( shaped the era's debates about the natu...)Polynesia explorers created worldwide web of scientific knowledge

Liebersohn's study focuses on three generations of travelers ?none of them household names today. Philibert Commerson was a French naturalist aboard Louis de Bougainville's world voyage of 1766-1769; Germany's George Forster accompanied his father on Captain James Cook's second voyage of 1772-1775; and Adelbert von Chamisso, a native of France, served as a naturalist on the Russian Rurik voyage of 1815-1818.

"Keen for curiosities of every kind, none more than the customs of strange peoples that could turn a travel account into a bestseller," the travelers steered their courses using Linnaeus as their botanical guide and Jean-Jacques Rousseau as their intellectual guide.

The first wave of travelers expected to find the same "natural" societies in Polynesia that had been discovered earlier in the Americas and "became the stuff of European stereotypes," Liebersohn said. What they encountered, however, "defied their expectations": sophisticated societies, physical beauty, sexual freedom, tattoos, and ship and nautical skills that were different from anything they had known.

They also encountered negatives: "ferocious island politics, exploitative native elites and disruptive consequences of their own visits that called into question the naive assumption of fraternity with native peoples," Liebersohn wrote. Despite everything, these three travelers became "influential and insightful ethnographers," Liebersohn argues.

"Commerson wrote a letter on Tahiti that sealed its status as a Pacific paradise; Forster wrote an epic voyage narrative ?with captivating chapters on Tahiti ?that made him famous throughout Europe; Chamisso wrote about Hawaii and other islands with a sensitivity and accuracy still admired among anthropologists."

They had plenty of help ?from their captains, officers, voyage artists and physicians, and from Polynesian travelers who came aboard, brin
'"/>

Source:University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign