European Vision and the South Pacific Third Edition

Bernard Smith (1916-2011) was arguably Australia's greatest art historian and one of the most important humanist thinkers internationally on ideas concerning cultural contact. His European Vision and the South Pacific, first published in 1960, showed how the ideas of the Enlightenment and the empirical structuring of scientific and geographical knowledge during the great eighteenth-century voyages of discovery affected notions of identity-both for Europeans and the Indigenous peoples with whom they came in contact. Not only did Smith's investigation of art, science and imperialism of this period explore the conditions of frontier contact, it opened up the dialogue on de-colonisation and allowed us 'to think beyond or after it'. He was undoubtedly a pioneer of post-colonialism and the book remains 'a lighthouse' in pacific studies.

The republication of European Vision and the South Pacific is an essential part of the discourse reframing the interconnections and crossing of cultural boundaries between Europe and antipodean societies. This new edition of a significant Australian classic also coincides with the 250th anniversary of Cook's landing on the east coast of Australia, and complements new scholarship on territorialisation, colonialism and the politics of exchange between metropolitan centres and peripheries. A new introduction by Sheridan Palmer situates the book in a contemporary context.

About the Author

Editor- Sheridan Palmer is an art historian and author of Hegel's Owl- The Life of Bernard Smith and co-editor with Rex Butler of Antipodean Perspective- Selected Writings of Bernard Smith. Author- Bernard William Smith (1916-2011) was Australia's most eminent twentieth century art historian and a major thinker in the humanities. His first book Place, Taste and Tradition- a study of Australian art since 1788 is a key text in Australian art history, while European Vision and the South Pacific, first published in 1960, remains a pioneering masterpiece in the art and sciences of empire, imperialism and cultural contact in the Pacific. Smith was the president of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (1977-80), a senior academic in the Fine Arts Department at the University of Melbourne and the founding professor of the Power Institute of Fine Arts, Sydney University. During his life he published extensively on a wide variety of subjects including two memoirs, and was passionately committed to social, environmental and political concerns. In 1980 he presented the Boyer Lectures, and following his wife's death, established the RAKA award in recognition of Indigenous artists and writers. His major books include Place, Taste and Tradition (1945); Australian Painting 1788-1960 (1962); The Boy Adeodatus (1984); The Art of Captain Cook's Voyages, vols 1-3, with R diger Joppien, (1985-7); Imagining the Pacific (1992) and Modernism's History (1998).