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This chapter discusses the initial establishment of cattle in California and in Hawaiʻi. The centrality of livestock to European economies, and European beliefs that domestic animals served as a civilizing force, prompted colonists to transport cattle to these new territories. A herd of cattle accompanied the settlers from New Spain who founded the first Franciscan missions in Alta California in 1769. These settlers believed that their effort to turn California’s Indians into “gente de razón” or Christian “rational people” depended in large part on cattle. In 1793, the English explorer Captain George Vancouver transported cattle from the herds established in California to Hawaiʻi. Vancouver hoped to establish the animals on the centrally located archipelago near shipping lanes for growing trade with the Far East and in an attempt to transform Native Hawaiian culture by adding a pastoral element.

The government-sponsored Billings Expedition (1789–1795) brought natural historians back to the North Pacific for the first time since Steller’s visit. The mostly foreign-born scientists who sailed on these voyages had ambivalent relationships with their imperial sponsors. Informed by late-Enlightenment notions of civility and the example of Captain James Cook, they read Russia’s presumed backwardness into the North Pacific seascape. The destruction of the sea cow, sea otter, and fur seal emerged as particularly important indicators of the Russian Empire’s barbarity. At a time when Britain, Spain, and the United States challenged Russian dominion in the North Pacific, this was a potentially dangerous critique. In its association of imperial progress with species preservation, this was also a novel critique.

This book shines new light on the mostly ignored historical and legal evidence of the use of the Doctrine of Discovery in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States. In these countries, Christian Europeans assumed that they held sovereign, property, and commercial rights over the indigenous peoples under the ‘legal authority’ of the Doctrine. This chapter examines the development of Discovery in Europe, focusing on England's role in that development and its use of the Doctrine in these four English colonies. It also sets out the elements of Discovery to explain its underpinnings and definition and to explain how it was used in these four countries to acquire the rights of indigenous peoples. These four countries still struggle to deal with indigenous peoples and, in fact, they were the only countries to vote against the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The chapter traces the explorations of two early Kanaka voyagers overseas to demonstrate that from the moment that they caught sight of Cook’s ships off their shores, Kānaka actively sought to understand the contours of the globe and what the outside world might mean for them.

This introductory chapter recounts an event when native Hawaiians mistook British explorer Captain James Cook for Lono—the god of peace, music, and fertility—which resulted in cooperation between the natives and Cook's group of explorers. For the Hawaiians, the belief that Cook was Lono fulfilled their religious needs, and Cook's willingness to engage in ritual ceremonies enabled the religious views of the islanders to go unchallenged. In contrast to with the claim of international relations theory that misperception tends to be a roadblock to peace, the book argues that incomplete information, misperceptions, or sheer ignorance may generate cooperation in cases where complete information or shared ideas might lead to violence.

This chapter provides a detailed account of the growth of the unregulated sealing industry in the Dependencies, in the same format as Chapter Two. It begins with a history of the discovery of South Georgia, and follows the arrival of American and British vessels in late eighteenth century. It follows a similar pattern in the Falklands history, where sealing excursions declined during European and American wars, only to return with vigor from 1810 onwards - devastating seal stocks by the 1820s. The South Georgian sealing industry continued to decline during the nineteenth century, with numerous failed excursions recorded. In counterbalance to this, the South Shetland Islands saw a rise in sealing. A rise in sealing occurred during the brief sea fur boom of the 1860s and 1870s, where the chapter concludes.

This chapter opens part 1 of the book, “Theorizing on the Move,” by examining three major contexts or sources for Darwin’s ambition as a prospective naturalist. First, it describes the existence of a well-known and consequential scientific puzzle to which he would eventually offer a new answer: how were coral reefs formed? This question was of great practical significance to the British Admiralty and individual navigators, and it had important theoretical implications for geologists who were interested in the history of the earth. Second, the chapter explains the purpose of the 1831-1836 Royal Navy voyage of HMS Beagle and of Darwin’s presence aboard, emphasizing the role of Francis Beaufort in directing hydrographic surveyors to study coral reef formation in the South Seas. Third, it describes the range of intellectual and practical experiences Darwin brought to the voyage by examining his training at Edinburgh University and the University of Cambridge. This discussion calls attention to his expertise in the sciences of marine zoology and (terrestrial) geology, his early exposure to the work of Alexander von Humboldt, and the mentorship Darwin received from Robert Grant, John Stevens Henslow, and Adam Sedgwick.