The Cambridge History acknowledges the diversity of Pacific voices and the particularity of their experiences, while narrating common patterns and intersections with global events. A long-standing convention in Western scholarship was that historians studied events while anthropologists studied cultures. To cultural anthropologists, 'ethnohistory' meant the reconstruction of past life- ways by analysing documentary materials. To the academic audience, the significance of ethnohistorical work usually hinges on its thoroughness, and originality is measured by the extent to which the scholars ferret out unpublished sources and make sense of fragmentary records. Oral traditions, like travellers' accounts and Western histories, are produced in a contemporary context, reflecting particular points of view. In this chapter 'colonial history' denotes a perspective and style of historiography rather than the time of its production. Recounting events significant to Western core states and affecting Westerners, colonial history situates agency, causality and effective power in the actions of the imperial nations and their citizens.