Abstract
Today many thinkers in the west believe that we are an unfortunate generation. Many look ahead with fears and doubts, and some pity their misfortune to be born in this nuclear era. Our future does not seem as secure or beckoning as the future envisaged in the last century, but do we know the world’s history sufficiently to be able to tell whether our era is particularly unfortunate? Are we really the first generation to fear the world’s future?
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Notes
Prophecy of Elias: Katharine R. Firth, The Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain 1530–1645 (Oxford, 1979 ) p. 5–6.
E. S. de Beer, The Literature of Travel in the Seventeenth Century, pamphlet, Hakluyt Society (London, 1975 ) p. 5.
Origin of word ‘optimism’: Paul Hazard, European Thought in the Eighteenth Century, translation from French, Penguin paperback (London, 1965) p. 340.
Wesley’s preface: John Passmore, Dictionary of the History of Ideas, 1974, vol. 3, p. 468.
Four-stages theory: ‘Social Science and the Ignoble Savage’, paper presented by R. L. Meek (University of Papua New Guinea) 6 August 1975.
Rousseau and Hottentots, E. H. McCormick, Omai: Pacific Envoy, Auckland, 1977, pp. 6–7.
Beauty of American Indians: Benjamin Keen, The Aztec Image in Western Thought (Rutgers, 1971), p. 240.
Voltaire and fad for primitivism: J. A. Aldridge, Voltaire and the Century of Light (Princeton, 1975 ) p. 228.
Isselin and other scoffers at nature: Friedrich Meinecke, Historism: The Rise of a New Historical Outlook (London, 1972) p.,197.
Joy at seeing Tahiti: E. H. McCormick, Ornai: Pacific Envoy, p. 16; John Dunmore, French Explorers in the Pac (Oxford, 1965 ) vol. 1. pp. 110–112
Glyndwr Williams, ‘Seamen and Philosophers in the South Seas in the Age of Cook’, The Mariner’s Mirror, vol. 65, Feb. 1979.
Joseph Banks on Tahitian food: J. C. Beaglehole (ed.), The Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks 1768–1771 (Sydney, 1962) vol. 1, pp. 341, 347.
Tahitian abundance compared with France: this elementary point seems to be overlooked by historians of exploration but it can easily be inferred by glancing at such books as Fernand Braudel, Capitalism and Material Life 1400–1800, (Harper paperback New York, 1973) p. 39
and John Roberts, Revolution and Improvement: The Western World 1775–1847 (Berkeley, 1976), p. 12.
Cook on Aboriginals: J. C. Beaglehole (ed.), The Journals of Captain James Cook (Cambridge, 1968), vol. 1, p. 399.
Cook and Shelvocke’s book: Glyndwr Williams, “‘Far more happier than we Europeans’: reactions to the Australian Aborigines on Cook’s voyage” Historical Studies, (Melbourne, October 1981 ) no. 77, p. 507.
Botany Bay’s climate and soil: G. Blainey, A Land Half Won (Melbourne, 1980 ) pp. 10–13, 23.
John Dryden, The Conquest of Granada by the Spaniards, part 1, written in 1670.
Chief Justice Pedder of Tasmania on savage freedom: Van Diemen’s Land: Copies of all Correspondence… on the Subject of the Military Operations (Hobart, 1971) p. 82.
Noble savage not in New Zealand: cannibalism was another reason why the Maoris were not idolised. See J. C. Beagle-hole, The Life of Captain James Cook (London, 1974) pp. 212–3.
‘In the Jeffersonian era’: Bernard W. Sheehan, ‘Paradise and the Noble Savage in Jeffersonian Thought’, William and May Quarterly, 1969, vol. 26, p. 327.
J. G. Herder, Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man, tr. from German (London, 1800 ) p. 168.
Black Africa: William B. Cohen, The French Encounter with Africans (Bloomington, Indiana, 1980) pp. 64–5, 72, 95.
Saint-Pierre on birds and butterflies: Henry Hunter’s translation, Annual Register… 1796 (London, 1800) pp. 394–5.
J. H. Bernardin de St. Pierre, Paul and Virginia: An Indian Tale, translated from the French (Hartford, 1834 ).
Peron’s dynamometer: M. F. Peron, A Voyage of Discovery to the Southern Hemisphere, tr. from French (London, 1809 ), pp. 312–4
F. C. T. Moore in his translation of Joseph-Marie Degerando, The Observation of Savage Peoples (London, 1969 ) p. 38.
Romanticism in Europe: Anthony Thorlby, The Romantic Movement (London, 1966 )
Lilian R. Furst, Romanticism, (London, 1969 )
Mario Praz, The Hero in Eclipse in Victorian Fiction (Oxford, 1969) esp. pp. 37–65.
P. van Tieghem, La Preromantisme, 5 vols., 1924–47, cited in Thorlby, p. 22.
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© 1988 Geoffrey Blainey
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Blainey, G. (1988). Happy Isle. In: The Great Seesaw. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10086-6_2
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