The first sees the fringing continents being drawn into the island Pacific and the second sees the island Pacific being flung to the periphery of these lands. His analysis harnesses two forces: centripetal and centrifugal. Drawing on Asian, Oceanian, European, American, ancient and modern narratives, the author assembles a fascinating Pacific region from a truly global perspective. Matt Matsuda’s splendid history shatters the basin and, with it, the rim. The book identifies and draws together the defining threads and extraordinary personal narratives which have contributed to this history, showing how localised contacts and contests have often blossomed into global struggles over colonialism, tourism and the rise of Asian economies. From ancient canoe navigators, monumental civilisations, pirates and seaborne empires, to the rise of nuclear testing and global warming, Matt Matsuda ranges across the frontiers of colonial history, anthropology and Pacific Rim economics and politics, piecing together a history of the region. This essential single-volume history of the Pacific traces the global interactions and remarkable peoples that have connected these regions with each other and with Europe and the Indian Ocean, for millennia. Asia, the Pacific Islands and the coasts of the Americas have long been studied separately.
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