This history presents an authoritative and comprehensive introduction to the experiences of Pacific islanders from their first settlement of the islands to the present day. It addresses the question of insularity and explores islanders' experiences thematically, covering such topics as early settlement, contact with Europeans, colonialism, politics, commerce, nuclear testing, tradition, ideology, and the role of women. It incorporates material on the Maori, the Irianese in western New Guinea, the settled immigrant communities in Fiji, New Caledonia and the Hawaiian monarchy and follows migrants to New Zealand, Australia and North America.

1. Contending approaches; 2. Settling the region; 3. Pacific Edens?; 4. Discovering outsiders; 5. Land, labour and independence; 6. New political orders; 7. Land, labour and dependency; 8. Invention of the native; 9. The war in the Pacific; 10. A nuclear Pacific; 11. The material world re-made; 12. The ideological world re-made; 13. The end of insularity?