Rifled Sanctuaries

Download or read book Rifled Sanctuaries written by Bill Pearson and published by Auckland University Press. This book was released on 2013-11-01 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Pacific Islands began to appear in Western literature soon after European navigators made landfall there. From the first, there was seldom a statement of plain facts. Explorers brought their own viewpoints while editors, poets and novelists went on to interpret and moralise the first accounts. Portraying Pacific peoples as sensual, indolent, childlike and &– frequently &– wicked, such stories implied the duty of Europeans to rule and of the natives to be grateful. Modified though it sometimes was by the more accepting attitudes of beachcombers, by the exploitative activities of traders, and throgh the romantic eyes of erotic novelists, this conception of Pacific Islanders persisted through the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth.