Research Catalog

Title

The apotheosis of Captain Cook : European mythmaking in the Pacific / Gananath Obeyesekere ; with a new afterword by the author.

Author

Obeyesekere, Gananath

Publication

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press ; Honolulu, Hawaiʻi : Bishop Museum Press, c1997.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xxi, 313 p. : ill.; 24 cm.

Summary

"In January 1778 Captain James Cook "discovered" the Hawaiian islands and was hailed by the native peoples as their returning god Lono. On a return trip, after a futile attempt to discover the Northwest Passage, Cook was killed in what modern anthropologists and historians interpret as a ritual sacrifice of the fertility god. Questioning the circumstances surrounding Cook's so-called divinity - or apotheosis - and his death, Gananath Obeyesekere debunks one of the most enduring myths of imperialism, civilization, and conquest: the notion that the Western civilizer is a god to savages. Through a close reexamination of Cook's grueling final voyage, his increasingly erratic behavior, his strained relations with the Hawaiians, and the violent death he met at their hands, Obeyesekere rewrites an important segment of British and Hawaiian history in a way that challenges Eurocentric views of non-Western cultures." "The discrepancies between Cook the legend and the person come alive in a narrative based on shipboard journals and logs kept by the captain and his officers. In these accounts Obeyesekere sees Cook as both the self-conscious civilizer and as the person who, his mission gone awry, becomes a "savage" himself - during the last voyage it was Cook's destructive side that dominated. After examining various versions of the "Cook myth," the author argues that the Hawaiians did not apotheosize the captain but revered him as a chief on par with their own. The blurring of conventional distinctions between history, hagiography, and myth, Obeyesekere maintains, requires us to examine the presuppositions that go into the writing of history and anthropology."--BOOK JACKET.

Subjects

• Hawaii > History > To 1893
• History
• Polynesia > Discovery and exploration
• Hawaii > History > To 1893 > Historiography
• Ethnology > Polynesia
• Cook, James, 1728-1779

Genre/Form

History

Note

• Originally published: c1992.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 299-306) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

I. Captain Cook and the European imagination ; Myth models ; Improvisation rationality and savage thought -- II. The third coming: a flashback to the South Seas ; The visit to Tahiti and the destruction of Eimeo ; The discovery of Hawaii -- III. The thesis of the apotheosis ; Further objections to the apotheosis: maculate perceptions and cultural conceptions ; Anthropology and pseudo-history -- IV. Politics and the apotheosis: a Hawaiian perspective ; The other Lono: Omiah, the Dalai Lama of the Hawaiians ; Cook, Lono, and the Makahiki Festival -- V. The narrative resumed: the last days ; The death of Cook: British and Hawaiian versions -- VI. Language games and the European apotheosis of James Cook ; The humanist myth in New Zealand history ; The resurrection and return of James Cook ; The versions of the apotheosis in the traditions of sea voyagers -- VII. Cook, fornication, and evil: the myth of the missionaries ; On native histories: myth, debate, and contentious discourse ; Monterey melons or, a native's reflection on the topic of tropical tropes --VIII. Myth models in anthropological narrative ; The mourning and the aftermath -- Afterword: On de-Sahlinization -- Appendix I: The destruction of Hikiau and the death of William Watman -- Appendix II: Kāliʻi and the divinity of kings.

ISBN

• 0691056803 (Princeton University Press, cloth ed.)
• 0691057524 (Princeton University Press, pbk. ed.)
• 0930897684 (Bishop Museum Press)

LCCN

^^^98149683^

OCLC

38518743

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library