The Amazing Life and Strange Death of Captain Cook: Crash Course World History #27 Video Lecture | A Complete Guide to World History : 1 - World Knowledge

Hi, I'm John Green, this is Crash Course World
History and today we're going to talk about
the life and astonishing death of Captain
James Hook. Who's death by a crocodile ch-
what? James Cook? There's no crocodiles? HGGG!
Stupid history, always disappointing me. Well,
Captain Cook is pretty interesting too and
his death is a nice entree into one of the
great historian feuds of recent times. God,
I love historian feuds.
[theme music]
So Captain Cook was born in 1728. He was a
sailor and eventually a British Naval Officer,
who saw action in the Seven Years War (which
you will no doubt remember from last week)
But he's best know for his three voyages of
exploration and scientific discovery that
took place in the Pacific Ocean.
The first was between 1768 and 1771, the second
between 1772 and 1775, and the third between
1776 and 1780. Although on the last one, Cook's
journey ended in 1779 because he died. And
as you can see from the map, Cook pretty much
OWNED the Pacific.
He mapped the coast of Australia, paving the
way for British colonization and also paving
the way for the near destruction of aboriginal
peoples and their culture. As with the Columbian
Exchange, Cook's voyages to Australia remade
the biological landscape. He introduced sheep,
which paved the way for Australia's huge wool
industry. Right, there was a penal colony
established in Australia; but the real story
of Australia is its success as a colony. Within
80 years, Australia went from a 1,000 Anglo-Australians
to 1.2 million.
Equally important, Cook explored and mapped
out New Zealand. Again paving the way for
colonization and paving the way for Crash
Course World History to make an announcement!
We did it! We finally talked about Australia
and New Zealand! We're a real world history
class! Huzzah! (party horn) Now all you Australians
have to shut up about how we've never mentioned you!
Right, so in his voyage Cook also determined
the was no such thing as the mythical continent
of "Terra Australis" said to have exsited
here. And he helped to dispel the idea of
a North-West Passage, which Europeans had
been obsessed with for centuries. He was the
first European to describe Hawaii and also
the first to keep his ships' crews free of scurvy!
Cook and his successors were part of the middle
wave of European colonization. The one that
took place after Europeans settled in the
Americas, but before they set their sights
on Africa. One more thing to mention about
the context of these voyages, or rather their
impact. Besides huge territorial gains and
increased wealth, exploration of the Pacific
contributed to Europe's romantic fascination
with science. In the 18th and 19th centuries,
Europeans became obsessed with mapping and
charting and classifying the world. Which
maybe isn't like candle-light dinner romantic,
but if you think about visiting never before
seen lands and bringing back odd life-forms.
Well, I mean think about how we feel about
space. And then of course as they colonized
people, Europeans portrayed themselves as
a civilizing force; bringing both science
and religion.
Oh, it's time for the Open Letter? An Open
Letter to "The White Man's Burden." But first,
let's see what's in the secret compartment
today. Ah! It's a moustache, so I can look like Kipling!
Dear White Man's Burden,
I'mma go ahead and take this off Stan. I think
Tumblr has had enough to get their GIFs.
So White Man's Burden, you're a poem. And
more that a century after Kipling wrote you,
scholars still disagree over whether he was
kidding. And this speaks to how weird and
insane Imperialism really was. Europeans seemed
to genuinely believe that it was their unfortunate
duty to extract massive wealth from the rest
of the world. Seriously, were you kidding
when you called natives "Half Devil and Half
Child?" Because in retrospect, that seems
to describe... ya know... you.
Best Wishes,
John Green
Right, so now having discussed the life of
Captain Cook, we shall turn to the most controversial
thing he ever did. Die. Let's go to the Thought
Bubble.
So Cook landed in Hawaii at Kealakekua Bay
in early 1779 and explored the island. While
he was ashore he was greeted by an important
person, either a Chief or a God. And then
in early February, he left. But the ship had
trouble and was forced to return to the bay
for repairs. During this second visit, he
had difficulty with the Hawaiians, who'd previously
had been pretty hospitable. And there was
a fracas, in which Captain Cook was killed
by at least one Hawaiian. We know this from
journals kept by various crewman, but the
historical controversy arises from the details and
interpretation of his death. Why, in short, was Cook
killed? The traditional view is that Cook was killed
for some religious reason, although what isn't
always clear. One of the most fleshed out
versions of this story comes from the anthropologist
Marshall Sahlins, in his book "Islands of
History." So in the Hawaiian religious system
Ku, the God of War and Human Sacrifice, rules
for eight or nine months out of the year.
The other months are reserved for the Fertility
God, Lono. The season long festival for Lono
is call "Makahiki" and during this the Hawaiian
King, who is associated with Ku, is ritually
defeated. During the Makahiki, an image of
Lono tours the island, gets worshipped, and collects
taxes. And at the end of the Makahiki period, Lono
is ritually defeated and returned to his native Tahiti.
The thinking goes that because Cook arrived
in the middle of the Makahiki, the Hawaiians
perceived him as Lono. So Cook took part in
the rituals and sacrifices that were made
as part of the Makahiki and in Sahlins' view,
Cook was killed as a ritual murder to mark
the end of Makahiki. For Ku to return, the
fesitval to end, and the normal political
order to be restored, ***** Lono had to be
defeated and presumably killed! For Sahlins,
Cook's death fits perfectly with the ritual
structure of Hawaiian culture.
Thanks Thought Bubble. So the big problem
with this interpretation, which admittedly
sounds pretty cool, is that we don't have much evidence
that Hawaiians would have actually seen Cook this way.
We find a really interesting opposing view
from Gananath Obeyesekere and I will remind
you that mispronunciation is my thing! Sorry
Gananath. Anyway, he criticized Sahlins' interpretation
of Cook's death for looking a lot more like
European myth than like a Hawaiian ritual.
First off, Obeyesekere argues that Cook himself
would not easily be confused with Lono. In
fact if he were taken for a God, it would
probably be Ku, the War God, what with all
the cannons and muskets. Also there's the
fact that the name Cook sounds more like Ku
than Lono. Also, arguing that native Hawaiians
would see a European and think him a God has
all kinds of troubling implications. One of
them being that native Hawaiians aren't terribly
smart. When in fact we know that they are
very smart because unlike the rest of us,
they live in Hawaii. And last but definitely
not least, Lono is associated with fertility
and the Hawaiians would have associated the
Europeans with the exact opposite of fertility
because they introduced gonorrhea to Hawaii.
And there's a further problem with the "Cook
equals Lono" equation, which is that nothing
in Hawaiian religion has any of their gods
being ritually killed. Part of their mythology
can be seen as sanctioning a ritual killing
of the King, but not of a god and also it's
a long way from ritual killing to actual killing!
The truth is probably a lot less spectacular,
which is that Cook was probably killed during
a melee in which a bunch of Hawaiians were
also killed. Before his death, Cook had attempted
to take a Hawaiian King hostage in response
to Hawaiians taking a bunch of stuff from
Cook's boats. This was common practice for
Cook. He had done the same thing in Tahiti
and other Polynesian Islands after Islanders
had taken European goods. Which by the way
happened everywhere Cook went in the Pacific,
so maybe he should have figured out that it
was like a thing! That you were allowed to
take stuff off boats in exchange for the right
to hang out there! Great sailor, terrible anthropologist.
Although to be fair, anthropology hadn't be invented.
Additionally, right before Cook was killed
there were rising tensions between the Hawaiians
and the Europeans. Even though at first their
relationship had been quite cordial as evidenced
by all that gonorrhea. So why the tension?
Probably because the Europeans dismantled
a Hawaiian ritual space, some sources call
it a temple, and used it for firewood. Cook
attempted to pay for it, but his low-ball offer of two
hatchets, I'm not making that up, was refused!
I'm sorry we destroyed your temple, but I'll
give you two hatchets! One for each hand!
I mean, what would you even do with a third
hatchet?!?
So unfortunately, the earliest Hawaiian account
offering this explanation for why Cook was
killed comes well after the accounts. But
at least it's a Hawaiian explanation. Of course
it's also possible that the Hawaiians were
just upset that Cook had attempted to kidnap
their King! Most accounts from the time portray
a chaotic scene in which Cook himself fired
at least two shots, probably killing at least
one Islander. And one thing that seem pretty
clear, even as described by European chroniclers,
is that Cook's death does not look premeditated
and it sure doesn't look like a ritual.
But even so, the idea that Hawaiians saw Cook
as a God has ended up in a good many accounts
of his demise. Why? Well one explanation is
that it fits in with other stories of explorers.
You've all probably heard that Taínos thought
Columbus was a god and that the Aztecs supposedly
thought Cortés was a god. And this just makes
Captain Cook one in a long line of Europeans
who were thought to be gods by people who
Europeans felt were savages. And making Cook
a god also sets up a stark contrast between
the enlightened West and primitive Polynesia,
because Captain Cook often appears in history
books as a model man of the Enlightenment.
Sure he never had much formal schooling, but
his voyages were all about about increasing
knowledge and scientific exploration. And
having him die at the hands of a people who
were so obviously mistaken in thinking him
a god makes an argument for the superiority
over the intellectualism of the Enlightenment
versus the so called "Primitive Religion"
of the colonies. But whenever a story seems
to fit really well into such a framework,
we need to ask ourselves, "Who's telling that
story?"
One of the reasons we know so much about Captain
Cook and the reason he shows up in so many
history textbooks is because we have tons
of records about him, but they're almost all
European records. Even the Hawaiian records
we have about Cook have been heavily influenced
by later contact with Europeans. So if we
cast Cook's death as part of a native ritual,
we're implying that Hawaiians were just performing
a ritual script. Which takes away all their
agency as human beings. Are we making them
recognizable, having them respond as we think
Europeans would by flying off the handle?
I don't have an answer, but the debate between
these two historical anthropologists brings
up something that we need to keep in mind.
Very often in history, we make statements
about people who haven't written their own
story. Whether it's Hawaiians or Native Americans
or working class people. And we try to imagine
that we're seeing the world as they have seen
it. But the best we can really do is offer
an approximation. So is it really possible
to present a Hawaiian version of Captain Cook's
death? Or is the exercise inherently condescending
and paternalistic? And most importantly, is
our inability to escape our biases a good
excuse for not even trying? As usual, those
aren't rhetorical questions. Thanks for watching.
I'll see you next week.
Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan
Muller, our script supervisor is Danica Johnson,
the show is written by my high school history
teacher Raoul Meyer and myself, and our graphics
team is Thought Bubble. Last week's "Phrase
of the Week" was fancier hats! If you want
to guess at this week's "Phrase of the Week"
or suggest a future one you can do so in comments
where you can also ask questions about today's
video that will be answered by our team of
historians. Thanks for watching Crash Course and as
we say in my hometown, Don't Forget To Be Awesome.