REVIEWS: Hounding the 'great voyager'

Review of The Trial of the Cannibal Dog: Captain Cook in the South Seas, by Anne Salmond

Abstract

Review of The Trial of the Cannibal Dog: Captain Cook in the South Seas, by Anne Salmond

Cook has had a great reputation as an idealised 'great voyager' and Enlightenment figure, meticulous and reasoning in some accounts (see for example, Beaglehole's editions of Cook's journals), but is also available to be demonised as a representative of an precursor to cultural imperialism and colonialism in the Pacific: the kitchen, it could be said, is alread over-populated with 'Cooks'. Yet for all the many volumes already produced on the subject of Cook, The Trail of the Cannibal Dog,by anthropologist and historian Anne Salmond, should be seen as a valuable addition, in that it extends the scope of the discussion of the voyages and the cultural contact they endagered.