Volume I of The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean provides a wide-ranging survey of Pacific history to 1800. It focuses on varied concepts of the Pacific environment and its impact on human history, as well as tracing the early exploration and colonization of the Pacific, the evolution of Indigenous maritime cultures after colonization, and the disruptive arrival of Europeans. Bringing together a diversity of subjects and viewpoints, this volume introduces a broad variety of topics, engaging fully with emerging environmental and political conflicts over Pacific Ocean spaces. These essays emphasize the impact of the deep history of interactions on and across the Pacific to the present day.

"There has never been a more appropriate time for a comprehensive history of the Pacific Ocean as we attempt in this collection. The dramatic rise of East Asian economies in the decades after World War Two has given rise to one of the most dramatic and rapid realignments of global economic and political influences in world history. Energy resources and raw materials flow into East Asia from Australia, South America, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean world to fuel the new workshop of the world in the Peoples Republic of China. China has become the fulcrum point of the global economy in what has been deemed to be the Pacific Century. The massive flow of trade goods across the Pacific Ocean between the United States and China lies at the heart of this Pacific-centred realignment, accompanied by increasing tensions over rival spheres of influence in the Pacific between these two great superpowers. Recent maritime confrontations in the Pacific have largely been analysed by international relations experts and legal scholars with limited reference to the rich but fragmented history of cultural exchanges across and within the Pacific Ocean"--