Exploration of the Pacific

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Early

Asian Pacific coasts, reaching southern China and much of the Malay Archipelago
. Direct European contact with the Pacific began in 1512, with the Portuguese encountering its western edges, soon followed by the Spanish arriving from the American coast.

In 1513, Spanish explorer

North and South Pacific. In the 17th and 18th centuries, other European powers sent expeditions to the Pacific, namely the Dutch Republic
, England, France, and Russia.

History

Pre-European exploration

See also:
Models of migration to the New World
Polynesian expansion

Humans reached Australia by at least 55,000 BC which implies some degree of water crossing. People were in the Americas before 10,000 BC. One theory holds that the Indigenous Americans travelled along the coast by canoe.

Austronesians

About 3000 BC speakers of the

Kon-Tiki expedition successfully demonstrated that the trip from the Americas to Polynesia using only materials and technology available at the time was at least possible, even if highly improbable.[1][2]

Asians

On the Asian side long-distance trade developed all along the coast from Mozambique to Japan. Trade, and therefore knowledge, extended to Indonesia but apparently not Australia. By at the latest 878 when there was a significant Islamic settlement in Canton much of this trade was controlled by Arabs or Muslims. In 219 BC Xu Fu sailed out into the Pacific searching for the elixir of immortality. Zheng He (1371–1433) was China's greatest explorer, mariner, and navigator.[3]

Japanese fishing boats, if blown out to sea, could be carried by the current all the way to North America. Japanese boats reached Acapulco in 1617, the Aleutians in 1782, Alaska in 1805, the mouth of the Columbia River in 1820, and Cape Flattery in 1833. Such trips may have taken place before Europeans were present in those areas to make detailed records of them.[4]

European exploration

Captain Cook in the Pacific
     First voyage (1768–1771)
     Second voyage (1772–1775)
     Third voyage (1776–1779)
Ferdinand Magellan discovered the Strait of Magellan
leading into the Pacific in 1520

Iberian pioneers

The first contact of European navigators with the western edge of the Pacific Ocean was made by the Portuguese expeditions of António de Abreu and Francisco Serrão, via the Lesser Sunda Islands, to the Maluku Islands, in 1512,[5][6] and with Jorge Álvares's expedition to southern China in 1513,[7] both ordered by Afonso de Albuquerque from Malacca.

Spanish explorer

Balboa was the first European to sight the Pacific from America in 1513 after his expedition crossed the Isthmus of Panama and reached a new ocean.[8] He named it Mar del Sur (literally, "Sea of the South" or "South Sea") because the ocean was to the south of the coast of the isthmus where he first observed the Pacific. Starting in 1519, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan sailed the Pacific East to West on a Castilian (Spanish) expedition, which concluded later with the first world circumnavigation by the basque sailor Juan Sebastián Elcano. Magellan called the ocean Pacífico (or "Pacific" meaning, "peaceful") because, after sailing through the stormy seas off Patagonia, the expedition found calm waters. The ocean was often called the Sea of Magellan in his honor until the eighteenth century.[9]

From 1565 to 1815, a Spanish transpacific route known as the

Manila galleons regularly crossed from Mexico to the Philippines and back. On the Asian side the Portuguese and later the Dutch built a regular trade from the East Indies to Japan. On the American side Spanish power stretched thousands of miles from Mexico to Chile. The vast central Pacific was visited only by the Manila galleons and an occasional explorer. The south Pacific was first crossed by Spanish expeditions in the 16th century who discovered many islands including Tuvalu, the Marquesas, the Cook Islands, the Solomon Islands, and the Admiralty Islands, and later the Pitcairn and Vanuatu archipelagos.[10]

Spanish explorations and routes across the Pacific Ocean.

The Pacific recognized

Europeans knew that there was a vast ocean to the west, and the Chinese knew that there was one to the east. Learned Europeans thought that the world was round and that the two oceans were one. In 1492, Columbus sailed west to what he thought was Asia. When

Diogo Ribeiro
map of 1529 was the first to show the Pacific at about its proper size.

The coast of Asia

The Portuguese

Kuril islands
, crossing the Pacific further north of the routes usually taken until then. The land that he eventually discovered northeast of Japan, has since become a matter of legend and controversy.

One hundred years after the Spanish and Portuguese the Dutch Republic began its remarkable expansion. The Dutch reached the East Indies in 1596, the Spice Islands in 1602 and in 1619 founded

Maarten Gerritsz Vries reached and charted Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. In 1653 Hendrick Hamel
was shipwrecked in Korea. At about this time the Russians reached the Pacific overland via Siberia (see below). It is significant that the Russian and Dutch trades were never linked since Siberian furs might easily have been exported to China at great profit.

Portuguese trade routes (blue) and Spanish trade routes (white) in the 16th century.

Magellan and the Manila Galleons

In 1519,

Manila Galleons crossed the Pacific from Mexico to the Philippines and back, exchanging Mexican silver for spices and porcelain. Until the time of Captain James Cook these were the only large ships to regularly cross the Pacific. The route was purely commercial and there was no exploration of the areas to the north and south. In 1668, the Spanish founded a colony on Guam
as a resting place for west-bound galleons. For a long time this was the only non-coastal European settlement in the Pacific.

South America

In 1513, six years before Magellan, Spanish explorer

Juan Fernandez islands
and explored the Chilean coast down to the Strait of Magellan.

Western Islands reached from South America
"A New and Accurate Map of the World" of 1627 possibly by John Speed. Western North America north of Mexico a guess; A Strait of Anian at Bering Strait; Japan and other Pacific Islands distorted; Only the north coast of New Guinea; No Australia; Huge 'Southern Unknowne Land' in the south.

The South Pacific

Several Spanish expeditions were sent from South America across the Pacific Ocean in the 16th and early 17th centuries. They all used the southern

Luis Vaz de Torres sailed west and discovered the strait that bears his name sighting the northern tip of Australia. Other Spanish expeditions discovered Tuvalu, the Marquesas, the Cook Islands, the Admiralty Islands and the Pitcairn. In 1722, the Dutchman Jacob Roggeveen
sailed from Cape Horn to Batavia and discovered Easter Island and Samoa.

Cape Horn

Six years after Magellan, in 1526, one of the ships of the Loaísa expedition sailed through the Strait of Magellan and followed the coast north to Mexico. In 1578, Francis Drake passed through the Strait, sailed north raiding Spanish ships during his successful circumnavigation. On 5 June 1579, the ship briefly made first landfall at South Cove, Cape Arago, just south of Coos Bay, Oregon, and then sailed south while searching for a suitable harbour to repair his ailing ship.[11][12][13][14][15] On 17 June, Drake and his crew found a protected cove when they landed on the Pacific coast of what is now Northern California.[16][17] While ashore, he claimed the area for Queen Elizabeth I as Nova Albion or New Albion.[18] In 1580, Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, who was hunting for Drake, was the first to sail from the Strait to Europe. In 1587, Thomas Cavendish followed Drake, captured a Manila galleon and returned via the Pacific and the Indian Ocean. In 1599, the first Dutch ships passed through the Strait of Magellan (Will Adams, the first Englishman to reach Japan, was on board). Olivier van Noort followed and became the first Dutch circumnavigator.

In 1525,

Garcia de Nodal expedition
followed the Dutch and proved that Tierra del Fuego was an island by circumnavigating it. Since the Strait of Magellan is narrow and hard to navigate Cape Horn became the standard route until the opening of the Panama Canal. It is a measure of the difficulty of these seas that it was not until 1820 that anyone went as far south as Antarctica.

North America

When the Spanish conquered Mexico in 1521, they gained a stretch of Pacific coast. In 1533,

Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo reached a point north of San Francisco. In 1578 Drake landed somewhere on the coast. In 1587 Pedro de Unamuno, coming from the Philippines, stopped at Morro Bay, California. In 1592, Juan de Fuca may have reached Puget Sound
.

In 1595,

Drake's Bay and the survivors had to sail the rest of the way back to Mexico in a small launch. The smaller vessel, however, allowed Cermeño to sail closer to the coast and to make useful observations of coastal features. In 1602, Sebastián Vizcaíno
re-explored the California coast, one of his ships reaching Oregon. His was the last northward exploration for the next 150 years.

The

Portolà expedition of 1769 began the land exploration of Alta California, following the coast as far north as San Francisco Bay
and using the reports of Cermeño and Vizcaíno for guidance.

After conquering Mexico the Spanish occupied the southern two thirds of Mexico, all of Central America and the South American coast down to Chile. North of this the land was too dry to support a dense population that could be ruled and taxed. The only exception was the

History of the West Coast of North America and Early knowledge of the Pacific Northwest
.

Australia

Australia is remarkable for the number of explorers who missed it. Some think that the Portuguese reached Australia before 1600 but

Batavia. Since it was difficult to know longitude some ships would reach the west coast or be wrecked on it. In 1616, Dirk Hartog bumped into the west coast and did some exploring. Frederick de Houtman did the same in 1619. In 1623 Jan Carstenszoon followed the south coast of New Guinea, missed Torres Strait and went along the north coast of Australia. In 1643, Abel Tasman left Mauritius, missed Australia, found Tasmania, continued east and found New Zealand, missed the strait between the north and south islands, turned northwest, missed Australia again and sailed along the north coast of New Guinea. In 1644, he followed the south coast of New Guinea, missed the Torres Strait, turned south and mapped the north coast of Australia. In 1688, the English buccaneer William Dampier beached a ship on the northwest coast. In 1696, Willem de Vlamingh explored the southwest coast. In 1699, Dampier was sent to find the east coast of Australia. He sailed along the west coast, went north to Timor, followed the north coast of New Guinea to the Bismarck Archipelago
and abandoned his search because his ship had become rotten. Until Captain Cook the east coast was completely unknown and New Zealand had only been seen once.

Major Islands. Off the map to the east of the Cook Islands are the Society Islands with Tahiti and then the Tuamoto Archipelago with the Marquesas to its north.
Pacific Islands
See also: History of the Pacific Islands
Mythical lands

Europeans had long believed in a

Diderot's Encyclopédie in 1755 is filled with nonsense. In 1875 no less than 123 mythical islands were removed from the Royal Navy chart
of the North Pacific.

Further expeditions

Russian posts closely followed the natural distribution of the fur-bearing Sea Otter
Alaska and the Russians

The modern period begins with Russian expeditions. They

Russian America
was sold to the United States in 1867.

The routes of Captain James Cook's voyages. The first voyage is shown in red, second voyage in green, and third voyage in blue. The route of Cook's crew following his death is shown as a dashed blue line.
Captain Cook

On his first voyage (1768–1771) James Cook went to Tahiti from Cape Horn, circumnavigated New Zealand, followed the east coast of Australia for the first time and returned via the Torres Strait and the Cape of Good Hope. On his second voyage (1772–1775) he sailed from west to east keeping as far south as possible and showed that there was probably no Terra Australis. On his third voyage (1776–1780), he found the Hawaiian Islands (possibly first seen by Spanish captain Ruy López de Villalobos in 1542. The Spanish named these islands "Isla de Mesa, de los Monjes y Desgraciada") and followed the North American coast from Oregon to the Bering Strait, mapping this coast for the first time and showing that there was probably no Northwest Passage. Cook was killed in Hawaii in 1779. The expedition made a second attempt at the Bering Strait, stopped at Kamchatka and China and reached England in 1780. Cook set a high standard of scientific exploration, showed that there was no large land mass in the southern ocean, mapped the two largest island groups in the Pacific, and by following the east coast of Australia and the west coast of North America closed the last gaps in European knowledge of the Pacific coasts. On his second voyage, Cook was accompanied by Johann Reinhold Forster and Forster's son Georg, who influenced significantly Alexander von Humboldt and his understanding of the Pacific, which Humboldt encountered in 1802–3. Several German-speaking navigators and explorers followed, most of them in the service of expeditions launched by Imperial Russia.[19] After Cook everything was detail.

Cook's rivals and successors

Several governments sponsored Pacific expeditions, often in rivalry or emulation of Captain Cook. At the time of Cook's first voyage, in 1766-1769

Jean-François-Marie de Surville visited the Solomon Islands and New Zealand. In 1785-1788 Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse followed the American coast from Chile to Alaska, crossed to China, explored northern Japan and Kamchatka, went south to Australia and lost his life in the Santa Cruz Islands. The Malaspina Expedition (1789–1794) visited the American coast, Manila, New Zealand and Australia. In 1792-93 George Vancouver more thoroughly mapped the west coast of Canada. In 1803/6 Adam Johann von Krusenstern led the first Russian circumnavigation and investigated both sides of the North Pacific. In 1820 Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen saw Antarctica. A number of other voyages are listed in "European and American voyages of scientific exploration
."

Spain on the west coast of North America

For Europeans in the

Oregon country
between Britain and the United States. The United States conquered California in 1848 and purchased Alaska in 1867.

Northeast

The Russians moved south and the Japanese moved north and explored the

Mamiya Rinzo explored the coast of Sakhalin. During the Crimean War a British fleet failed to capture Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. In 1860 Russia annexed the southeast corner of Siberia
from China.

The Pacific opened to trade and imperialism

After Captain Cook large numbers of European merchant vessels began to enter the Pacific. The reasons for this are not completely clear. On Cook's third voyage furs bought at Nootka were sold in China at a 1,800 percent profit - enough to pay for a trading voyage. The first to do this was

Clipper ships cut the sailing time from Europe to the Pacific. England founded a colony in Australia in 1788 and New Zealand in 1840. After about 1800 England began to replace the Dutch Republic along the Asian coast. Hong Kong became a colony in 1839 during the First Opium War
, which was also the first time that a large European military and naval force appeared in the Pacific. European ships and sailors disrupted life on the Pacific islands. Most of the Pacific islands were soon claimed by one European power or another.

See also

References

  1. ^ Patrick Vinton Kirch, On the Road of the Winds: An Archaeological History of the Pacific Islands Before European Contact, University of California Press, 446 pages. 2002. ISBN 0-520-23461-8, ISBN 978-0-520-23461-1.
  2. ^ Andrew Sharp, Ancient voyagers in Polynesia (Univ of California Press, 1964).
  3. ^ Corona Brezina, Zheng He: China's Greatest Explorer, Mariner, and Navigator (Rosen, 2016).
  4. ^ Hayes, Derek. Historical Atlas of the North Pacific, page 52
  5. ^ Hannard (1991), page 7
  6. ISBN 978-0-340-69676-7
    .
  7. ISBN 0-8133-3749-6
  8. ISBN 978-1-4655-7034-5
    . Retrieved 12 June 2013.
  9. ^ Camino, Mercedes Maroto. Producing the Pacific: Maps and Narratives of Spanish Exploration (1567–1606), p.76. 2005.
  10. ISBN 0-393-06259-7
    .
  11. ^ Von der Porten, Edward; Aker, Raymond; Allen, Robert W.; Spitze, James (2002). "Who Made Drake's Plate of Brass? Hint: It Wasn't Francis Drake". California History. 81 (2): 28–30.
  12. ISBN 978-0195042221
    .
  13. doi:10.1080/00253359.2003.10659292
    .
  14. ISBN 0-7748-0113-1
    .
  15. ISBN 978-1-904959-28-1
    .
  16. doi:10.1080/00253359.2003.10659292
    .
  17. ISBN 0-7748-0113-1
    .
  18. ISBN 978-1-844-13762-6
    .
  19. ^ Daum, Andreas (2019). "German Naturalists in the Pacific around 1800: Entanglement, Autonomy, and a Transnational Culture of Expertise". In Berghoff, Hartmut (ed.). Explorations and Entanglements: Germans in Pacific Worlds from the Early Modern Period to World War I. Berghahn Books. pp. 79–102.

Bibliography

Further information: Pacific Ocean § Further reading
  • Camino, Mercedes Maroto. Producing the Pacific: Maps and narratives of Spanish exploration (1567-1606) (Rodopi, 2005).
  • Daum, Andreas. "German Naturalists in the Pacific around 1800: Entanglement, Autonomy, and a Transnational Culture of Expertise". In Explorations and Entanglements: Germans in Pacific Worlds from the Early Modern Period to World War I, ed. Hartmut Berghoff, Frank Biess, and Ulrike Strasser. New York: Berghahn Books, 2019, 79–102.
  • Delaney, John. Strait Through: Magellan to Cook & the Pacific, (Princeton University Library, 2010). Website devoted to the exploration of the Pacific Ocean Online
  • Dodge, Ernest Stanley. Beyond the Capes; Pacific Exploration from Captain Cook to the Challenger, 1776–1877 (Little, Brown, 1971).
  • Engstrand, Iris HW. "Seekers of the 'Northern Mystery': European Exploration of California and the Pacific." California History 76.2-3 (1997): 78-110 online[permanent dead link].
  • Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Pathfinders - A Global History of Exploration, (2006).
  • Guest, Harriet. Empire, Barbarism, and Civilisation: Captain Cook, William Hodges and the Return to the Pacific (Cambridge UP, 2007).
  • Hayes, Derek. Historical Atlas of the North Pacific Ocean: Maps of Discovery and Scientific Exploration, 1500–2000, (2001)
  • Haycox, Stephen, et al. eds. Enlightenment and Exploration in the North Pacific, 1741–1805. (U of Washington Press, 1997) excerpt.
  • Heawood, Edward. A History Of Geographical Discovery in the Seventeenth And Eighteenth Centuries (1912) online
  • Howse, Derek, ed. Background to Discovery: Pacific Exploration from Dampier to Cook (U of California Press, 1990).
  • Irwin, Geoffrey. The prehistoric exploration and colonisation of the Pacific (Cambridge UP, 1994).
  • Lincoln, Margarette, ed. Science and exploration in the Pacific: European voyages to the southern oceans in the eighteenth century (Boydell & Brewer, 2001).
  • Lloyd, Christopher. Pacific Horizons: The Exploration of the Pacific Before Captain Cook (Allen and Unwin, 1946). online, popular history
  • Lloyd, Christopher. Atlas of maritime history (1975) online, popular
  • Parry, J.H. The Age of Reconnaissance (1963) online
  • Williams, Glyn. "'To Make Discoveries of Countries Hitherto Unknown' The Admiralty and Pacific Exploration in the Eighteenth Century." The Mariner's Mirror 82.1 (1996): 14–27.
  • Withey, Lynne. Voyages of discovery: Captain Cook and the exploration of the Pacific (U of California Press, 1989).

Historiography

Primary sources

  • Lamb, Jonathan, Vanessa Smith, and Nicholas Thomas, eds. Exploration and exchange: A South Seas anthology, 1680-1900 (U of Chicago Press, 2000).
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