Summary Of The Great Ocean By David Igler

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The Great Ocean is a book written by David Igler on the interactions between different cultures from the Pacific Rim region from about 1770 to 1850. Igler is a former graduate of UC Berkeley specializing in Environmental History and the American West and is currently a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, and the president of the Pacific Coast Branch of American Historical Association. In the category of U.S. Maritime History, Igler won the North American Society for Oceanic History John Lyman Book award. Rather than focusing on the widely studied Atlantic trade, Igler focuses on the trade interactions that occurred throughout the Pacific Ocean including Cook’s voyages, whaling, colonization and empire expansion, California gold rushes and many other related topics. The target audience for this book is for any researcher that is in need of a credible source on the globalization of the Pacific Rim region. …show more content…

Igler supports his thesis by examining and discussing the interactions between different cultures including islanders, Native Americans and Europeans. Igler’s first historical look at the Pacific region starts in 1768, by discussing the three voyages of Captain James Cook and what he and his crew encountered in their explorations. Igler also goes into great detail on why Captain Cook’s voyages were the gateway to the globalization of the Pacific Ocean. After Cook’s voyages, the California Gold rush is a very important theme discussed in the book because it created immigration to west coast of the United States and diverse enculturation of people from all over the Pacific

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