Blending global scope with local depth, this book throws new light on important themes. Spanning four centuries and vast space, it combines the history of ideas with particular histories of encounters between European voyagers and Indigenous people in Oceania (Island Southeast Asia, New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands).

Bronwen Douglas was Senior Fellow at The Australian National University for 16 years and is an Adjunct Associate Professor in retirement. An historian of the interplay of ideas of human difference or race and practical encounters in Oceania, she is author of Across the Great Divide (1998) and co-editor with Chris Ballard of Foreign Bodies: Oceania and the Science of Race 1750-1940 (2008).