David Igler´s new book truly has a lot to offer: A fascinating topic, a tremendously entertaining read, an intriguing argument and numerous colourful, tightly interwoven narratives. “The Great Ocean“ presents a history of the Pacific Ocean from the late eighteenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries. Beginning with James Cook´s voyages, Igler suggests, the interplay of European powers and later the United States of America with indigenous peoples in a challenging environment brought fundamental changes to the region and created a new geographical concept: the eastern Pacific.

Arguing from a strongly historical point-of-view, Igler demonstrates a seminal and inspiring way to approach a geographical region as complex and elusive as the Pacific Ocean. This approach draws from several scholarly disciplines, such as global history, environmental history, imperial studies and, of course, maritime history. The introduction presents an overview of the development in the east Pacific between Cook´s voyages and the beginning of the Californian Gold-Rush in the late 1840s. A region that had appeared remote and empty to Europeans became increasingly enmeshed in global networks. Igler identifies the themes to be explored in this frame of development: commerce; epidemics and diseases; violence, suppression and conflicts; processes of extinction of both animals and indigenous peoples; new perceptions and knowledge.

The agents involved in these processes were European powers such as Spain, Britain and Russia, the newly emerging United States, China and Japan as well as peoples indigenous to the region: Hawaiians, Tahitians, Aluutiq, Hoh, Tlingit and many others. The very structure of Igler´s narrative, however, makes it clear from the beginning that an attempt to identify the agents neatly along a structure of nations or empires would be only of limited help here. The book emphasizes mostly the actions of individuals and their effects on a region: John Kendrick´s trading expeditions in the Pacific, James Cook´s accumulation of knowledge and his policy concerning sexual encounters between sailors and indigenous women, James Dwight Dana´s concept of the Pacific Ocean as “an immense jigsaw puzzle of interrelatesd parts“ (p. 161), Mary Brewster´s observations about the realities of whaling, Timofei Tarakanov´s experience of being taken hostage by the Hoh, Adelbert von Chamisso’s travels on a Russian ship, and numerous other stories combine to create an impressive history of the east Pacific. In a more theoretical tone, Igler explains his approach as an interplay of global, oceanic, and local scales of history (p. 11). This approach proves very successful overall, but also problematic at times, when Igler fails to explain his choice of sources and the meaning of the individual story for the more general history. For instance, the choice of Adelbert von Chamisso is not entirely convincing, as his “holistic“ approach to the oceans can be found already in the writings by Langsdorff on the first Russian circumnavigation of the world in 1803-1806.

Apart from this, however, the chapters following the intriguing introduction explore and illustrate the set ambition in a very substantial manner. “Seas of Commerce“ describes how centres of trade emerged in the east Pacific, enabling individuals, companies and whole nations to establish new networks of contacts and to accumulate money and power. Such networks, of course, provided not only for the exchange of money and commodities, but also for the spread of bacteria. In “Disease, Sex and Indigenous Depopulation“, Igler develops an earlier argument.1 He describes not only the hardly imaginable degree of pain inflicted by new kinds of deadly germs, but explains how the effects were particularly dire as indigenous peoples were confronted with unknown diseases in a time of fundamental social change. The traditional concept of “virgin soil epidemics“ – the point that germs proved to be so dangerous, simply because the population was not used to them – ignores the social and economic transformations of the time. Neither actions of earlier missionaries nor later colonial structures bore such grim consequences as the new and intense traffic of trade vessels between the 1770s and the 1840s, when death and infertility diminished local populations on a hitherto unseen scale.

The vital point of the next chapter, named “Hostages and Captives“, is similar in the sense that it contrasts traditional practices of taking hostages among indigenous peoples and Russian promyshlenniki with the new structures that developed from the 1770s on. The growing numbers of traders and the increasing competition amongst them led to a more systematic approach to exploitation and, eventually, resulted in more violent strategies.

The next chapter describes how growing traffic and trade as well as an increasing demand for whale oil – in the western world – and pelts – in China – translated into “The Great Hunt“ and the near extinction of both whales and sea otters. While Russian interest, and also the initial British involvement in the region, were strongly motivated by the profit promised by sea otter pelts, the imperial expansion of the United States was closely connected to whaling. The money to be made by means of whaling turned the east Pacific into a highly lucrative region for American entrepreneurs and hence added a maritime component to the more traditional manifest destiny.

Knowledge and perception, finally, are the crucial elements of the last two chapters on “Naturalists and Natives in the Great Ocean“ and “Assembling the Pacific”. Here, Igler portrays scientists´ fascination with native cultures and their obsession with indigenous´ bodies and particularly skulls. The collections and systems emerging from the questionable activities of anthropologists and collectors provided another basis for the definition of an “eastern Pacific“. In a similar way, scientists identifying with the newly emerging oceanography were fascinated by the Pacific ocean. An assumed otherness and isolation worked together with recent developments to make this outdoor laboratory approachable to many. In particular, John Dwight Dana explored the region and laid the foundation for potential American interest in the Pacific Ocean – not necessarily followed up, however, when geology and geography in the late 19th century became strongly terracentric again.

Igler’s conclusion sees the evolution of the eastern Pacific to become an element of the American Far West, developing from a highly inter-imperial and connected part of the world into a region subject to strong American influence. The US-Mexican war and the Californian Gold-Rush were steps on this way, as was the Alaska purchase. Still, this book does not make a point about the development of a Pacific American frontier, and certainly it does not tell a story of American success. Rather, Igler emphasises the interconnectedness of this region, the multitude of factors and agents and hence the openness of the historical outcome and the violence and destruction deriving from this complex structure. The book is a welcome addition to recent debates in various fields, the most important of them perhaps being the discussion about how to historize the Pacific Ocean. This is an important piece of scholarship that will prove valuable to many readers, who can approach this book with many diverse questions and who will benefit from its equally diverse answers.

Note:
1 David Igler, Diseased Goods. Global Exchanges in the Eastern Pacific Basin, 1770-1850, in: American Historical Review 109 (2004) 3, pp. 693-719.