Encounters, Agency, and Race in Oceania

Abstract

Re-reading Greg Dening’s writings provides a sharp reminder of the global significance of Pacific history in the second half of the twentieth century and his centrality in it. In this talk, I discuss three episodes of encounter between European voyagers and Indigenous Oceanians which show the enduring significance to my historical practice of what Greg called ethnohistory or ethnographic history. An ethnohistorical method illuminates the co-formulation of ‘anthropological’ knowledge in the fertile tension between European discourses on human difference or race, travellers’ experience in Oceania, and local agency