In this fascinating and exciting overview, Donald B. Freeman explores the role of the Pacific Ocean in human history. Covering over one third of the globe, the Pacific Ocean plays a vital role in the lives and fortunes of more than two billion people who live on its rim-lands and islands. It has played a crucial part in shaping the histories of the different Pacific cultures, towards which it has appeared in a variety of different guises. Exploring the ocean’s place in human history, this wide ranging book draws together the long and varied physical, economic, cultural and political history of the Pacific, from Prehistory through to the present day. It takes an interdisciplinary approach to show the changing viewpoints of those who explored, exploited and settled the Pacific, including the inhabitants of its Asian and American rim-lands. The book draws on new research in a variety of areas, such as early Pacific migrations, impacts of European colonization, the effects of climate change, and current economic and political developments. It provides a uniquely broad overview that will be of vital interest to students and to all those with an interest in World History.

The Asia Pacific region’s enormous diversity of living cultures and preserved heritage sites has significant appeal to many tourists. However tourism has grown so rapidly that many issues associated with the incorporation of cultural and heritage experiences in tourist itineraries (such as authenticity verses commodification, exploitation of national cultures, impacts on local communities, and the management of heritage resources) have not been adequately addressed and must be debated. This revealing book reviews recent developments in cultural and heritage tourism in the Asia Pacific region and provides a discussion on how communities have faced and overcome significant challenges to develop and market their culture and heritage resources. A range of models and case studies are used to deepen the reader’s understanding of heritage and cultural issues, to illustrate many of the more controversial issues, and to examine new evaluative, and planning tools. This book is a special issue of the Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research.

This volume lays the physical and conceptual groundwork for the Pacific World series, exploring both the constraints imposed and the opportunities offered to humanity by the physical environment of the Pacific region. Organized from the perspectives of "Big History" and macro-geography, the volume presents a series of major studies and surveys by authors from a range of disciplines. It opens with perspectives on the ocean, and closes with questions of human settlement, diffusion, and trans-Pacific contacts. Geologists write of the origins of the Pacific, its geological structure, and the problem of tsunamis; climatologists and oceanographers discuss the El Niño Southern Oscillation and the ocean waters; biologists and biogeographers find patterns in the life of the Basin - as is shown, all these have their impact on the potential of the region for human use and settlement. Finally, geographers, anthropologists, and archaeologists deal with the peopling of the Pacific islands, the settlement of the Americas, and the incidence and importance of pre-modern links across the Pacific.

Academic survey of the Pacific Islands. Includes maps, photographs, tables, diagrams, atlas, and detailed index.