Early Mapping of the Pacific

by Suarez, Thomas

• ISBN13: 9780794600921
• ISBN10: 0794600921
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-04-15
• Publisher: Periplus Editions

Summary

The Pacific Ocean remained largely mysterious until the latter part of the eighteenth century, when a series of monumental voyages brought most of its heretofore unknown archipelagos to the mapmaker's pen. Until then, the evolving image of the ocean had been molded as much by the cartographer's whimsy as by the explorer's survey. Using a cornucopia of rare and beautiful maps, this book traces the exploration and charting of the Earth's largest ocean, weaving an odyssey stretching from Japan and the Philippines on the west, Australia and New Zealand on the south, and east through the varied islands of Oceania, including Tahiti, Hawaii, and even the "island" of California. The story of the maps was often the story of the explorers and islanders themselves. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Thomas Suarez is a well-known authority on early maps whose previous books include Early Mapping of Southeast Asia (Periplus,2000), which has become a standard work in the field. He has served as curator and advisor for collections and exhibitions dealing with the history of cartography, and has been an important source for early maps for the past twenty-five years.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 12
The Pacific Islands and Their People	p. 14
Human Settlers
The European Record
Pacific Settlement: Deliberate or Accidental?
Cosmology
Indigenous Maps
Pacific Regions
Mariners, Mapmakers, and the Great Ocean	p. 26
Early Cartographic Traces
The Discovery of America Defines the Pacific
Two Patterns of Early Pacific Mapping
On the Eve of Magellan
The Pacific's East-West Breadth
The Pacific's North-South Limits
Terra Australis and Other Enticements
The Pacific Evolves after Magellan	p. 48
Medieval Lore Mixes with New Discoveries
In the Wake of the Solomon Islands	p. 60
The Solomons on Printed Maps
Francis Drake's Circumnavigation
The Marquesas: Mendana's Second Expedition
Quiros and Torres
Earliest Mapping of Australia and New Zealand	p. 78
Mapping the Dutch Discovery of Australia
The "Pacific" Land of Beach
Jacob Le Maire
Abel Tasman
The Age of Enlightenment	p. 106
The English Map Trade
Scientists and Buccaneers
Literary Pacific Landscapes
Further Searches for Terra Australis
The European Discovery of Easter Island and Samoa
A Renaissance of English Voyages
Bougainville Follows the English Lead
Thomas Forrest in the Western Pacific
The Three Voyages of James Cook	p. 128
The First Voyage
The Second Voyage
The Third Voyage
The Discovery of Tahiti and Hawaii	p. 140
Tahiti and the Mapping of the Cosmos
The Tahitian Navigator, Tupaia
Later Explorers and Missionaries Map Tahiti
The European Discovery of Tahiti
Do Maps Record Hawaii before Cook?
Missionaries and the Mapping of Hawaii
The Eighteenth Century after Cook	p. 168
La Perouse
The Rediscovery of the Solomon Islands
William Bligh
Micronesia, the Elusive Isles	p. 178
Missionaries Question Islanders to Construct Maps
The Methodical Mapping of Micronesia
Surveyors, Whalers, and Missionaries	p. 194
The Marquesas
The London Missionary Society
Russian Expeditions Combine Science and Commerce
The French Expeditions
Mapping below the Surface
The United States Exploring Expedition
Thematic and Oceanographic Mapping
Bibliography	p. 218
Index	p. 220
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