 3 – Private Picture – 30.09.2021.
From the very beginning, the CMS station members seem to have been included not only in the missionary networks, but were also closely connected with Māori settlements, with Samuel Marsden and the Penal colony in NSW and Van Diemens Land, (therefore connected within the so-called Tasman World)4, and of course with the whaling ships, which regularly anchored at the Bay of Islands. Thus, ships formed the only possible means for the CMS station to remain in touch with the Marsden in NSW but also to the CMS Secretary in London, and also to receive crucial supplies, and information.
While conflicts and a constant lack o supplies shaped the first ten years, the arrival of Henry Williams in 1823 and his brother William Williams in 1826 promised better times. The majority of the CMS members, who arrived either at the beginning or came afterwards to the growing numbers of CMS stations, consisted of carpenters, who had knowledge in designing or constructing ships, had retired from the Navy or had ancestors working in the Navy. At the Bay of Islands, they were in touch with Māori Individuals, who surely had a distinct knowledge of the sea too.
Early after his arrival, Henry Williams instructed William Puckey, one of the Missionaries, to design and built together with Māori a missionary vessel, which they named HERALD, a 55 ton schooner. Their own ship, so the intention, would allow and enable them a certain degree of economic independency. Captains like Gilbert Mair, Hanson or Capt. Peter Dillon (also known with the French title Le Chevalier) were names, that were quite familiar to the Missionaries.
Reading about these “maritime influences” I had to think about the maritime influences of the NSW colony, as David Haines and Jonathan West stress in their articles of 2018 called “crew cultures in the Tasman World”. And indeed, the first four colonial Governors had Navy background, which was “unique among British colonies”.5 Men from the Navy constituted also Sydney’s civil service to an important extent, while also ship “Captains had magisterial authority” with all the consequences and dynamics, which comes with it.
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Primary sources:
Hall, William (1809): Letter to Marsden, 28.09.1809, in: Cadbury Research Library, CMS/B/OMS/C/N E/2.
Marsden, Samuel (1814): Reverend Samuel Marsden’s First Visit to New Zealand, In: Marsden Online Archive, MS/ 176/001, http://www.marsdenarchive.otago.ac.nz/MS_0176_001, [last Access: 27.01.2022]
Hall to Marsden, 28.09.1809, in: Cadbury Research Library, CMS/B/OMS/C/N E/2 [↩]
This surely needs to be topic of another post here [↩]
Middleton, Angela (2008): Te Puna – A New Zealand Mission Station. Historical Archaeology in New Zealand. New York: Springer, p. 79-80 [↩]
This needs to be topic of another post here as well [↩]
Haines, David; West, Jonathan (2018): Crew Cultures in the Tasman World, in: Steel, Frances (Ed.): New Zealand and the Sea. Historical Perspectives. Wellington, pp. 181-200, p. 186. [↩]
Throughout the 19th century, whale oil was a natural resource that was in high demand as both a lubricant and a means of illumination for the growing cities of the Atlantic World. One can even say: It fuelled the Industrial Revolution in this period. After having exhausted whale populations in the Atlantic, whaling ships from both London and New England ports ventured from the 1790s onwards into the Pacific.
Such transoceanic whaling voyages, which could last up to four years, required regular stops for provisions and supplies at ports and islands. During their stopovers, members of whaling ships came in touch with local communities, traded not only guns and goods, but also employed Indigenous peoples on various islands in the Pacific Ocean. As such, these transoceanic whaling voyages put “thousands of people from around the world on the move”1 and “provided mobility and travel, which facilitated a kind of freedom that was not [always] present on land”2. The whaling ventures departed from Atlantic ports followed the whale migration patterns as far as the Pacific in order to fulfil “the [growing] demands of a vast network of consumers”3 for its oil.
My dissertation project shows on the example of the Swain and Starbuck families how Quaker whalers constituted an interaction space with Native American, African and African American individuals already in the Atlantic. Having these backgrounds in mind, I argue that these families had already formed a specific interaction space in the Atlantic, when they reached the Pacific from 1790 onwards. I aim to reconstruct these multiple socioeconomic relationships of these global interactions between whalers and Māori Iwi between 1790 and 1840.
This research blog shall give my dissertation project a (digital) audience and allow me to discuss specific topics and aspects, to introduce research details, key publications, and accompany me in the academic journey on a regular base.
Wanhalla, Angela (2013): Matters of the Heart. A History of Interracial Marriage in New Zealand. Auckland: Auckland University Press, p. 7 [↩]
Russell, Lynette (2012): Roving Mariners. Australian aboriginal whalers and sealers in the southern oceans, 1790-1870. New York: State University of New York Press, p. 97 [↩]
Shoemaker, Nancy (2014): Living with whales. Documents and oral histories of Native New England whaling history. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, p. 4 [↩]
