January 12 - May 4, 2010
The flow of goods, labor and travelers across the oceans has a rich and troubled history. In both the Atlantic and Pacific Worlds, the global exchange of natural resources and labor, the movement of travelers, explorers, missionaries and tourists, and the displacement of indigenous peoples are complex processes which historians, economists, and anthropologists typically approach within disciplinary frameworks. But these traditional approaches give us little opportunity or cause to think comparatively about the relationship between these developments as they emerged in the Atlantic and Pacific.
Islands: Missionaries, Migration, and Labor will approach the comparative study of global development in the modern world from the perspective of lands surrounded by water. Islands and beaches can be seen as distinctive, liminal spaces of cultural exchange. During the era of colonial expansion and imperial control of the Atlantic and Pacific regions of the western hemisphere, islands became geographical spaces where nations sought to determine the social, political and economic contours of the new world. Europeans approached islands as way stations, spaces of economic exchange and as host communities. Migrating workers moved between island colonies, establishing and re-establishing ethnic communities that shaped the process of colonialism. And indigenous islanders interacted with European colonizers and migrating workers, often establishing the terms of cultural communication.
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