The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Pacific (Hist Atlas) [Paperback]

Colin McEvedy (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Hist Atlas | Publication Date: September 1, 1998

Through the use of historical maps the author outlines the history of the Pacific. Topics covered include: the first colonizations; the movements of the Polynesians; the voyages of Magellan and the Elizabethan circumnavigators Drake and Cavendish; Tasman's discovery of Tasmania, New Zealand and Fiji; Cook and the mapping of Australia, the discovery of Hawaii and exploration of the Arctic; Perry opening up Japan in the mid 19th century; the age of colonialism; war in the Pacific 1941-1945; the last five maps will deal with post-war events and will examine the present power of the Pacific rim.

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics); aFirst Edition First Printing edition (September 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140254285
• ISBN-13: 978-0140254280
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.5 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,304,157 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #80 in Books > Education & Reference > Atlases & Maps > Historical

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lot of information but maybe too many stories to tell., August 23, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Pacific (Hist Atlas) (Paperback)

This is the seventh in McEvedy's series of comprehensive historical atlases. Having covered Europe and the Middle East in a group of four (ancient, medieval, modern and recent), Africa, and North America, he has now produced the largest of all -- a 120-page work dealing with Asia and the Pacific. To my mind this is not quite as good as the others.

It has some of their strength -- principally a tremendous amount of information and research, which is very enlightening on some important themes -- i.e. population growth, European voyages of discovery, and the expansion of the Malays and Polynesians into Indonesia and the Pacific Islands. Also McEvedy's graceful and humorous style. For example, finding that anthropologists seem to have reached the anomalous conclusion that the native Tasmanians were more closely related to the Melanesians north of Australia than to their immediate neighbors the Australian aborigines, he quotes a Victorian on evolution: "let us hope that it is not true, and if it is, that it not become generally known."

However I note several weaknesses in comparison to the others.

First, the atlas seems to tell too many stories. It covers at least five major areas -- China & Northeast Asia; Southeast Asia; Central Asia & Tibet; the Pacific; and North America. Even though the atlas is physically larger than its predecessors, this reduces detail so much that events become hard to follow at times, particularly in Southeast Asia, Central Asia and the Tibetan plateau. This is true even of some of the Atlas's major focuses -- i.e. colonial expansion and the Second World War. If North America were dropped some information might be lost but the whole atlas would become much clearer.

Second, it covers the whole span of history. This makes coverage spotty up till around 1000 AD, and some important events (Warring States period and Three Kingdoms/disunity eras in China; Tai migration into Southeast Asia; Muslim conversion of Central Asia) are lost altogether.

Probably three and a half stars is a better choice than four. Nonetheless it has a lot of information, is well written, and has the special virtue of being the only book of its kind I have ever seen & reasonably priced as well.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good but not the best in the series., June 20, 2005

By 

C. D. Fleming - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Pacific (Hist Atlas) (Paperback)

Following from the excellent, entertaining and informative series of Penguin maps on Europe (Ancient, Middle ages, Modern, Recent Histories) this book attempts to show 10000 years of history in the Pacific in 100 pages using the same geographical map (of the entire Pacific rim), showing the rise and fall of cultures, civilisations and other relevant events in the history of the region.

Unfortunately, in this case it does not work so well with reading of the book a little disjointed and less absorbing that others in the series. There are two reasons why I think this is so :
1) The time frame is just too large - too much happens in 10,000 years to be described in enough detail in a book like this, and we end up with lots of details for some events (e.g. America vs. Japan in WWII, European exploration of Pacific 16th->18th centuries) and not so much on others (e.g. mass migration of Chinese to SE Asia in 19th century).
2) The geographical area covered (all the pacific rim) is just too big and in some parts just too plain empty. Further, some of the most interesting events are just outside this map and so are just shown on the periphery or get missed out, e.g. the rise and fall of various Chinese dynasties and the Russian conquest on Siberia all appear on the very periphery of the maps but the Galapagos and Easter islands are all that really exist in the SE Pacific and don't really have a lot of history but still are shown on every page.

Maybe these are just limitations of the rules of these books (i.e. to use the same map) but maybe a map of Asian history would be a good complement to it.

Despite this though, it still is a good read. Mr Mcevendy has a clever ability to describe a whole era of history in a single paragraph. And finally, as with his other books, within the text there is often some very funny lines which will keep readers amused, e.g. on the extinction of native species with the arrival of man "... the moa's problem was having had to too easy over the subsequent 150 million years : no enemies, no sense of danger, no moa".

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The relative importance of East Asia, May 20, 2006

By 

Andrew R. Wells (Hong Kong) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Pacific (Hist Atlas) (Paperback)

For many years, Dr. McEvedy has been producing succinct analyses of mankind's achievements, combining wit and devastating attacks on the post-modern academic establishment.
But for some time, he left himself open to one major criticism: why deal with the Middle East, Europe, the Americas and even Africa, while relegating East Asia by implication to a historical backwater? In this book, he has convincingly rebutted his critcs.
Naturally, there will be partisans who find McEvedy's Euro-centric view of the world distasteful. To quote from an earlier work, "Asia is [rightly} considered only as a stage on which the European struts... this... needs no justification".
But here he has shown he is no mindless neo-con or jingo: he is simply not prepared to whitewash inconvenient facts, such as the smug and self-defeating attitude of the Ming and Ching rulers of China, or the fact that Japan only acquired real historical significance with the Meiji Restoration.
This is a book which will withstand the tests of time. It is brightened by the author's usual lively wit and extraordinary gift for relating maps to prose.