Foreign Visitors to the Cook Islands 1773 to 1840 - Nga Papa'a mua ki teia pa enua

Paremata Press, Wellington, 2014. Good secondhand condition.

After the foreign explorers, traders, missionaries and whalemen began to visit the Cook Islands. Seen from the shore with a Cook Islander's perspective, these early visits were brief and erratic. Gradually however more frequent and longer visits brought in foreign influences, some good and some bad. The prime task for the generation of Cook Islanders alive from 1800 to 1840 was how to make sense of this erratic parade of foreign visits, and how to adapt to the introduction of new ideas, new technologies, and new religions, and how to cope despite the new diseases.

I have tried to present the fragmented and widely scattered raw source materials in what is, I hope, an accessible and readable form. Short summaries of the visits made by the discoverers, traders, early missionaries and whalers are followed by three annexes.

- from the Introduction