Historical Archaeology of Early Modern Colonialism in Asia-pacific ― The Southwest Pacific and Oceanian Regions

The history of Asia-Pacific since the sixteenth century has traditionally been told with Europe as the main player ushering in a globalized, capitalist world, but the contributors to this volume and its companion volume suggest that Europeans merely appropriated existing systems in the area for their own benefit. The essays help decentralize that global history and assemble a picture of the region before and after European involvement in order to develop a more holistic understanding of colonial processes.

In this volume of Historical Archaeology of Early Modern Colonialism in Asia-Pacific, case studies from Alofi, Vanuatu, the Marianas, Hawai'i, Guam, and Taiwan compare the development of colonialism across different islands. Contributors discuss human settlement before the arrival of Dutch, French, British, and Spanish explorers, tracing major exchange routes that were active as early as the tenth century. Pulling from oral tradition as well as archaeological and written records, they highlight rarely examined sixteenth- and seventeenth-century encounters between indigenous populations and Europeans and draw attention to how cross-cultural interaction impacted the local peoples of Oceania.

Packed with archaeological and historical evidence from both land and underwater sites, impressive in geographical scope, and featuring perspectives of scholars from many different countries and traditions, this volume and its companion illuminate the often misunderstood nature of early colonialism in Asia-Pacific.