The Europeans Encounter the Peoples of the Pacific in the Eighteenth Century
Hen European explorers set out to map the Pacific, they brought with them artists to paint the landscapes and peoples they encountered. Later, other artists produced engravings of the original paintings and these engravings were made available to a wider public. In this way, even people of modest means or only limited literacy could learn something about the different cultures and peoples that were now in more regular contact with European commerce elsewhere in the world.
These artists documented what they saw, but their vision was also shaped by the ideas that they brought with them and by the classical European styles of portraiture and landscape painting that they had been trained to produce. On the one hand, their images sometimes emphasized the exotic or essentially different quality of life in the Pacific. At the same time, the use of conventional poses in the portraiture or in the depiction of human forms suggested hints of a developing understanding of the extent to which Europeans and people elsewhere in the world shared essential human characteristics. This ambiguity was
A. Portrait of Omai by Joshua Reynolds (c. 1774). B. "Omiah [sic] the Indian from Otaheite, presented to their Majesties at Kew," 1774.
And the German scientist’s writing inspired Darwin’s voyage to the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador.
Thus Europeans who looked outward did so for a variety of reasons and reached very different conclusions. For some Enlightenment thinkers and rulers, scientific reports from overseas fitted into a broad inquiry about civilization and human nature. That inquiry at times encouraged selfcriticism and at others simply shored up Europeans’ sense of their superiority. These themes reemerged during the nineteenth century, when new empires were built and the West’s place in the world was reassessed.
How revolutionary was the Enlightenment? Enlightenment thought did undermine central tenets of eighteenth-century culture and politics. It had wide resonance, well beyond a small group of intellectuals. Yet Enlightenment thinkers did not hold to any single political position. Even the most radical among them disagreed on the implications of their thought. Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Mary Wollstonecraft provide good examples of such radical thinkers.
C. View of the Inside of a House in the Island of Ulietea, with the Representation of a Dance to the Music of the Country, engraving after Sydney Parkinson, 1773.
Typical of Enlightenment political and social thought, which sought to uncover universal human truths, while at the same time remaining deeply interested and invested in exploring the differences they observed in peoples from various parts of the globe.
The first two images depict a Tahitian named Omai, who came to Britain as a crew member on a naval vessel in
July 1774. Taken three days later to meet King George III and Queen Charlotte at Kew (image B), he became a celebrity in England and had his portrait drawn by Joshua Reynolds, a famous painter of the period (image A). The third image is an engraving by two Florentine artists after a drawing by Sydney Parkinson, who was with James Cook on his first voyage to the Pacific in 1768 (image C).
The two artists had never visited the South Pacific, and their image is noteworthy for the way that the bodies of the islanders were rendered according to the classical styles of European art.
Questions for Analysis
1. Does the Reynolds portrait, in its choice of posture and expression, imply that Europeans and the peoples of the Pacific might share essential traits? What uses might Enlightenment thinkers have made of such a universalist implication?
2. How might a contemporary person in Britain have reacted to the portrait of Omai kneeling before the king?
3. Do you think image C is an accurate representation of life in the South Pacific? What purpose did such imaginary and idyllic scenes serve for their audience in Europe?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (roo-SOH, 1712-1778) was an “outsider” who quarreled with the other philosophes. He shared the philosophes’ search for intellectual and political freedom, and he attacked inherited privilege, yet he introduced other strains into Enlightenment thought, especially what was then called “sensibility,” or the cult of feeling. Rousseau’s interest in emotions led him to develop a more complicated portrait of human psychology than that of Enlightenment writers, who emphasized reason as the most important attribute of human beings.
He was also considerably more radical than his counterparts, one of the first to talk about popular sovereignty and democracy.
Rousseau’s milestone and difficult treatise on politics, The Social Contract, began with a now famous paradox: “Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” How had humans freely forged these chains? What were the origins of government? Was government’s authority legitimate? If not, Rousseau asked, how could it become so?
World History
