Empire, Barbarism, and Civilisation: Captain Cook, William Hodges and the Return to the Pacific

The artist William Hodges accompanied Captain Cook on his second voyage to the South Pacific in 1772–5. His extraordinarily vivid images, read against the fascinating journals of Cook and his companions, reveal as much about European cultures and historiography as about the peoples they visited. In this lively and original book, Harriet Guest discusses Hodges's dramatic landscapes and portraits alongside written accounts of the voyages and in the context of the theories of civilisation whic...