In a one-page essay (400-500 words) describe how you think the Europeans’ feelings and perceptions about their own society in the 18th – 19th centuries influenced their perceptions of the peoples they encountered in the Pacific and vice versa, how learning about other peoples affected their perceptions of their own society. Think about the Europeans still at home, who were just hearing about these strange societies through the reports of explorers. How did their interpretations of “savage” or “primitive” peoples change through time? How do you think their perceptions might have differed if they had actually gone to the places they read about and met the people or lived with them for an extended period of time? (A useful example is to think of the contrast between Captain Cook’s notes from his time in Tahiti and the way that they were written up by the biographer/historian Hawkesworth.)
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