chapter from authors book in progress on the subjec

Mehnert, Klaus, 1906-1984

eVols at University of Hawaii at Manoa

"PACIFIC HISTORY"By KLAUS MEHNERTIn the world's politica.! 'lIocabu!arv, "The Pacific" has beco7n6 oneof the most frequently used terms. Fro-in yeM to year the connecti01~between Atlantic and Pacific affairs has grown closer. With tke Rome-Berlin·TokllO Axis ,"eaching from Bordeaux to the MarshaU Isla'TUis, awlwith the Anglo-A merican bloc circlinfl the globe, events in 011£ hemispheremost inti1ltl£tely affect those in the othe'r. To supple'1ll.ent the hugea.mount of literature on the modern polit'ical problems of the Paoific, wehere p1"eSent some ideas on the hUItoT'y of tha.t area.In 1930 the a1Lthor was invited to join the facultll of tke UniversityOf Hawaii. Before that he had been connected 1uith the Univers·it·ies ofBel'lin and California. The histo'ry of the White powers, pwrti.culc£rl,yof Russia, in t.he Pacific has be61~ his chief inte'rest, and he has taughtcourses in "History of Russia in AS'ia 'and on the Paoific" and "HistoT/lof the Westen~ Nations in the Pacifico" An a.rticle by hill~entitled "Marco Polo and the Pacific" and closely related to the ,present6118ay hCl~ iust beel~ published by the 1Iln.gazille ull Ma1'co Polo" inShanghai.The following is a chqpter fr(}m It book on the histc}lll of the Pacific1Oh'jch the author hll.8 been worki.ng on for the 1JUst three year8 at theUniversity of Hawaii.THE NEGLECTED PACIFICThe biggest thing on the surface oftile earth-tllt~ Padfic Oce"n h"o beenneglected by historians. Up to the Ageof Discovery, man was unaware of thePncific's existencp.. Then he becameincreasingly conscious of this ocean,and in the last hundred years he studiedthe Pacific area with mounting interestand from an increasing number of an-gles. But, while much research and writ-ing have been devoted to the historiesof individual regions of this area (suchas Japan, China, California, and Hawaii)and some to individual aspects of Pan-Pacific history (such as discoveries,trade, and naval strategy), there hasbeen no comprehensive history of thePacific as a whole. The time has cometo write such a history; world interestin this area and the amount of pre-paratory research justify it.The author's desire to make this studyresulted from six years of life, study,and teaching in and on the Pacific,p"rticularly in thA Hawaiian Islands.For this enormous ocean cannot fail toimpr'U:IQ llnynne who ha.c; lived in itsmidst i who has stood in a long line atthe Honolulu Post Offi<!9 on hOAt 01"Clipper day waiting to send a letterover thousands of miles of water tothe nearest mainland; who from aplane or mountain top has seen theverdant archipelago enclosed by thewhite breakers of waves travelingover seventy million square miles; orwho has contemplated on a globe againstthe background of blue the specks ofdust that mark the Hawaiian group.Nowhere in the world do people thinkand talk as much in Pacific terms asin Hawaii, where the "Institute ofPacific Relations" was founded, wherepeople assert they live at the "cross-roads of the Pacific," and where thetelephone directory includes a long listof Pacific enterprises-down to the"Pacific Fertilizer," "Pacific Plumbing,"and "Pacific Junk" companies.226 THE XXth CENTURY"PACIFIC HISTORY"?Originally, as a European and aGerman, I was skeptical of so sweepinga term as "Pacific History." The mapsand atlases amid which I grew up hadEurope in the center and hardly evershowed the Pacific as a unit. Indeed,what was there to show except a lotof water, currents and winds, and someislands? For all practical purposesJapan seemed to be the end of theworld in the east and California in thewest,Furthermore, can eastern Asia andwestern America have a history incommon-lands with the oldest andyoungest civilizations, Confucius andHollywood, Peking and New Yark, tworaces, two cultures, two ways of life,as different and incongruous as these?Do they not have more in common withEurope than among themselves? Cana common denominator be fOllnn forthe snowy wastes of Alaska, the warmcharm of Polynesia, the deserts ofAustralia 'fYe3, Pacific Hi3tory exi3t3, it isworthy of careful analysis, and know-ledge of it is necessary for the under-standing of the future. Some writershave predicted that the political centerof gravity will shift from the Atlanticto the Pacific. The future we do notknow; but even if the next phase ofhuman hhsLory 5hould be called Paclfic,it will not be "pacific," and manydecIsive events are certaIn to happenin the vast expanse of this sea, eventsgrounded in facts and ideas of the past.DEFINITION"Pacific History" is a new and un-familiar child in the old establishedfamily of histories and requires adefinition both as to area and periodcovered. A globe shows, better than aMercator map, that the Pacific is almosta closed lake. In the north, Asia andAmerica all but touch each other; inthe southwest a dense mass of islandslinks Asia to Australia and New Zea-land. This leaves only two larger gaps,separating the Antarctic-on one sidefrom New Zealand, and on the otherfrom Tierra del Fuego. Thus the areaof Pacific History should embra.ce thePacific coasts of:a. Asia-from the Bering Straitto the Malay Peninsula;b. The Americas between the ___straits of Bering and Magellan; ~c. The Antarctic continent,all with their approaches and hinter-lands. Everything between these coastsshould also be included : Japan, theNetherland East Indies, Australia, NewZealand, and the Pacific Islands.It is less easy to establish the limitsof Pacific History in regard to time,but it seems reasonable to suggest thatPacific History began when man becameaware of the Pacific and/or the conti-nents that surround it. One cannotspeak of Pacific History before theexistence of the Pacific wa::l knowu.The term therefore would not includethe gelf-gatigfied life led on the edgesof the Pacific by the ancient Japaneseor Chinese, Aztecs or Incas. They wereunaware that the ocean which washedtheir shores-far from being the endof the world-was a body of watersurrounded by land. For this period.when not even an idea, let alone know-ledge, of the Pacific Ocean had yetemerged, we have only a Japanese orAztec hiotor:r, perhaps a For Ea6tcrnand American, but certainly not a PacificHietory.EARLY MIGRATIONSThe Asia-American migrations whichpreceded the coming of the white manare unrecorded and thus prehistoric.Scientists are still debating on howthey took place, whether by way of theBering Strait, the Aleutian Islands,Polynesia, or the Antarctic, for theinhabitants of Asia and America en-countered by the intruding white manhad no memory of these movements.Suppose early man in America-the"American Indian"-arrived over thecircum-Pacific route across the BeringStrait. His contemporary in Asia, notupACIFIC HISTORY" 227knowing of a huge continent acrossthe sea, could have no idea that it wasinhabited by his own kin. And theAmerican Indian was probably just asunaware that his ancestral home laysomewhere on the other side of thePacific. Even if he had believed that hisforefathers had come over the BeringSea, he would not necessarily haverealized that the land they had leftwas on the other side of a vast ocean.For he would not have thought ofthem as having traveled by a circuitousrou teo In away, they had not: theshortest route from North China toAmerica-even to so distant a part asPeru-runs directly through the nar-rowest point of the Bering Strait.Or let us assume that early Americanshad traveled, as some prefer to believe,the trans-Pacific route by way of theislands of the South Seas. Such amigration would likewise not be PacificHistory. True, the Polynesians per-formed magnificent and courageousvoyages. But, if they reached America,the fact remained unknown, not onlyto the outside world, but apparently tothe Polynesians themselves. In recentyears their feats of navigation arebeing reconstructed by archeologists,anthropologists, and linguists afterlengthy research, with an ingenuitywhich must use imagination, ratherthan knowledge, to fill the huge gapsbetween the known facts-facts as fewand far between as the islands of theeastern Pacific.One of the reasons why the earlyAmericans seem not to have remem-bered their migrations can perhaps befound in the fact that none of thepossible avenues was likely to haveinvited frequent use. The only easyand close access from Asia to America,across the Bering Strait, lay withinthe Arctic Circle, in an inhospitablelatitude. Of the others, both the Aleu-tian chain and the Antarctic sufferednot only from the same inconvenienceof high latitude, but from the additionaldifficulty of wider distances of openwater to be crossed. The only clim-atically favorable approach, through theislands of the South Pacific, necessitatedthe navigation of the ocean at itswidest part where the southeasternend of Asia and the westernmost partof South America are almost exactly1800 apart.Nor are there any memories of sub-sequent movements between the twocontinents, though such intercourse al-most certainly took place. Thus thePacific Ocean separated the Asiaticfrom the American branches of human-ity to a point of complete unawarenessof each other and of itself.THE WHITE MANIt was a newcomer, the white man,who first saw the Pacific as somethingto be crossed. In 1520-21, only sevenyears after Balboa had gazed upon itat Darien, Magellan was sailing acrossit for the first known time. Thereafterthe Pacific became for almost 400 yearsa white man's sea, the indigenous racesnot participating actively in the destinyof the area as a whole.This suggests that, up to the recentrise of modern Japan which began withthe ending of her self-imposed seclusion,Pacific History is the story of thewhite man's exploration, struggle, con-quest, rivalry, colonization, and exploit-ation in the Pacific area.However, merely adding up the his-tories of the peoples in the Pacific areasince the coming of the Europeans doesnot constitute Pacific History. Theterm should rather include onlydevelopments or problems concerningthe Pacific as a whole. Therefore aPacific History must deal with events,not because they happened in thePacific, but because they influenced thedevelopment in this area. In manycases the drawing of the dividing linemust be arbitrary, and the reader maynot always accept the author's opinion.But all should agree, for instance, thatsince 1513 the events along the shortand narrow Isthmus of Panama are ofgreatest Pacific significance, while thosealong the thousand miles of coast bothto the north and south of the isthmus228 THE XXth CENTURYrarely played more than a local role;and that the conquest of Mexico byCortez left an incomparably strongerimprint on the destiny of the Pacificthan the establishing of the Manchusin Peking. More than that: events infar away Europe, such as the defeatof the Armada or the incorporation ofPortugal into Spain or the wars be-tween Spainand the Netherlands, affectedthe Paci fic more than many simultane-ous events on the very shores of thisocean. Hence its history can be under-stood only in close connection with thedevelopment of Europe.WHERE TO BEGIN?At which particular moment ofEuropean intrusion into this area shouldPacific History begin'? The voyages ofColumbus and Vasco da Gama areconvenient landmarks, but Marco Polocan claim to be the first known whiteman to travel over the waves of thisocean and to bequeath his experiencesto posterity. Marco's account of histravels has influenced the future of thePacific more than any other book.It also seems symbolic that MarcoPolo, the individual, should stand atthe dawn of Pacific History. The his-tory of the white man in the Pacificis-if one excepts Polar explorations-more than any other the story of in-dividuals. The Balboas and Pizarros,the Magellan::! and Xaviora, the Khaba-rovs and Berings, the Cooks andVancouvers, the explorers, conquIsta-dores, merchants, missionaries, andadventurers who penetrated the largestocean, the widest open spaces of Americaand Siberia, the most populous empiresof AsiSl, did this with incredihly smallbands of followers. The lives anddeaths of these few men, their suc-cesses and failures, have shaped thedestiny of the Pacific.LINKSPacific History since Marco Polo'stime can be regarded as an entity;it is more than just the sum of other-wise unrelated histories of the shorecountries. There are links which holdit together and make it a unit. Someof these may be enumerated.First of all there was Marco Polohimself, largely responsible for thedesire of subsequent Europeans toreach the fabulous lands of the East andto acquire the extraordinary treasureswhich he described. It is surprisinghow little his influence on history hasas yet been studied. Much has beenbrought to light about him and hisvoyages, every inch of his routes hasbeen re-traveled and checked, but thatis about all.Then there was that fragrant magnetwhich drew adventurers, merchants, andnations to the Pacific-spices. Thereexists no single adequate book on thehistory of spices and their role in worldaffairs. Even that distinguished arbiterover things important and unimportant,the Encyclopedia Britannica, has noentry between SPHINX and SPIDER.Yet it was in quest of spices that newworlds were discovered, that Vasco daGama, Columbus, and Magellan sailed.That dangerous phantom, the non-existent Terra Au,stmlis Incognita,conceived and born in the minds ofphilosphers, lured countless navigators,from Mendafia to Cook, into the SouthSeas. By their courageou:s amI uucea~­ing efforts the one-time "continent/'which was: believed to cover thp. bp.ttprpart of the southern hemisphere, grad-ually rcsolved itocl£ into Australia,New Zealand, hundreds of small islands,the 1ce-covere<l Antarctic, and, mO::ltof all, water. Privation, death, anddisappointment cover this path, yet atits end emerged the map and the poli-tical shape of the modern South Seas.What the search for Terra Australismeant for the discovery of the SouthPacific, the desire to obtain furs meantfor the North Pacific. Quest for fursdrove the Russians from Novgorod tothe Pacific and beyond, along the coastsof Alaska and northwest America;quest for furs led Canadians andAmericans overland and around theHorn to the Oregon country. Fur-kingdoms arose and clashed, increasingnumbers of ships carried their produceupAClFIC HISTORY" 229across the North Pacific to the marketsof China, connecting southeastern Chinawith northwestern America by wayof Hawaii.As soon as the continental characterof the Americas had been recognized,nations, finding their entry into the~ Pacific blocked around Africa by thePortuguese, and around South Americaby the Spaniards, went in search ofnew approaches. The struggle to dis-cover northern sea passages aroundAmerica and Asia had begun. Butwhile these, as was soon found, ledhopelessly into arctic ice and polarnight, northern overland passages tothe Pacific were achieved by men inquest of fur. In 1639 the first RussianCossacks, after crossing Siberia, reachedthe Okhotsk Sea, and in 1793 on thenorthwest coast of America these proudwords were written on a rock: "Alex-ander Mackenzie, from Canada, byland."In addition to the Terra Australisfantasy a number of other myths ormisunderstandings called men into thePacific, such as the fabulous islandsRica de Oro and Rica de Plata, theStrait of Anian-in search of whichsuch prizes as California and Hawaiiwere found-and the Company Land.And one of the strongest of thebonds holding Pacific History togetheris the area's close dependence on theaffairs of Europe. The rise or fall ofSpain and Portugal, of the Netherlandsand Great Britain, of Russia andFrance, had obvious repercussions inthe Pacific.Then, with the coming of the nine-teenth century, the Pacific area becamean arena of intense rivalry amongmodern European imperialisms. Thisrivalry was expressed in many forms-in whaling and sealing, in trade andcolonization, in missionary and militaryactivities, in establishment of protector-ates and convict colonies, in discoveriesof gold and oil. Steamship lines, cables,airways, and radio-all helped to shortenthe distances and introduced the word"Pacific" into the everyday vocabularyof the world.

"Pacific History"

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"Pacific History"

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