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Unspoken Voices: Captain Cook's Third Voyage, The Lono Question, And The Discourse Of Trade, Gordon Sauer Iii

All Theses

This thesis examines the polarized debate regarding Captain James Cook's apotheosis waging on between anthropologists Marshall Sahlins and Gananath Obeyesekere. By illustrating how and why binary interpretations of Cook's death render a shallow examination of associated travel texts, the thesis re-examines two travel journals resulting from Cook's third and final voyage--journals from the American, John Ledyard and Captain James Cook--and an account, 'Captain Cook's Visit to Hawaii,' taken from Samuel Mānaiakalani Kamakaua's (nineteenth-century Hawaiian historian) Ruling Chiefs of Hawaii. Focusing on discussions of trade, this project reconfigures the apotheosis debate in order to highlight the significance of the discourse …