New York: Harper Collins, 2019. xvi, 365 pp. (Maps, B&W photos, coloured photos, illustrations.) US$29.99, cloth. ISBN 978-0-06-206087-7.
Sea People is at its core a historiography. While superficially it deals with how Polynesians came to first arrive in their homelands, ultimately it is not about Polynesians or other Pacific Islanders. Instead, it is largely about how outsiders, mainly European explorers, colonizers, and scientists, have attempted to answer their own questions about how people got to these remote islands. Thompson takes us on a 500-year journey, beginning with the earliest Europeans to cross the Pacific, and concluding with applications of DNA analysis to the understanding of island journeys. Although a bit disjointed at times, this well-written story invites the reader to explore and critique the mindset of sailors and scholars who have studied the Pacific for the past few hundred years.
Sea People is organized into six main parts, ordered chronologically, subdivided into thematic chapters, and bookended with a prologue and coda. In part 1, Thompson describes accounts of the first European explorers, starting with Magellan’s expedition, to enter the region. She discusses later encounters between Pacific Islanders and Europeans in the Marquesas and elsewhere, describing communications and what were almost certainly miscommunications, as recorded in Europeans’ journals. Particularly interesting is her discussion of Europeans’ centuries-long fixation on finding “Terra Australis Incognita,” a mythical utopian southern continent that “balanced” the continental weight of the northern hemisphere.
Part 2 deals primarily with British voyaging in the late eighteenth century, focusing on the travels of Captain James Cook. Especially noteworthy here are discussions of Tupaia’s exchanges with the crew, and his eventual decision to join them for the remainder of their journey. Thompson highlights the role of Tupaia in the success of the voyages, as well as the cross-cultural construction of a regional map based on Tupaia’s extensive knowledge of the region. Part 3 addresses the European attempts to understand Polynesian origins from the late eighteenth century to the early twentieth century. While Europeans did ask Polynesians about their origins, radically different ontologies left them unsatisfied with the answers given. This led to a great deal of fanciful speculation by Europeans and Euro-Americans.
The latter half of the book delves into twentieth and twenty-first-century study of Polynesia and the Pacific more generally. Part 4 focuses on anthropology and archaeology, beginning with the ways in which the early twentieth-century European obsession with racializing everyone impeded understanding. It then moves on to the stories of Te Rangi Hiroa (Peter Buck), the advent of scientific archaeology in the Pacific, the recovery of Lapita pottery, and the significance of radiocarbon dating to these studies. Part 5 dives into experimental voyaging work and the revival of Polynesian sailing practices, aided by Micronesian knowledge. Finally, part 6 looks at recent scientific work, aided by DNA analysis and large numbers of radiocarbon dates. The prologue and coda provide reflective bookends to the volume, detailing Thompson’s personal motivations for telling this story, and reflections on what it means for outsiders to conduct research in the Pacific.
A few issues do hinder the book’s effectiveness. The title immediately stands out as a bit odd and misleading. “Sea People” is a specific reference to a purported group in the eastern Mediterranean during the Late Bronze Age. It is not a term widely used in Polynesia or the Pacific more generally, and it is a bit jarring that this term is used without further explanation or discussion. The prologue also introduces a major motivation on the author’s part for beginning this book project: her husband, Seven, is Māori, and thus he and her children are descendants of the grand voyaging history of the Pacific. After providing vivid anecdotes of their family travels in the Pacific, which perhaps overly romanticize the connections between all Polynesians, her family is conspicuously absent from the rest of the book. As a reader, I was left wanting to hear her family’s voices. This was, after all, about their stories.
Furthermore, the book is unfocused geographically. Thompson does define the limits of the large region of Polynesia. However, she also discusses other regions of the Pacific in considerable detail, and often seems to conflate “Pacific Islands” with “Polynesia.” There is quite a bit of interconnectedness between Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia, and they are all part of the grand voyaging traditions of the Pacific. Many of the topics she discusses, such as Lapita migrations and navigation, are not exclusive to, or even centred on Polynesia. In popular culture, it is quite common for Micronesia and Melanesia to be either erroneously lumped in with Polynesia or to be marginalized in discussions of the Pacific, and this book is unfortunately no exception. The full recognition and inclusion of Melanesia and Micronesia would have made for an even richer and more compelling (not to mention more accurate) story.
Other aspects of the book are particularly commendable. Thompson rightly problematizes the term “discovery” when talking about the first Europeans to encounter islands in eastern Polynesia. This is refreshing to see in a work of popular literature. Moreover, while the book focuses more on people who are not from the Pacific, it is reflexive about this, particularly in the coda. She raises the question of how much outsiders, especially those representing colonial powers, can be trusted to understand and portray the Polynesian past. This is an important question clouded with complexities and contradictions. Relatedly, she also points out that as scientific study of the Polynesian past by outsiders has continued, it has developed stories that are more and more similar to the stories Polynesians tell about themselves. While it is not present in the manuscript, perhaps an expanded exploration of this observation could help to chart a way forward for accurate, ethical, and collaborative study of the Polynesian past by both insiders and outsiders.
Maureece J. Levin
Valdosta State University, Valdosta