Aphrodite’s Island: The European Discovery of Tahiti (2009) is a shared historical account of not only the first European contact with the South Pacific island of Tahiti, but also Europeans’ fascination with the country.
This book is detailed and comprehensive, with its sketches and colour plates. Salmond separates fact from fantasy using Tahitian oral histories, European manuscripts, art, artefacts, and expedition logs in this massive tome of 500 pages.
The Spaniard Juan Fernandez may have sighted Tahiti in 1576, and Portuguese Pedro Fernandes de Queiros too in 1606, calling it Sagittaria, but it was Englishman Samuel Wallis that was credited with its first landing in 1768 nine months before Frenchman Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, but the news had not yet reached Europe. Bougainville claimed the island for France, and called it the Island of Cythera after the Greek island where Aphrodite had first been washed ashore. But it is also known as the Land of Love, the Island of Venus, and Utopia.
British Captain James Cook landed in 1769 to observe the astronomical event, the Transit of Venus, calling the land King George’s Island. His second voyage to Tahiti was from 1772-1775.
The real name of Aphrodite’s Island was Otaheite, and it was the Spaniards from Peru in 1772 that pronounced it Tahiti, with the visit of Don Thomas Gayangos in the Aguila.
James Cook, on his third voyage, landed in Australia in April 1779, and returned to Tahiti where he was killed.
There are wonderful bits of history mentioned in this book, such as the women dressed as a man on Bougainville’s ship, unbeknownst to the crew until Tahitian men revealed her true identity by her scent. And Frenchman Bougainville sighted Australia two years before Cook but dismissed it as useless for settlement, didn’t land, and headed for New Guinea instead. Captain Cook shocked his crew by, literally, letting his hair down (untying it) for a discussion with Tahitian leaders.
(Australia is a digression but an important one). Although British William Dampier had explored parts of Australia in 1688, it was Englishman Matthew Flinders, visiting Tahiti and circumnavigating Australia in 1802, who confirmed it as a continent, naming it Terra Australis (although the term Australia was first used on a 1545 German map). Flinders is particularly famous in South Australia for landing on 28 January – beating the Frenchman Nicolas Baudin by two days. Baudin was sent by Napoleon Bonaparte to collect interesting things for Josephine, and he landed in Tasmania first, on 13 January, ‘picking up shells and catching butterflies.’ Flinders and Baudin met on 8 April – in the cove that Flinders called Encounter Bay where Flinders boarded Baudin’s ship to have breakfast (despite thinking their countries were still at war, although a treaty had been signed two weeks before the meeting).
This book concludes with the arrival of William Bligh in 1788 to Tahiti – stopping short of the settlement years. European settlement commenced from 1789 with the British crew from Bligh’s HMS Bounty. Englishman Charles Darwin also visited the island in the HMS Beaglein 1835.
What I like about Salmond’s book is its extensive coverage of Tahitian explorers Tupaia, Ahutoru, Hitihiti, Puhoro, and Ma’I. Tupaia, who wrote about Tahitian cosmology, recorded by Joseph Banks in 1769, is described as ‘an extraordinary genius.’ Tupaia piloted James Cook’s ship, the HMS Endeavour,as Cook sailed in search of the Great Southern Continent (Australia). When Cook landed in Botany Bay, Australia, in April 1770, Tupaia was standing next to him.
Ahutoru accompanied Bougainville when he returned to Paris, spent two years there, and dined with the King Louis XV of France in Versailles, and Hitihiti travelled with Captain Cook to Easter Island. Ma’I too travelled to England, met King George and Sarah Banks – the sister of botanist Joseph – had his portrait painted and was lionised. Another islander could name the stars and pointed out ‘those that marked the bearing of Tahiti.’ European explorers showered Tahitian explorers with both compliments and criticism – were the Europeans proud, yet jealous, of their skills and genius?
Europeans accidentally visited Tahiti in their search for Australia, yet it is the Tahitians that maintain that they ‘summoned’ these European explorers to their land. Since 1768, eight islanders sailed on European ships as explorers, and Hitihiti was the first to return in 1774. Even when the Tahitians realised that the Europeans were not gods, but mere mortals, they thought their immense sea voyages over months and years were extraordinary.
Salmond also highlights death and diseases; misconceptions, myths and legends; clashes and conflicts; sexuality and eroticism; all associated with Tahitians and their effects on European men far from home. More importantly, Salmond highlights the significance of Tahiti as a Pacific pathway for sea voyages, and the leadership roles that Tahitians assumed in the early contact periods with strangers from strange lands. It places predominantly unknown Tahitians, and their oral histories, in a shared historical context that leaves no detail omitted.
MARTINA NICOLLSis an international aid and development consultant, and the authorof:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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