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Tahiti
Documents the step-by-step destruction of Tahiti's traditional culture by European exploration and exploitation
- GenresHistory
226 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
About the author
David Howarth
113 books91 followersDavid Armine Howarth (1912 - 1991) was a British historian and author. After graduating from Cambridge University, he was a radio war correspondent for BBC at the start of the Second World War, joining the Navy after the fall of France. He rose to the rank of lieutenant commander and spent four yeas in the Shetland Islands, becoming second in command of the Shetland Naval base. He was involved in the Special Operations Executive (SOE), including the Shetland Bus, an SOE operation manned by Norwegians running a clandestine route between Shetland and Norway, which utilized fishing boats with crews of Norwegian volunteers to land agents and arms in occupied Norway. For his contributions to espionage operations against the German occupation of Norway, he received King Haakon VII's Cross of Liberty. The King also made Howarth a Chevalier First Class of the Order of St Olav.
After the War he designed and built boats before turning to writing full time. He wrote an account of the Shetland Bus operation, as well as many other books of history, bringing to his many of his books an immense practical knowledge of ships and the sea.
David Howarth died in 1991. At his request, his ashes were scattered over the waters of Lunna Voe, Shetland, near Lunna House, the first base of the Shetland Bus operation.
After the War he designed and built boats before turning to writing full time. He wrote an account of the Shetland Bus operation, as well as many other books of history, bringing to his many of his books an immense practical knowledge of ships and the sea.
David Howarth died in 1991. At his request, his ashes were scattered over the waters of Lunna Voe, Shetland, near Lunna House, the first base of the Shetland Bus operation.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
December 30, 2020
I'm a little irritated at the moment. Yesterday I wrote a great review or maybe it was just good or OK on this book & there was some glitch that would not allow me to save it. So it was lost! Boo hiss.
So now you'll definitely get the just OK version....
Howarth's book focuses from the time of the first British discovery of a previously uncharted island, Tahiti, in 1767 to the mid-1840's. In this time period Tahiti was visited by the British, French, Spanish & Americans. Captain Cook made multiple trips there and appears to have been the most tolerant and open to a culture so different from his own, yet even he never really understood the full extent especially they way they governed themselves. Missionaries from England lived there among the people, yet never seemed to understand them, for 45 years; but it was the French who finally was able to get the Tahitian people to "cede" the island to them becoming a French colony.
The journals of many of these early explorers found the Tahitians to be a happy, healthy, kind, generous and forgiving people whose culture became unrecognizable 50-60yrs later. The author states: Early explorers observed Tahitian life, admired its virtues and exploited its customs. None of them perceived a whole system of ethics fundamentally different from their own... Tahiti was a small civilization perfectly in balance. In spite of good intentions, Europeans fatally upset it merely by their presence and especially by introduction of diseases, the concept of private property, and the concept of sin.
This was an interesting time period of exploration and learning about a new culture, but I have to admit the writing was dry at times and I could only read this in short spurts. I would have also liked a little bit more about the flora and fauna of the island as they found it. I know, I know, its a history book...I'm just saying.
We get the words Taboo and Tattoo from the Tahitians/Polynesians
So now you'll definitely get the just OK version....
Howarth's book focuses from the time of the first British discovery of a previously uncharted island, Tahiti, in 1767 to the mid-1840's. In this time period Tahiti was visited by the British, French, Spanish & Americans. Captain Cook made multiple trips there and appears to have been the most tolerant and open to a culture so different from his own, yet even he never really understood the full extent especially they way they governed themselves. Missionaries from England lived there among the people, yet never seemed to understand them, for 45 years; but it was the French who finally was able to get the Tahitian people to "cede" the island to them becoming a French colony.
The journals of many of these early explorers found the Tahitians to be a happy, healthy, kind, generous and forgiving people whose culture became unrecognizable 50-60yrs later. The author states: Early explorers observed Tahitian life, admired its virtues and exploited its customs. None of them perceived a whole system of ethics fundamentally different from their own... Tahiti was a small civilization perfectly in balance. In spite of good intentions, Europeans fatally upset it merely by their presence and especially by introduction of diseases, the concept of private property, and the concept of sin.
This was an interesting time period of exploration and learning about a new culture, but I have to admit the writing was dry at times and I could only read this in short spurts. I would have also liked a little bit more about the flora and fauna of the island as they found it. I know, I know, its a history book...I'm just saying.
We get the words Taboo and Tattoo from the Tahitians/Polynesians
April 20, 2023
Howarth is, by some margin, the best English-language writer of popular history in the twentieth century (imo), and in Tahiti he provides a fascinating and deeply depressing account of the collapse of traditional Tahitian society upon coming into contact with the West.
Howarth avoids the usual lazy trope of "evil Western colonizers vs. magical perfect Edenic natives" -- the Tahitians did engage in infanticide, after all! -- but this is one case where that trope actually might be applicable. I really found myself rooting for the Tahitians, because dear Lord, you can't help but facepalm at least once per chapter re: whatever new completely insanely evil thing the British were up to now . . . the historical end of the European colonial empires didn't come nearly soon enough.
Howarth's use of primary sources is especially good, and the final chapters (on more recent Tahitian history) were a welcome addition as well.
Howarth avoids the usual lazy trope of "evil Western colonizers vs. magical perfect Edenic natives" -- the Tahitians did engage in infanticide, after all! -- but this is one case where that trope actually might be applicable. I really found myself rooting for the Tahitians, because dear Lord, you can't help but facepalm at least once per chapter re: whatever new completely insanely evil thing the British were up to now . . . the historical end of the European colonial empires didn't come nearly soon enough.
Howarth's use of primary sources is especially good, and the final chapters (on more recent Tahitian history) were a welcome addition as well.
May 31, 2009
This is one of those books that makes you extremely obnoxious around other people because you'll spend all of your time trying to channel the topic to Tahiti -- "Speaking of Star Trek, did you know that Patrick Stewart, who played Jean-Luc Picard, is actually a Yorkshireman -- just like James Cook the famous explorer who traveled to Tahiti on his second voyage around the Pacific in 1772. Ever the observer, Cook was the first European to have extensive contact with various people of the Pacific. He correctly concluded there was a relationship among all the people in the Pacific, despite their being separated by thousands of miles of ocean..." and so on. You will start talking like this when you read this book. David Howarth is one of my favorite historians because he writes about what he loves, whether it's Waterloo, the Norman Invasion or Tahiti and his love transfers into great writing and storytelling. The world is so fascinating and history can be exhilarating when it's conveyed this well.
January 18, 2026
The history of Tahiti from its discovery in 1767. Howarth describes the Tahitians as Noble Savages, living in harmony and peace in an idyllic paradise. Every day year round in Tahiti is 80 degrees. They live in economic socialism and societal feudalism. Everybody has everything they want already or it is easily obtainable and nobody has more than anyone else. The island and those surrounding it are ruled by local chieftains who are descended from god. They are happy and carefree and have no sexual taboos. They live the lives of Adam and Eve before they are cast out of Eden. This is the basis of Howarth's book and colors everything that comes after.
When the English arrive they are met with half naked women offering themselves, half naked men offering presents, and half naked men attacking them with sticks and rocks. After killing a few Tahitians the attacks stop and then it's just Tahitians handing out free stuff, Tahitian women handing out free sex, and Tahitians stealing everything that isn't nailed down. This is how things go on repeat for decades. Ships only stay in Tahiti for a few weeks at most and only visit once every three of four years. But slowly the Tahitians fall to the corruption of the Europeans and their paradise is lost.
This is how Howarth tells it and for the most part it is true. Howarth quickly dismissed anything that would differ from the description of peaceful, loving children of nature. They are the perfect example of what humanity could be, except for the commonly practiced human sacrifices, the exposing of infants, and the wars for no reason except boredom. Over time the Europeans teach them about private property, monarchy, jealousy, prostitution, alcoholism, how to fight war with better weapons, along with tuberculosis, diphtheria, influenza, smallpox, and all the French diseases. Once the Tahitians have weapons besides rocks and can now actually win a war they fight incessantly, and that along with all the diseases leads to the population dropping by 90% over the next 100 years.
It's an interesting history and Howarth is fair in concluding that exposure to the outside world did not benefit the people of Tahiti, a common result when people of a higher technological state of development meet a lower one. He covers most of the early visits to the island, and it is a demonstration of how actually fragile the society was that it failed from so little outside influence.
When the English arrive they are met with half naked women offering themselves, half naked men offering presents, and half naked men attacking them with sticks and rocks. After killing a few Tahitians the attacks stop and then it's just Tahitians handing out free stuff, Tahitian women handing out free sex, and Tahitians stealing everything that isn't nailed down. This is how things go on repeat for decades. Ships only stay in Tahiti for a few weeks at most and only visit once every three of four years. But slowly the Tahitians fall to the corruption of the Europeans and their paradise is lost.
This is how Howarth tells it and for the most part it is true. Howarth quickly dismissed anything that would differ from the description of peaceful, loving children of nature. They are the perfect example of what humanity could be, except for the commonly practiced human sacrifices, the exposing of infants, and the wars for no reason except boredom. Over time the Europeans teach them about private property, monarchy, jealousy, prostitution, alcoholism, how to fight war with better weapons, along with tuberculosis, diphtheria, influenza, smallpox, and all the French diseases. Once the Tahitians have weapons besides rocks and can now actually win a war they fight incessantly, and that along with all the diseases leads to the population dropping by 90% over the next 100 years.
It's an interesting history and Howarth is fair in concluding that exposure to the outside world did not benefit the people of Tahiti, a common result when people of a higher technological state of development meet a lower one. He covers most of the early visits to the island, and it is a demonstration of how actually fragile the society was that it failed from so little outside influence.
October 24, 2023
Tahiti is an incredibly beautiful island with a history wrought with colonialism and brutality but also ingenuity and joy. I sawthis on full display during my recent trip there, during which I was reading this book. The author makes a point of inserting nuance into an issue that in my mind can’t possibly have mucuh-the almost total exploitation of a land, its people and its culture. He seems to have a remarkable soft spot for Captain Cook which especially rubbed me the wrong way. It’s a shame he didn’t seem to talk to many Tahitians to write this book but rather argued that the only literature he could refer to were primary sources and these were conveniently only written by the colonizers. I think this book falls into the familiar trap that many US history books do so I took all of the info with a grain of salt.
Read
August 24, 2010The subtitle of this book is 'A Paradise Lost'. The description of the paradise is mostly by backshadowing. It's not helpful to say that an edenic society has no history or customs. This is a sort of arrogant assumption that one gains selfhood through suffering, and only thus. The ancient Tahitians were human beings: if they lived at peace with each other and their environment, we'd be far better advised to sit student with them, and not to patronize them. Furthermore, focusing on the disintegration of the society under repeated assaults, while important, shouldn't be the primary focus of the book.
That said, if the Europeans behaved as badly in other parts of Oceania as they're documented as behaving here (and it's highly likely, by all accounts--often worse, indeed), the effects on Tahiti were only more obviously bad than in other places (because the Tahitians didn't 'deserve' it by being recalcitrant and hostile). Darwin's attempts to 'prove' that the Tahitians were better off under 'Christian' rule than aboriginally (from an early publication with Fitzroy, the captain of the Beagle) were pretty good examples of European hubristic bias. This book is a good corrective beginning, but there needs to be a more comprehensive multivolume work covering all of Oceania.
That said, if the Europeans behaved as badly in other parts of Oceania as they're documented as behaving here (and it's highly likely, by all accounts--often worse, indeed), the effects on Tahiti were only more obviously bad than in other places (because the Tahitians didn't 'deserve' it by being recalcitrant and hostile). Darwin's attempts to 'prove' that the Tahitians were better off under 'Christian' rule than aboriginally (from an early publication with Fitzroy, the captain of the Beagle) were pretty good examples of European hubristic bias. This book is a good corrective beginning, but there needs to be a more comprehensive multivolume work covering all of Oceania.
December 19, 2011
The chapter on the Duff, the Calvinist missionaries, is priceless. This is an anthropological study as much as anything else, and my primary interest in reading it was to start developing some subject matter awareness on Tahiti and the South Pacific, to be able to discover sources and context for learning more about Duncan McCluskey, who Howard Irwin suggests perhaps ended up there.
The sociodynamics of the two populations--western colonizers and native tribespeople--provides endless source of bemusement. Ultimately, of course, it is tragic how an island paradise was destroyed. The basis for the same theme of "Dream of a Ridiculous Man."
The sociodynamics of the two populations--western colonizers and native tribespeople--provides endless source of bemusement. Ultimately, of course, it is tragic how an island paradise was destroyed. The basis for the same theme of "Dream of a Ridiculous Man."
January 25, 2012
Simply superior reading. Riveting. Entertaining. Revealing. The lessons in this book are interesting and intriguing, as are the results of Cooks engagements with the islanders. The lessons found in this book are as valuable today as they could have been then.
This book is not one you will put down easily. Once you begin, Howarth piques your curiosity and leads you to the next chapter/experience/lesson seamlessly.
Essential reading!
This book is not one you will put down easily. Once you begin, Howarth piques your curiosity and leads you to the next chapter/experience/lesson seamlessly.
Essential reading!
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews