"Exploring the Pacific" by Martha Vail

Exploring the Pacific, this book Edition explains how explorers of the Pacific region expanded geographical knowledge and contributed to human understanding by generating maps, charts, paintings, and reports. The book covers such explorers as Bartolomeu Dias, Vasco Núñez de Balboa, Ferdinand Magellan, Álvaro de Mendaña, and James Cook.

Each ship that ventured into the Pacific around the Cape of Good Hope, through the Strait of Magellan, or around Cape Horn carried the hope and ambitions of its sponsoring nation. The Pacific, perhaps even more so than the Americas or Africa, became the playing board for the global game of imperial chess. By the 20th century, only the most remote and inhospitable islands were free from American, European, or South American colonial administration.

Coverage includes:
• Early Pacific navigation
• Art of the Pacific peoples
• The struggle between the Spanish and Portuguese to gain control of the spice trade
• The South Seas Bubble
• Captain James Cook's three voyages in the Pacific
• The real Robinson Crusoe.

Contents
1 “Tide Beating Heart of the Earth”
2 The First Pacific Explorers
3 Europeans Encounter the Pacific, from East and West
4 The Spanishin the Pacific
5 Exploration in the Service of Commerce
6 Exploration in the Service of Empire
7 James Cook Explores the Pacific
8 Science and Empire
Chronology
Timeline
Glossary
Bibliography
Further Resources
Picture Credits
Index
About the Contributors