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22 - Australasia and the Pacific

from Part II - Trans-regional and regional perspectives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2015

By
Ian J. McNiven
Edited by
Craig Benjamin
Craig Benjamin
Affiliation:
Grand Valley State University, Michigan
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Summary

There is a point on Google Earth where one can rotate the image of the globe so that all you see is the vastness of the Pacific Ocean and the continental landmasses of Australasia. This chapter embraces the challenge of presenting a summary history of Oceania, focusing on chronological changes in social interactions and social formations over the past 3,000 years using selected case studies to illustrate the flavour of Australasian and Pacific island societies. At the time of sustained British colonial invasion in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Australia was home to upwards of 1 million Aboriginal people divided into at least 250 languages and hundreds of 'tribal' groupings. The Melanesian world extends from the continental island of New Guinea and south and eastwards out into the western Pacific Ocean through the island nation-states of Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia and Fiji.

Keywords

AthensAthenian economyAthenian governmentsoutheastern Atticanatural resourceshistorical writingmilitary traininghigher educationgeographical works
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge World History , pp. 603 - 630
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

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References

Further Reading

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Hiscock, Peter, Archaeology of Ancient Australia, London and New York: Routledge, 2008.Google Scholar
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