The Fatal Impact: An Account Of The Invasion Of The South Pacific 1767-1840
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Tanning and foxing
Markings: Fair - Rubbed edges and bumping on spine and corners,Previous owner
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
In the latter half of the eighteenth century, European explorers — led by the intrepid Captain James Cook — sailed into the vast, uncharted waters of the South Pacific, encountering civilisations of extraordinary richness and complexity; The Fatal Impact chronicles the catastrophic consequences of that collision between worlds, tracing the period from 1767 to 1840 as Western ambition, disease, and cultural arrogance systematically dismantled the indigenous societies of Tahiti, Australia, and Antarctica. Alan Moorehead presents a sweeping, meticulously researched narrative that moves from the idealistic wonder of first contact to the grim reality of exploitation, detailing how the Polynesian and Aboriginal peoples were irrevocably transformed — and in many cases destroyed — by the forces of empire. Moorehead, celebrated for his gift for narrative history, writes with the authority of a journalist and the sensitivity of a humanist, crafting a work that is as much a moral reckoning as it is a historical account. His prose is lucid and compelling, drawing on the journals of Cook, Banks, and other contemporaries to illustrate the tragic irony at the heart of the Age of Discovery — that the very act of finding these peoples set in motion the mechanisms of their undoing. A landmark work of Pacific history, The Fatal Impact remains a profoundly relevant and sobering testament to the human cost of empire, leaving the reader to contemplate what was irrevocably lost when two worlds finally met.
Author: Alan Moorehead
Format: Paperback
Genre: Australasion & Pacific history
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Tanning and foxing
Markings: Fair - Rubbed edges and bumping on spine and corners,Previous owner
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
In the latter half of the eighteenth century, European explorers — led by the intrepid Captain James Cook — sailed into the vast, uncharted waters of the South Pacific, encountering civilisations of extraordinary richness and complexity; The Fatal Impact chronicles the catastrophic consequences of that collision between worlds, tracing the period from 1767 to 1840 as Western ambition, disease, and cultural arrogance systematically dismantled the indigenous societies of Tahiti, Australia, and Antarctica. Alan Moorehead presents a sweeping, meticulously researched narrative that moves from the idealistic wonder of first contact to the grim reality of exploitation, detailing how the Polynesian and Aboriginal peoples were irrevocably transformed — and in many cases destroyed — by the forces of empire. Moorehead, celebrated for his gift for narrative history, writes with the authority of a journalist and the sensitivity of a humanist, crafting a work that is as much a moral reckoning as it is a historical account. His prose is lucid and compelling, drawing on the journals of Cook, Banks, and other contemporaries to illustrate the tragic irony at the heart of the Age of Discovery — that the very act of finding these peoples set in motion the mechanisms of their undoing. A landmark work of Pacific history, The Fatal Impact remains a profoundly relevant and sobering testament to the human cost of empire, leaving the reader to contemplate what was irrevocably lost when two worlds finally met.