Article ID: CBB008329293

Among ‘Savage and Brutal Nations’: Instructing Identity and Science in the Pacific (2022)

unapi

This article reads the ‘hints’ provided by the President of the Royal Society Lord Morton to James Cook on his first Pacific voyage in 1768, first to show what they reveal about the contested views of technological advance as an index of progress in European thought in the later eighteenth century and, second, how that connection between technology and progress serves to entrench distinct differences between European and Indigenous identities in the colonial mind. Morton's ‘hints’ served as a kind of script that told the Europeans how to communicate their position as bearers of superior enlightened humanity. They functioned, therefore, as a technology of identity by ordering the behaviour of the European newcomers and curating their perceptions of the Indigenous people they encountered. Although the ‘hints’ were a self-conscious expression of enlightened sensibilities, they remained a technology for the colonial projection of those sensibilities and for performance of European identity.

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https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB008329293/

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Authors & Contributors
Williams, Glyndwr
Robin JH Clark
Fix, Adam
Martínez, Julia
Irving-Stonebraker, Sarah
Peter Dowling
Concepts
Indigenous peoples; indigeneity
Travel; exploration
Colonialism
Cross-cultural interaction; cultural influence
Trade
Sea travel
Time Periods
18th century
Enlightenment
19th century
17th century
Early modern
20th century
Places
Pacific Ocean
Tahiti
Great Britain
Australia
England
Spain
Institutions
Royal Society of London
Great Britain. Royal Navy
East India Company (English)
National Maritime Museum (Great Britain)
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