Encounters with wondrous things: the historical significance of the Cook-Forster Collection

Speaker
Paul Turnbull, Griffith University

Title
Encounters with wondrous things: the historical significance of the Cook-Forster Collection

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The Cook–Forster collection of the Georg-August University of Göttingen, Germany contains many objects of great artistry, ingenuity and spiritual significance. These objects provide vivid insights into the worlds of both European and Polynesian peoples during the second-half of the eighteenth century.

This talk explains how and why voyagers on James Cook's first two expeditions acquired these objects, and considers how important many of them were in shaping European perceptions of the peoples they met in Aotearoa (New Zealand), Tahiti and Hawai'i. The talk also considers the meanings and values of some of the most remarkable pieces in the Cook-Forster Collection for the peoples who created them, and how they contribute to our understanding of Maori, Maohi and Kanaka Maoli cultures around the time they first encountered Europeans.

Paul Turnbull is Professor of History and Head of the School of Arts, Media and Culture at Griffith University in Brisbane. His research interests include the eighteenth century, notably in the area of voyaging and ethnographic encounter in Oceania. He has also written extensively on the procurement and scientific uses of the ancestral remains of Indigenous Australians, and is internationally known for his research on the theory and practice of history in networked digital media.

His projects include South Seas: Voyaging and Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Pacific (1760-1800) , an online resource on James Cook's momentous first Pacific voyage (1768-1771).

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