Abstract
If Robinson Crusoe is the fictional elaboration of a non-fictional adventure – the story of the castaway Alexander Selkirk – subsequent non-fictional accounts by castaways and first settlers among island communities are equally indebted to Defoe. Here I look at one such group of accounts: the narratives of those beachcombers and missionaries who were the initial settlers of the Polynesian islands in the period between exploration and colonisation. The London Missionary Society (LMS) began sending evangelists to Polynesia in 1796, and were joined by other missionary groups after 1822.1 During the early contact period, beachcombers – escaped convicts, deserting sailors and itinerant traders who ‘went native’ in the South Pacific – also acted as initial Western representatives to specific island communities.
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Notes
Neil Gunson, Messengers of Grace: Evangelical Missionaries in the South Seas, 1797–1860 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978) pp. 11–30
William Diapea [Diaper], Cannibal Jack: The true autobiography of a white man in the South Seas [with an introduction by James Hadfield] (London: Faber and Gwyer, 1928) p. xix.
Ebenezer Prout, Memoirs of the Life of the Rev. John Williams, Missionary to Polynesia … (Third Thousand, London: John Snow, 1843) p. 256.
H. E. Maude, Of Islands and Men (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968) pp. 160–1.
John Williams, A Narrative of Missionary Enterprises in the South Seas Islands (London: John Snow, 1837) p. 144.
Nicholas Thomas, Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture and Colonialism in the Pacific (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991).
G. S. Parsonson, ‘The Literate Revolution in Polynesia’, Journal of Polynesian History, 2 (1967) 44.
Richard E. Lingenfelter, Presses of the Pacific Islands 1817–1867 (Los Angeles: The Plantin Press, 1967).
William Ellis, Polynesian Researches, during a residence of nearly six years in the South Sea islands, vol. 1 (London: Dawsons, 1967) p. 391.
John Martin, An account of the natives of the Tonga Islands, in the South Pacific Ocean. With an original grammar and vocabulary of their language. Compiled and arranged from the extensive communications of Mr. William Mariner, several years resident in those islands (London: John Murray, 1817, 2 volumes) pp. vii-viii.
Samuel Patterson, Narrative of the adventures and sufferings of Samuel Patterson, experienced in the Pacific Ocean, and many other parts of the world (Fairfield, Washington: n.p., 1967) p. 3.
James F. O’Connell, A Residence of Eleven Years in New Holland and the Caroline Islands, Saul H. Riesenberg (ed.), (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1972).
Greg Dening (ed.), The Marquesan Journal of Edward Robarts 1797–1824 (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1974) p. 8.
Greg Dening, Islands and Beaches (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1980) pp. 139–40.
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© 1996 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Smith, V. (1996). Crusoe in the South Seas: Beachcombers, Missionaries and the Myth of the Castaway. In: Spaas, L., Stimpson, B. (eds) Robinson Crusoe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-13677-3_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-13677-3_5
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