Customer Reviews

The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific

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In addition to asking some very important theoretical questions relevant to the practice of history and anthropology, Obeyesekere takes aim at Marshall Sahlins in this book. Sahlins went on to write a blow by blow response in the book "How 'Natives' Think: About Captain Cook, For Example" which should probably be read along with Obeyesekere's.

While I have only read selections of both, my feeling is that Sahlins has probably defended his honor, revealed big flaws in his opponent's arguments, but done little to blunt the critique Obeyesekere launches against the structuralist approach to the apotheosis of captain Cook. Even if some of his specific claims are called into question, Obeyesekere's best contributions are 1) showing the importance of "myth models" not only for natives, but for modern Western cultures and 2) showing that cultural specificity does not rob the "natives" of their capacity to engage in a kind of "pragmatic rationality" and we must hold open the possibility that considerable irrationality can creep into the "civilized" characters such as Cook.

Sahlin and other reviewers of this book argue that Obeyesekere simply reverses things, making the natives "bourgeois rationalists" and the Westerners irrational savages. I find this totally unpersuasive. His conception of pragmatic reasoning is flawed, but doesn't ignore the importance of culture in configuring the parameters of possible action.

I bought this book because of a general interest in Hawaiian history and Captain Cook. I'm not a professional historian and don't have any comment on such matters as quality of footnotes. However, I thought this was an excellent, very readable book. Mr. Obeyesekere takes historical fragments - diaries, letters, and so forth, and re-constucts the last few days of Cook's life. It's done so cleverly, in such a readable style, that it reminds one of the end of a mystery novel, where Sherlock Holmes explains his reasoning to Dr. Watson. However, there's the similar suspicion that it's being too clever, and that the author is taking evidence to fit the conclusion, rather than the other way around.

Also of interest was the repeated theme of cultural imperialism, explaining how modern historians project their own cultural predjudices (in this case, the simple savage, and a view of religion that is decidedly rational and rooted in monotheism) onto foreign cultures, and the misunderstandings that naturally arise. There's a number of similar cases I can think of, where the common knowledge is so influenced - best example is the view that Cortez conquered Mexico as an unimpeded God, when a simple reading of Bernal Diaz shows that's not the case.

I do have to complain, though, that a overly large portion of the book is given to the academic refutation of fellow scholar Mr. Sahlins. The author is challenging common thought, and I appreciate being able to read the debate with a prestigious scholar who represents the status quo. However, I thought it should have been made more distinct from the rest of the book - much interesting information is revealed in the argument, but it's comparatively dry reading.

Still, overall, this book makes for a very interesting read, and encourages one to re-examine their historical and cultural assumptions. I definitely think it's worth reading.

You have to give Obeyesekere credit for looking beyond the Makahiki festival, which dominates Marshall Sahlins' study of the apotheosis of James Cook. Obeyesekere sparked a minor maelstrom when he challenged the renown scholar's thesis that Cook was personified as a god by the Hawaiians. Obeyesekere looks beyond bicameral minds, and insists that the Hawaiians were fully conscious of their actions.

Cook was not the great god Lono, nor did he pretend to be. While his second arrival at the Sandwich Islands did coincide with the Makahiki festival, the Hawaiians did not deify him, but rather invited the Captain and his crew to take part in the ritual. Unfortunately for the Captain things seem to devolve afterward, and the Hawaiians killed him and several members of his crew.

Many have tried to piece together the tattered remnants of this story. Several of his crew kept journals and attempts were made after the fact to collect oral history from Hawaiians who were part of the cannibalistic ritual. Unfortunately, few of these accounts jive. Marshall Sahlins has done the most to try to piece together the events, but he seems to discount the Hawaiians ability for cognitive thinking, which tarnishes his work.

Obeyesekere attempted to draw Sahlins out, which he did with this book. Sahlins responded with the more scholarly but overbearing "How Natives Think," which he hoped would settle the issue once and for all. Unfortunately, Obeyeskere is not an anthropologist and his arguments tend to be a bit thin, but he does shoot plenty of holes into Sahlins' thesis.

This book starts with a simple question and assertion. Most scholars claim Captain Cook was taken for a God when he arrived in Hawaii(much as Cortez in Mexico) but this book claims that this narrative is 'racist' and 'eurocentric' and a classic 'imperialistic myth'. The idea here is that the narrative assumed Cook was a god(not that he was mistakenly taken for one) because the racist Europeans of the 18th century beleived Europeans really were gods to the 'natives'.

But this argument falls apart when one realizing what it is based on. The book wants to be the new 'Orientalism' and the author claims that as a 'Sri Lankan' he is best placed to judge what Hawaaians a dozen generations ago thought of a European. How rediculous. THe difference between Sri Lanka in the 20th century and Hawaii in the 18th is as different as Captain Cook's culture in England in the 18th and the culture of the Hawaiians. The racist assertion that a Sri Lankan can better judge a Hawaiian than a European is unfounded, perhaps the best person to judge a Hawaiin is a Hawaiian but it doesnt logic that a Sri Lankan would be better than a British person.

Thus the idea presented her is simply wrong headed. It would have been better had this book re-examined how Polynesians and Hawaiians in particular viewed Cook, rather than claim that every piece of the Cook story is 'racist'. What was Cook supposed to do? Not sketch the people he encountered, not write about them, he was in fact being very forward thinking in bothering to learn about the cultures he visited.

Seth J. Frantzman

Was Captain Cook viewed by Hawaiian people as a diety, specifically the god Lono? The author says not. This book by Professor Gannath Obeyesekere at Princeton University was conceived as a counter-argument to a theory proposed by Marshall Sahlins (in his 1981 book "Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities: Structure in the Early History of the Sandwich Islands"), "who used the apotheosis of Cook to advance a certain vision of structural history"(p52). This book, then, is a counter to that book written by Marhsall Sahlins, who has since written a counter to Obeyesekere's counter. Without having read Sahlins's original work that prompted this reaction from Obeyesekere, and having not read Sahlin's subsequent counter to Obeyesekere's criticisms, it was difficult for me to come to any conclusions about this controversy.

To the uninitiated on the Captain Cook controversy, this volume was similar to wading through the House of Representatives' 1979 Report that concluded on the Lee Harvey Oswald controversy on whether he shot and killed President Kennedy that there were "other shooters" that day in Dallas. Like the 1979 Congressional Report, Obeyesekere's book was a difficult work to make sense of unless you were already familiar with what was already being said.

Having said that, that doesn't mean this book was not interesting - it was! It deals with the murder in 1779 of Captain James Cook at Kealakekua Bay, Hawaii. Sahlins has been saying that Hawaiians mistook Cook to be their god Lono because of the coincidental timing of his arrival at the time of their Makahiki festival. They believed Lono had returned in the flesh, in accordance with prophecy. Obeyesekere says that's all bunk! He says they knew he was a human - a chief of a sailing ship, and came to know him as a nasty, murderous servant of the British Empire, so they killed him to pretty much stop him. After he was dead, they gave him a burial fit for a king in accordance with custom.

Obeyesekere says the idea that Hawaiians believed Cook was Lono came from the European's own `we're better than you' mentality - they imagined themselves to be gods everywhere they were treated with South Pacific courtesy. The author chastises Sahlins for perpetuating the myth, saying "None of the new evidence substantiates Sahlins's thesis that the apotheosis of Cook is a Hawai'ian rather than a European phenonmenon; nor has he dealt adequately with the methodological criticisms that I made of his previous work, particulary those pertaining to source material" (p194).

Unfortunately, the reader can know no more of Sahlins and his theory from reading this book than what Obeyesekere is telling. That said, I did notice that the two authors could be talking cross-purposes to some extent. And on this point it may be helpful to think about Oswald and Kennedy again. Obeyesekere is stuck on the point of whether Cook was Lono or not. But Sahlins comes across as being more interested in structural cultural theory. By analogy again, probably Oswald did not shoot and kill JFK (it was likely a faction within the U.S. government that took him out - a faction that has evolved into the Bush Crime Community), but the fact that so many people continue to believe Oswald did it is a cultural phenomenon in itself. Likewise, the social construction of Cook's death on a Hawaiian level was the result of a " `structural crisis'" (p 182) in need of harmonious rendering to existing " `sociological category'" (p 183). Sahlins, as he is portrayed by the author, shows an interest in how culture and society clings to culturally-determined ideas such as my example of Oswald as JFK killer and his example of Cook as Lono because of structural determinism. This determinism is minimized and even partly dismissed by Obeyeskere when he appears to throw out the bath water with the tub.

In short, reading this book will require that you read two more by Sahlins. At times you may feel you were called to jury duty. But there is much more within these pages than the apotheosis of Captain Cook. There is also the lens of structural anthropology.

Ten years hence it is tempting to beat up on this book and its shortcomings. We should resist the temptation. Obviously Nicholas Thomas in his new book "Cook" couldn't resist. That's a shame.

This was a necessary book. It raised and raises fundamental issues about anthropology and the nature of socio-historical inquiry that were and remain unresolved and are perpetually debated.

One thing Obeyesekere did with this book is expose the hypocritical underbelly of much of anthropology. Especially anthropology as practiced in Hawaii. Once he turned on the light, the cockroaches started running, and it got pretty ugly. Much of this book contains an extended response to various critics, especially the mostly pathetic "How Natives Think" by Marshall Sahlins. Somewhat regrettably, those two books are now linked forever.

In the end I would like to think that this book is about more than just a pissing contest between two relatively elite and priviledged academics. While Obeyesekere here is far from perfect, he is more right than Sahlins and his sympathizers. One reason why establishment "white" superstar academics cannot deal with legitimate postcolonial criticism is that they can't stand the thought--whether they want to admit it or not--of being looked at with the same scrutinous gaze that they themselves use. This "using and taking" aspect of anthropology is a fundamental aspect of the discipline, and it's a big part of the book.

The intellectual and political reaction of the Hawaiian community to this book is perhaps the most interesting aspect of it. Obeyesekere could have done a better job of establishing a sense of ethnographic authority with the Hawaiian community, but that in no way excuses the lame ass and racially prejudicial attacks he had to endure for being a "half breed" Sri Lankan intellectual. Quite frankly, I think many of the people at the Center for Hawaiian Studies at UH Manoa had no real clue what this book was about when it first came out and had to resort to the same old trite, truistic, and nationalistic slogans in response. Instead of accusing Obeyesekere of not being "Hawaiian" and therefore by definition not able to truly speak about, much less for, Hawaiians, why not encounter and respond to the man's argument?

This book is now part of the postcolonial pantheon and it is still used in a lot of anthropology courses. Ironically, my sense of the book is that many of the people generally sympathetic to the themes of this book may harbor many of the elitist and romantic biases about Hawaii that Obeyesekere sought to challenge. And that is perhaps the book's biggest shortfall.

Obeyesekere does a remarkable, clear and concise job by using the events in Hawaii to show that to get an understanding in the meeting of cultures we must look at the views of all cultures involved. Where Sahlins work resides mostly from the Mythical viewpoint and looks at the events of Cook's landing in Hawaii in 1779, Obeyesekere opens up for debate logical questions that may never be answered but remind us that we must look at the entire spectrum of any historical event. Obeyesekere is critical of the myth and the way Sahlins advances that myth. The better of the two authors questioned the myth of Cook and that is the correct way to interpret the actual events leading up to Cook's death.

This book is a travesty. I'm a history student researching the death of Captain Cook. My prof. who gained his PhD from Yale suggested I read this book as a counterpoint for how historical research should be done, and presented. Obeyesekere is way out of his league in this book. First he claims to be an islander so he can relate to the natives (in fact he is 1/2 sri lankan and the other half is european). From taht point it goes down hill. The man's arguments while compelling on the surface are completely unfounded. If you actually read the footnotes of his arguments they site often his own articles and essays, or take comments from European acounts out of context that when read do not state at all what Obeyesekere says they do. Do not get taken in by the popular denial of the truth of Cook's death. This book represents an obvious vendeta against historians who know what they are talking and have true expertise in the field such as Sahlins.Who knows ancient Hawwian traditions, is an expert in ancient polynesean language and culture, and studied in many places in the south pacific. Unlike Obyesekere who has no background in any of these things. This is another great example of a man who is way out of his league atempting to make a name for himself by rocking the boat.