Published Resources Details
Edited Book
- Title
- a Voyage Round the World, by George FORSTER
- Imprint
- University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu, 2000, Vol 1., 523 pp., Vol. 2, 398 pp
- Subject
- History of Australian Science - General
- Description
'George Forster's Voyage Round the World, first published in 1777, is a remarkably vivid account of Captain James Cook's second voyage [in the Resolution], which ranged over the Pacific and Antarctic waters in search of a southern land. Needless to say, no continent was found, but the voyage yielded a wealth of knowledge - presented in an animated way in this volume - which is distinguished by the range and depth of its anthropological reflection. Forster's book is considerably longer than Cook's own account and a great deal richer in its descriptions of the peoples of Oceania than any other narrative from the voyage; the book is arguably the richest of any eighteenth-century account of Pacific peoples. Its detail and acuity are all the more important because participants in Cook's second voyage encountered a singularly wide range of Pacific peoples; some, such as the New Caledonians and the Tannese, were met for the first time.' [From the Preface].
- Source
- Carlson 2001