Cross-cultural misunderstandings over property norms escalated to lethal colonial violence

Evidence

Another illustration of the inability to deal with difference is provided by Captain Cook’s early experience of Tahiti (1769). The Englishmen knew that the Tahitians held property communally and that they were therefore unlikely to possess a European concept of “theft.” In order to win over the natives, the crew showered them with gifts. Soon, however, the Tahitians began to help themselves. At first, the pilfering amused the visitors. But when the natives snatched Banks’s spyglass and snuffbox, he threatened them with his musket until they were returned. Cook’s crew continued to be plagued by incidents like this. A similar misunderstanding was to lead to Cook’s death at the hands of the Hawaiians, in 1779. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 624

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Colonial land appropriation was framed as consent with violence as alternative — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 300; Sudden cultural colonization provoked violent anticolonial reaction; Colonial and racial violence has claimed tens of millions of lives worldwide (+3 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Colonial land appropriation was framed as consent with violence as alternative — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 300; Sudden cultural colonization provoked violent anticolonial reaction; Colonial and racial violence has claimed tens of millions of lives worldwide (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Colonial violence stood inside the law, not outside it #complicates (0.75) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 411
• Diverse colonial officials produced radically discrepant causal accounts of the same murders #complicates (0.72) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1030