Biased Writings About The Pacific Islanders Summary

Biased Writings about the Pacific Islanders
During the seventeenth to the eighteenth century, many famous European travelers went around the globe and wrote about their experiences, which educated the Europeans who were not able to go out to the outside world and also left valuable study materials for historians to learn about the past. George Forster, Adelbert von Chamisso, and Charles Darwin were three of the most famous European travelers at the time; each of them wrote a great piece of travel writing, which were “A Voyage Round the World,” “A Voyage Around the World”, and “Voyage of the Beagle.” All three of them wrote about the Pacific Islanders in their paper, but the imagery they portrayed were ambiguous. Due to Forster, Chamisso, and Charles’ differences in writing styles and

In Forster’s writing about the New Zealanders, although he tried to stay unbiased and factual, his personal emotion still influenced him. Thus he expressed both negative and positively biased views for the New Zealanders. Forster pursued objectivity in his writing as he avoided personal inputs in his description. A good example from his text would be he described based on the facts, such as he described the New Zealander gave them food and showed signs of friendship. His tones were rather scientific, as the professional groups of people preferred to write this way. However, his point of views for the New Zealanders based on what they have done changes throughout his writing. He called the New Zealanders “savage” all over his writing, and he viewed them inferior compared to the Europeans. Forster was biased against the New Zealanders mostly due to their cannibalistic behaviors. In the example of the murder of Captain Furnaeaux’s ten men by the Islander, he stated: “Savages do not give up the right of retaliating injuries; but civilized societies confer