The Travels of Hildebrand Bowman

The Travels of Hildebrand Bowman (1778) tells the story of a fictional midshipman abandoned in Queen Charlotte Sound, New Zealand, after a battle with Maori that claims the lives of ten of his shipmates. Inspired by an actual event on Captain Cook€s second voyage, Bowman€s adventures take him to increasingly sophisticated cultures€•hunter/ gatherer, pastoral/nomadic, agricultural, and commercial€•that dramatize stadial history in a Pacific setting. The work provocatively weaves together popular fascination with Cook€s voyages, sensational conceptions of the newly charted Pacific, contemporary ideas on human development and culture, topical satire on London life, and a fanciful castaway story. As an introduction to the cultural connections linking Pacific studies, the Scottish Enlightenment, and eighteenth-century English society and politics, The Travels of Hildebrand Bowman is unique in literary history and unsurpassed as a teaching text. Of equal importance, it marks the birth of a national literature. It is the first New Zealand novel.

Historical appendices provide an exceptionally broad range of materials on the Grass Cove €œmassacre,€ the eighteenth-century stadial theory of historical development, cannibalism, and contemporary depictions of the South Pacific and its indigenous peoples.