Georg Forster’s Tahiti and Tonga Narratives in A Voyage Round the World

Record summary

Georg Forster’s account of Cook’s second voyage describes encounters in Tahiti, Tonga and other Pacific societies, including religious practices, sacred objects, origin ideas and stories as understood through European interpreters. The book is a useful companion to his father’s more systematic observations because it shows how narrative detail and romantic travel writing could shape European ideas of Pacific peoples. It may help track recurring motifs without treating them as one unified Polynesian mythology. Exact attribution of particular stories and informants is often uncertain in the published text.