Natives and Exotics : : World War II and Environment in the Southern Pacific / / Judith A. Bennett.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter UHP eBook Package 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Bennett, Judith A.,
• Place / Publishing House: Honolulu : : University of Hawaii Press, , [2009]; ©2009
• Year of Publication: 2009
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (448 p.) :; 32 illus., 13 maps

Ambitious in its scope and scale, this environmental history of World War II ranges over rear bases and operational fronts from Bora Bora to New Guinea, providing a lucid analysis of resource exploitation, entangled wartime politics, and human perceptions of the vast Oceanic environment. Although the war's physical impact proved significant and oftentimes enduring, this study shows that the tropical environment offered its own challenges: Unfamiliar tides left landing craft stranded; unseen microbes carrying endemic diseases disabled thousands of troops. Weather, terrain, plants, animals-all played an active role as enemy or ally.At the heart of Natives and Exotics is the author's analysis of the changing visions and perceptions of the environment, not only among the millions of combatants, but also among the Islands' peoples and their colonial administrations in wartime and beyond. Judith Bennett reveals how prewar notions of a paradisiacal Pacific set up millions of Americans, Australians, New Zealanders, and Japanese for grave disappointment when they encountered the reality. She shows that objects usually considered distinct from environmental concerns (souvenirs, cemeteries, war memorials) warrant further examination as the emotional quintessence of events in a particular place. Among native people, wartime experiences and resource utilization induced a shift in environmental perceptions just as the postwar colonial agenda demanded increased diversification of the resource base. Bennett's ability to reappraise such human perceptions and productions with an environmental lens is one of the unique qualities of this study.Impeccably researched, Natives and Exotics is essential reading for those interested in environmental history, Pacific studies, and a different kind of war story that has surprising relevance for today's concerns with global warming.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Currency, Measurement, and Place-Names -- Abbreviations -- Preface: Was the Environment a Stage or an Actor? -- Prologue: The Great Ocean: How Others Tried to Ride Its Waves -- Part I: Encountering Pacific Environments -- CHAPTER 1: Imagining Landscapes -- CHAPTER 2: Peopling the Southern Pacific -- CHAPTER 3: Diseased Environments -- Part II: Using Indigenous Resources -- CHAPTER 4: Local Resources -- CHAPTER 5: Taking Stock -- CHAPTER 6: Resources for the Metropole -- CHAPTER 7: The Human Resource -- Part III: Exiting Environment, Leaving Residues -- CHAPTER 8: Paying for the Damages -- CHAPTER 9: Close Out -- CHAPTER 10: Leavings on Landscape -- CHAPTER 11: Legacies and Visions -- Part IV: Embodying War's Environment -- CHAPTER 12: Remembering Place -- CHAPTER 13: Places of Memory, Sites of Forgetting -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- About the Author