20 - Seafaring and Colonization in the Southern Ocean, 1000 ce–1850 ce

Summary

The Southern Ocean is the continuous sea that circles the globe between the Roaring Forties and the Screaming Sixties, latitudinal names that aptly describe its intimidating character for seafaring, and its Pacific sector is discussed here. Long thought to be occupied by a southern continent, the existence of the Southern Ocean was not fully established by European voyaging until the end of the eighteenth century, but Tasmania and southern Chile had been inhabited since the last Ice Age, and New Zealand for about 800 years. Their histories are different but they disclose similar adaptations of subsistence and settlement patterns to the cool climates and rich marine and coastal resources of the Southern Ocean. From the early nineteenth century in Tasmania and New Zealand, and somewhat earlier in Chile, a serial influx of European sealers, whalers, and settlers brought severe resource competition, social disruption, and demographic depression to the Indigenous societies. They responded, in varying degrees, by engaging in globalized commerce, creating hybrid technologies, and forming mixed-race communities.