I have worked on many shipwreck investigations and have been involved in the discovery of a couple of shipwreck sites of this period. Here’s what’s usually involved in identifying a ship.
Academic rigour, journalistic flair
Articles on Cook250
Displaying 1 - 20 of 21 articles
A new film canvasses Indigenous Australian accounts of, and responses to, Captain Cook’s arrival.
Captain Cook’s sailors traded nails for sex, but the history of intimate encounters and their impact on women throughout the Pacific is still largely ignored.
Indigenous story-telling of Cook’s landing has transformed the way we understand his legacy in Australia. And the way he came ashore set some of the terms for future colonial-Indigenous relations.
250 years since Captain Cook landed in Australia, it’s time to acknowledge the violence of first encounters.
The Conversation, CC BY63 MB (download)
The way Australia has commemorated Cook's arrival has changed over time – from military displays in 1870 to waning interest in Cook in the 1950s, followed by the fever pitch celebrations of 1970.
New Zealand’s commemorations of James Cook’s arrival 250 years ago were least about the British explorer himself, but instead focused on Polynesian voyaging heritage and encounters with Māori.
Britain had an urgent problem after it lost its American colonies: where to send its convicts. It settled on NSW after rejecting other options, but the new spot didn’t exactly live up to its billing.
For too long, Cook was a promise recollected in pigment, bronze and stone. Contemporary First Nations artists are challenging this imagery.
Many teachers want to teach Indigenous perspectives but often lack confidence or know-how. Teachers must be willing to confront the ongoing effects of colonialism in and outside the classroom.
Explore Cook’s journey through the Pacific, the orders that brought him in search of the ‘Great Southern Land’ and the impact of his arrival in our new interactive.
An honest reckoning with Captain Cook’s legacy won’t heal things overnight. But it’s a start.
The Conversation41.4 MB (download)
The impact of 1770 has never eased for Aboriginal people. It was a collision of catastrophic proportions.
Incidents from Cook’s first voyage highlight themes relevant in Indigenous-settler relations today: environmental care, reconciliation and governance. This collision of beliefs, it seems, wasn’t lost on Cook.
Both islanders played a central role in Cook’s three voyages across the Pacific, but their contributions have largely been overshadowed in what is generally thought of as era of European exploration.
To find out how the teaching of Captain Cook in Australian schools has changed, I examined textbooks used in the 1950s until today.
Botany was an integral feature of Britain’s colonial and imperial ambitions.
Re-enactments of James Cook’s arrival in Australia have served only to gloss over the violence of his interactions with Indigenous people and elevate Australia’s imperial and British connections.
Over the course of his three voyages, Cook was frustrated by the refusal of Indigenous people to embrace Western ways. He grew increasingly punitive, embodying the ‘savagery’ he ostensibly despised.
Every European ship that voyaged the Pacific was, in the first instance, a floating fortress, an independent command that could send out small shore parties or to concentrate firepower as needed.
For celebrated botanist Joseph Banks, his voyage with James Cook was more about extending imperial power than simply discovery.
Unpicking the threads of the stories told about Captain Cook’s arrival is vital to find agreement on the provenance of materials that changed hands during colonisation.
Job Board
-
Policy and Research Project Manager
-
Lecturer in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
-
Senior Lecturer/ Associate Professor, Economics
-
Research Strategy and Impact Officer
-
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology
Top contributors
-
Adjunct Associate Professor, University of Technology Sydney
-
Co-Director, Australian Centre for Indigenous History, Australian National University
-
Professor, Griffith University
-
Director/Chair of Aboriginal History - The Wollotuka Institute, University of Newcastle
-
Executive Dean and Pro Vice-Chancellor, College of Arts, Law and Education, University of Tasmania
-
Historian and Conjoint Lecturer, University of Newcastle
-
Associate professor, Australian Catholic University
-
Publishing Manager NMA, National Museum of Australia
-
Professor, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney
-
Lecturer in Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Education, University of Tasmania
-
Professor of Modern History, University of Portsmouth
-
Professor of History, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University
-
ARC Future Fellow, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney
-
Curator & Section Head, Oceania, The British Museum
-
Lecturer, Griffith Law School, Griffith University
