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White Shadows in the South Seas
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138 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 1, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 10, 2018
deserted beauty
We think we’re civilized. We think we have culture, while those poor primitives out there used to kill and eat each other. They get tattoos, they fight with sharks, they eat dogs, cats, and sea centipedes, and they go around half-naked. Sheesh, what savages! Of course, our rivers do catch on fire occasionally, we pollute everything we touch, people are eating dog food come wintertime, thousands die of addictions every year, and we can wipe out whole villages from 35,000 feet up, and can threaten the whole planet if occasion demands. Yes, well, have you ever seen a white shadow? I was wondering what that was before I read this book, based on a stay in the Marquesas islands of the South Pacific back in 1913. Well, I don’t think I’m spoiling much if I drop the answer right here. “White shadows” refers to us, the people of the West—Europe and America---whose whalers, traders, and slavers arrived in the South Pacific like a bunch of crazy, murderous, drunk, kidnapping pirates who claimed to be civilized. Compared to what?.....is an excellent question.
OK, maybe Frederick O’Brien used some language that wouldn’t rank among politically-correct phrases today. Maybe also he still held some weird 19th century ideas about sunken continents and Polynesians as being actually Caucasians. But for his time, he was right on. He didn’t play the Great White sahib/bwana/tuan, but lived, ate, and played with the locals and he didn’t act superior in any way. Of course, he enjoyed “white privilege”, but that phrase wasn’t even invented then. He just did his best to fit in, accepting what was given and not looking down on anyone. He met various foreign castaways and hermits, he met tattooed old cannibals and recorded some of their (rather horrific) stories, he learned how to surf, climbed up the steep, green valleys, and admired the local girls, but (at least in print) did not succumb to their wiles. He wrote a fine book about the lifeways and beauties of the remote archipelago that perhaps half a century before had had 100,000 people, but by 1913 had only 4,000. What I especially liked about this book is the sense that runs through the whole thing that such a disaster was entirely avoidable had people acted differently, that the supposedly civilized Westerners had caused this near-genocide, bringing disease and culture-collapse. Like many people back over a hundred years ago, O’Brien thought that the Marquesans were doomed to disappear. People used to write that about the Native Americans, Ainu, and Hawaiians too. They did not disappear after all, but in the case of the Marquesas, they never recovered, their culture was shattered, and the survivors lived most dispiritedly amongst the luxuriant fruit, flowers, ferns, and rugged mountains surrounded by the Pacific. It's good to remember the long gone idyllic scenes of South Pacific islands, but it's also good to remind ourselves of more somber realities. (less)
We think we’re civilized. We think we have culture, while those poor primitives out there used to kill and eat each other. They get tattoos, they fight with sharks, they eat dogs, cats, and sea centipedes, and they go around half-naked. Sheesh, what savages! Of course, our rivers do catch on fire occasionally, we pollute everything we touch, people are eating dog food come wintertime, thousands die of addictions every year, and we can wipe out whole villages from 35,000 feet up, and can threaten the whole planet if occasion demands. Yes, well, have you ever seen a white shadow? I was wondering what that was before I read this book, based on a stay in the Marquesas islands of the South Pacific back in 1913. Well, I don’t think I’m spoiling much if I drop the answer right here. “White shadows” refers to us, the people of the West—Europe and America---whose whalers, traders, and slavers arrived in the South Pacific like a bunch of crazy, murderous, drunk, kidnapping pirates who claimed to be civilized. Compared to what?.....is an excellent question.
OK, maybe Frederick O’Brien used some language that wouldn’t rank among politically-correct phrases today. Maybe also he still held some weird 19th century ideas about sunken continents and Polynesians as being actually Caucasians. But for his time, he was right on. He didn’t play the Great White sahib/bwana/tuan, but lived, ate, and played with the locals and he didn’t act superior in any way. Of course, he enjoyed “white privilege”, but that phrase wasn’t even invented then. He just did his best to fit in, accepting what was given and not looking down on anyone. He met various foreign castaways and hermits, he met tattooed old cannibals and recorded some of their (rather horrific) stories, he learned how to surf, climbed up the steep, green valleys, and admired the local girls, but (at least in print) did not succumb to their wiles. He wrote a fine book about the lifeways and beauties of the remote archipelago that perhaps half a century before had had 100,000 people, but by 1913 had only 4,000. What I especially liked about this book is the sense that runs through the whole thing that such a disaster was entirely avoidable had people acted differently, that the supposedly civilized Westerners had caused this near-genocide, bringing disease and culture-collapse. Like many people back over a hundred years ago, O’Brien thought that the Marquesans were doomed to disappear. People used to write that about the Native Americans, Ainu, and Hawaiians too. They did not disappear after all, but in the case of the Marquesas, they never recovered, their culture was shattered, and the survivors lived most dispiritedly amongst the luxuriant fruit, flowers, ferns, and rugged mountains surrounded by the Pacific. It's good to remember the long gone idyllic scenes of South Pacific islands, but it's also good to remind ourselves of more somber realities. (less)
January 15, 2018
This book on the South Seas, and two others that followed, gained its author, Frederick O'Brien, much fame and popularity in the 1920s. Today, the book is difficult to find, and Frederick O'Brien has slipped back into obscurity. But never was there an individual about whom we know so much and so little at the same time. His works describe his life in the Marquesas in detail, but outside of his books on Polynesia, little remains to be known about him. A planned autobiography O'Brien was in the process of writing soon disappeared after his death. Meanwhile, White Shadows in the Southern Seas (the title refers to the calamity that European--especially French--and American civilization had brought to the Marquesas), along with Mystic Isles of the South Seas and Atolls of the Sun, did much to revive the popularity of the South Seas as a literary genre and a subject of romance and adventure for the general public in the West.
O'Brien himself was something of a globetrotting wanderer, and this trilogy of so-called Travel Books leaves him looking like a Jack Kerouac of the South Seas. Or, rather, as O'Brien undertook his journeys a generation earlier or more, perhaps Kerouac was the Frederick O'Brien of the American open road. At any rate, O'Brien was also a moralist and a loner. He brought these values to the Marquesas and the South Seas, and, in so doing, was able to stand apart and make a critical commentary on the lives of Polynesians ravaged by their encounter with modern civilization.
I have labeled O'Brien's work as "so-called Travel Books" because they are much, much more than that simple designation indicates. They are part autobiography, part philosophy, part social science, and part scientific journal. But most of all, they are storytelling in a grand style. Perhaps O'Brien did occasionally lapse into what we today consider overwhelming and flowery prose (not all that unusual in his era), but essentially he is a writer devoted to detail and the interruption of his own tale with stories of the people and places he encounters. This makes White Shadows in the South Seas, then, almost an anthology of myths, adventures at sea, and high personal drama and romance.
O'Brien died in 1932 in Sausalita, California. His fame died with him. And it is a pity that today, even among scholars on South Seas literature, he is sometimes forgotten. But he remains popular among the circle of people these days who still find something alluring in the now vanished world of Polynesia. O'Brien was, I suppose, the fulcrum between two great generations of South Seas writers and artists. He followed in the wake of Herman Melville, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Paul Gauguin, all of whom came to Atuona, on Hiva Oa, in the Marquesas. Almost simultaneously with O'Brien, although just a bit later, came the postwar generation. Edward A. Salisbury, along with Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, brought their motion picture cameras to the region. And Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall set up both their homes and literary shop in Tahiti. Jack London, a bit earlier, also wrote of his encounter with the South Seas, albeit most of his stories are centered on Hawaii.
One final note. O'Brien harshly denounces Europeans and Americans for their role in "depopulating" Polynesia. In the language of current criticism, the depopulating might be seen as genocide. For O'Brien describes islands and peoples who were in the process of dying away. Not only did they succumb to Western diseases for which they had little or no immunity, but they were also subject to black-birding (exported as virtual slave labor to Australasia), armed invasion, and commercial trading that eviscerated the traditional patterns of work, worship, and social hierarchy. (Salisbury and Nordhoff and Hall also mention the effect of the Spanish flu epidemic on Polynesians.) O'Brien was outraged with these developments. The only thing he could do about it, however, was to give life to their dying traditions. This he did in three volumes deserving of a better fate than they have so far met.
O'Brien himself was something of a globetrotting wanderer, and this trilogy of so-called Travel Books leaves him looking like a Jack Kerouac of the South Seas. Or, rather, as O'Brien undertook his journeys a generation earlier or more, perhaps Kerouac was the Frederick O'Brien of the American open road. At any rate, O'Brien was also a moralist and a loner. He brought these values to the Marquesas and the South Seas, and, in so doing, was able to stand apart and make a critical commentary on the lives of Polynesians ravaged by their encounter with modern civilization.
I have labeled O'Brien's work as "so-called Travel Books" because they are much, much more than that simple designation indicates. They are part autobiography, part philosophy, part social science, and part scientific journal. But most of all, they are storytelling in a grand style. Perhaps O'Brien did occasionally lapse into what we today consider overwhelming and flowery prose (not all that unusual in his era), but essentially he is a writer devoted to detail and the interruption of his own tale with stories of the people and places he encounters. This makes White Shadows in the South Seas, then, almost an anthology of myths, adventures at sea, and high personal drama and romance.
O'Brien died in 1932 in Sausalita, California. His fame died with him. And it is a pity that today, even among scholars on South Seas literature, he is sometimes forgotten. But he remains popular among the circle of people these days who still find something alluring in the now vanished world of Polynesia. O'Brien was, I suppose, the fulcrum between two great generations of South Seas writers and artists. He followed in the wake of Herman Melville, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Paul Gauguin, all of whom came to Atuona, on Hiva Oa, in the Marquesas. Almost simultaneously with O'Brien, although just a bit later, came the postwar generation. Edward A. Salisbury, along with Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, brought their motion picture cameras to the region. And Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall set up both their homes and literary shop in Tahiti. Jack London, a bit earlier, also wrote of his encounter with the South Seas, albeit most of his stories are centered on Hawaii.
One final note. O'Brien harshly denounces Europeans and Americans for their role in "depopulating" Polynesia. In the language of current criticism, the depopulating might be seen as genocide. For O'Brien describes islands and peoples who were in the process of dying away. Not only did they succumb to Western diseases for which they had little or no immunity, but they were also subject to black-birding (exported as virtual slave labor to Australasia), armed invasion, and commercial trading that eviscerated the traditional patterns of work, worship, and social hierarchy. (Salisbury and Nordhoff and Hall also mention the effect of the Spanish flu epidemic on Polynesians.) O'Brien was outraged with these developments. The only thing he could do about it, however, was to give life to their dying traditions. This he did in three volumes deserving of a better fate than they have so far met.
December 10, 2018
deserted beauty
We think we’re civilized. We think we have culture, while those poor primitives out there used to kill and eat each other. They get tattoos, they fight with sharks, they eat dogs, cats, and sea centipedes, and they go around half-naked. Sheesh, what savages! Of course, our rivers do catch on fire occasionally, we pollute everything we touch, people are eating dog food come wintertime, thousands die of addictions every year, and we can wipe out whole villages from 35,000 feet up, and can threaten the whole planet if occasion demands. Yes, well, have you ever seen a white shadow? I was wondering what that was before I read this book, based on a stay in the Marquesas islands of the South Pacific back in 1913. Well, I don’t think I’m spoiling much if I drop the answer right here. “White shadows” refers to us, the people of the West—Europe and America---whose whalers, traders, and slavers arrived in the South Pacific like a bunch of crazy, murderous, drunk, kidnapping pirates who claimed to be civilized. Compared to what?.....is an excellent question.
OK, maybe Frederick O’Brien used some language that wouldn’t rank among politically-correct phrases today. Maybe also he still held some weird 19th century ideas about sunken continents and Polynesians as being actually Caucasians. But for his time, he was right on. He didn’t play the Great White sahib/bwana/tuan, but lived, ate, and played with the locals and he didn’t act superior in any way. Of course, he enjoyed “white privilege”, but that phrase wasn’t even invented then. He just did his best to fit in, accepting what was given and not looking down on anyone. He met various foreign castaways and hermits, he met tattooed old cannibals and recorded some of their (rather horrific) stories, he learned how to surf, climbed up the steep, green valleys, and admired the local girls, but (at least in print) did not succumb to their wiles. He wrote a fine book about the lifeways and beauties of the remote archipelago that perhaps half a century before had had 100,000 people, but by 1913 had only 4,000. What I especially liked about this book is the sense that runs through the whole thing that such a disaster was entirely avoidable had people acted differently, that the supposedly civilized Westerners had caused this near-genocide, bringing disease and culture-collapse. Like many people back over a hundred years ago, O’Brien thought that the Marquesans were doomed to disappear. People used to write that about the Native Americans, Ainu, and Hawaiians too. They did not disappear after all, but in the case of the Marquesas, they never recovered, their culture was shattered, and the survivors lived most dispiritedly amongst the luxuriant fruit, flowers, ferns, and rugged mountains surrounded by the Pacific. It's good to remember the long gone idyllic scenes of South Pacific islands, but it's also good to remind ourselves of more somber realities.
We think we’re civilized. We think we have culture, while those poor primitives out there used to kill and eat each other. They get tattoos, they fight with sharks, they eat dogs, cats, and sea centipedes, and they go around half-naked. Sheesh, what savages! Of course, our rivers do catch on fire occasionally, we pollute everything we touch, people are eating dog food come wintertime, thousands die of addictions every year, and we can wipe out whole villages from 35,000 feet up, and can threaten the whole planet if occasion demands. Yes, well, have you ever seen a white shadow? I was wondering what that was before I read this book, based on a stay in the Marquesas islands of the South Pacific back in 1913. Well, I don’t think I’m spoiling much if I drop the answer right here. “White shadows” refers to us, the people of the West—Europe and America---whose whalers, traders, and slavers arrived in the South Pacific like a bunch of crazy, murderous, drunk, kidnapping pirates who claimed to be civilized. Compared to what?.....is an excellent question.
OK, maybe Frederick O’Brien used some language that wouldn’t rank among politically-correct phrases today. Maybe also he still held some weird 19th century ideas about sunken continents and Polynesians as being actually Caucasians. But for his time, he was right on. He didn’t play the Great White sahib/bwana/tuan, but lived, ate, and played with the locals and he didn’t act superior in any way. Of course, he enjoyed “white privilege”, but that phrase wasn’t even invented then. He just did his best to fit in, accepting what was given and not looking down on anyone. He met various foreign castaways and hermits, he met tattooed old cannibals and recorded some of their (rather horrific) stories, he learned how to surf, climbed up the steep, green valleys, and admired the local girls, but (at least in print) did not succumb to their wiles. He wrote a fine book about the lifeways and beauties of the remote archipelago that perhaps half a century before had had 100,000 people, but by 1913 had only 4,000. What I especially liked about this book is the sense that runs through the whole thing that such a disaster was entirely avoidable had people acted differently, that the supposedly civilized Westerners had caused this near-genocide, bringing disease and culture-collapse. Like many people back over a hundred years ago, O’Brien thought that the Marquesans were doomed to disappear. People used to write that about the Native Americans, Ainu, and Hawaiians too. They did not disappear after all, but in the case of the Marquesas, they never recovered, their culture was shattered, and the survivors lived most dispiritedly amongst the luxuriant fruit, flowers, ferns, and rugged mountains surrounded by the Pacific. It's good to remember the long gone idyllic scenes of South Pacific islands, but it's also good to remind ourselves of more somber realities.
September 1, 2021
Begins as a 3 star travel book on the Marquesas in the 1920's, then becomes a one star anthropological study. Interesting only to a skeptical historical scholar.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews