New Books in Pacific Studies

New Books in Pacific Studies

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New Books in Pacific Studies episodes

  • A Pacific Power: Liberal Imperialism in German Samoa with Matthew P. Fitzpatrick (Oxford UP, 2025)

    Before the First World War Germany was a global empire with colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. Annexed to this empire in 1900 was Samoa, a thriving Polynesian trading hub which had previously been the site of conflict between Britain, Germany, and the United States.

    A Pacific Power: Liberal Imperialism in German Samoa (Oxford University Press, 2025) by Dr. Matthew Fitzpatrick brings to light an often-overlooked history of German imperialism in the Pacific. Focusing on Samoa, it shows the tension between German rulers and Samoan subjects, as well as the variety of ways the Germans sought to reshape the colony according to their own requirements. It looks at how Samoa became a colonial site that brought Germany into conflict not only with Britain and the United States, but also China, New Zealand, and the Vatican. At the same time, it uncovers the social and cultural experiments of a colony that treated matters of sexuality, race, and religion in often unexpected ways.

    Through a study of colonial conflicts and crises, A Pacific Power brings to light Germany's strategies of imperial rule and Samoan methods of resisting and co-opting German institutions. It investigates how German rule transformed Samoa and altered German culture and politics. It shows how Samoa brought Germany into conflict not only with Britain and the United States, but also China, New Zealand, and the Vatican. Laying bare the exploitative and racist nature of German colonial labour practices, it also uncovers the surprising social and cultural experiments of a colony that treated matters of sexuality, race, and religion in often unexpected ways.

    Through careful attention to archival sources and the personal recollections of those who colonised Samoa and those who were colonised, Dr. Fitzpatrick reorients German imperial history towards Polynesia, emphasising the too often overlooked importance of the Pacific to German attempts to globalise their economy, culture and military reach.

     

    This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.


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    49 min
  • David Helvarg, "Forest of the Sea: The Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp" (Princeton UP, 2026)

    In

    a matter of decades, a spectacular cold-water paradise thirty million
    years in the making is succumbing to warming oceans. Kelp forests are
    largely out of sight, hidden under the ocean’s surface, yet they are one
    of Earth’s most wondrous and underappreciated marine habitats. It’s
    an ethereal light-infused realm of sharks, otters, eels, sea stars,
    crabs, rockfish, and myriad other species vital to a functioning ocean
    and the countless coastal communities that make their living from the
    sea. Unlike coral reefs, whose similar plight plays out in tropical
    waters highly visible to vacationing tourists, kelp forests thrive along
    cold-water coastlines far from tourist centers. What will it take to
    stop the decline before these underwater playgrounds bursting with
    colorful life become vast fields of lifeless urchin barrens?

    For readers who know kelp only as tangles on the ocean surface or smelly mounds of seaweed littering beaches, Forest of the Sea: The Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp (Princeton University Press, 2026) reveals a thriving three-dimensional underwater world of color

    and beauty whose loss if allowed to happen will reverberate in
    unimaginable ways for both nature and humans. David Helvarg, a veteran
    journalist and accomplished scuba diver, takes us on a memorable journey
    beneath the waves through kelp’s natural and human history, the
    billions of dollars of products and services it contributes to our
    global economy, the unwitting human activities that threaten its
    survival, and the hopeful movements around the world to restore kelp
    habitat. Helvarg introduces us to Indigenous leaders promoting sea otter
    reintroduction, out-of-work urchin fisherman,
    documentary filmmakers, and ocean scientists all working in an unlikely
    collaboration to restore and protect kelp forests while promoting a
    growing range of uses for food, medicine, and energy.

    Forest

    of the Sea is the first book to document what is at stake if we lose
    these irreplaceable marine jewels, helping readers to understand how
    these natural systems might adapt and survive.

    This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book

    focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
    negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
    analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
    Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. 


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    30 min
  • Malcolm Murfett, "Eden's Alternative to Appeasement: The Anglo-American Strategy that Might Have Been, 1937–38" (Tithebarn Press, 2026)

    As Foreign Secretary in Neville Chamberlain's Cabinet in 1937, Eden

    didn't believe in appeasing the German and Italian dictatorships or the
    militaristic Japanese regime. Instead, he wanted to confront their
    aggression head on. Faced with growing Japanese assertiveness, including
    the launching of an undeclared war on China in July 1937, Eden appealed
    to the US for help. He believed sending an Anglo-American naval force
    to the Western Pacific would demonstrate that the democracies were not
    spineless, but were prepared to stand up for what they believed in. Was
    this a viable alternative to Chamberlain's appeasement policy, now
    notorious for its failure in the face of fascism?

    In Eden's Alternative to Appeasement: The Anglo-American Strategy that Might Have Been, 1937–38 (Tithebarn Press, 2026), historian

    Malcolm Murfett tells the story, using a wide range of primary sources
    from the UK and US archives, of Eden's push to persuade Roosevelt's
    administration to be more assertive in the Pacific. He reveals the
    diplomatic dance both sides engaged in, each unsure of the other's
    reliability, of their own ability to commit, and tied up in their own
    internal struggles for policy dominance. We get a real insight into how
    two once-and-future allies managed each other's expectations, as well as
    the wider strategic parameters within which they were operating.

    With

    eerie echoes of our own times, Murfett explores the challenges involved
    in both international diplomacy, and foreign and security policy. How
    standing up for principles and values can become compromised by the
    requirements of Realpolitik, and logistical constraints.


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    35 min
  • Elizabeth Tynan, "Nuclear Archipelago: Secrets, Power and the Biggest Atomic Blast in Australia" (NewSouth, 2026)

    Nuclear Archipelago: Secrets, Power and the Biggest Atomic Blast in Australia

    (NewSouth, 2026) tells the shocking story of the two British atomic
    weapons test series held at Western Australia's Monte Bello Islands in
    1952 and 1956. Operation Hurricane and Operation Mosaic took place at a
    rugged archipelago 100 kilometres off the Pilbara coast, and each of the
    three bombs sent fallout over vast distances across the country. One of
    the tests, Mosaic G2 in June 1956, the largest nuclear weapon test ever
    held in Australia, sparked panic at the time that it had been a nuclear
    accident. In both the Mosaic tests, the crew of a British ship was
    deliberately positioned in the path of fallout. The biodiverse natural
    environment of the islands was left contaminated and has never been
    cleaned up.

    The book explores the politics, the secrecy and the controversies,

    including the true nature of Mosaic G2 and its role in the clandestine
    development of the British hydrogen bomb.

    Elizabeth Tynan

    is professor in the Graduate Research School at James Cook University,
    Townsville. She is a prominent writer and researcher of the era of
    British atomic testing in Australia. Her book Atomic Thunder: The Maralinga Story (NewSouth,
    2016) won the Prime Minister's Literary Award (Australian History) and
    the CHASS Australia Book Prize in 2017. Her follow-up book The Secret of Emu Field: Britain's Forgotten Atomic Tests in Australia was published by NewSouth in 2022.

    Morteza Hajizadeh

    is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New
    Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory;
    Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies;
    18th
    and 19th Century British Literature.


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    58 min
  • Edlie Wong, "Empire, Race, and Print Culture in the Black Pacific" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

    Empire, Race, and Print Culture in the Black Pacific (Cambridge University Press, 2026) is an Element which centers the 'Black Pacific' as a generative site for comparative and intersectional methodologies and transnational frameworks for thinking about racial formations, post-national literary forms, and cultural histories. At the end of the nineteenth century, US overseas expansion into the Pacific brought white supremacy and colonial rule into alignment. It also threw into greater relief the contradictions of US

    citizenship and national identity as legalized segregation and rising anti-Black violence foreclosed Reconstruction's possibilities. Race accrued dynamic new meanings in the age of new imperialism.

    Focusing on the earliest of African American literary magazines, the Boston-based Colored American Magazine (1900–09) and its southern rival, the Atlanta-based Voice of the Negro (1904–7), in this Element, Dr. Edlie L. Wong examines the formative role of magazine and periodical writings in the development of early Black transpacific internationalism.

    This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. 


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    48 min
  • Ian J. McNiven, "Sentient Seas: Archaeologies of Seascapes and Maritime Rituals" (UP Florida, 2026)

    Sentient Seas: Archaeologies of Seascapes and Maritime Rituals (UP Florida, 2026), published by University Press of Florida (2026), offers a global perspective on maritime cultures, examining how societies across time and space have understood and interacted with the sea. Synthesizing archaeological evidence, historical documents, and ethnographic accounts, Ian McNiven explores maritime traditions from ancient civilizations in the Middle East and Mediterranean to medieval Europe and Scandinavia to contemporary Indigenous communities in the South Pacific.

    McNiven investigates diverse cultural practices including shipbuilding, the treatment of shipwrecks and shipwreck victims, and maritime resource use, interpreting the evidence through the perspectives of mariners who understood the seas to be sentient and capable of acting with intentionality. He introduces the concepts of “terrestrial seascapes” and “ontological switching” to illustrate how land-based shrines and votive offerings extend maritime cosmologies and maintain a liminal transition from land to sea. By bridging anthropological and archaeological research with transdisciplinary blue humanities scholarship, Sentient Seas approaches seas as spiritscapes, recontextualizing folkloric beliefs about maritime superstitions.

    Ian J. McNiven is Research Professor of Indigenous archaeology at the Monash Indigenous Studies Centre at Monash University in Melbourne, and a Chief Investigator with the Australian research Council Centre of Excellence for Indigenous and Environmental Histories and Futures. He is coeditor of The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Indigenous Australia and New Guinea.


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    1 hr 21 min
  • Paul Stangl, "San Francisco Seafood: A History from Ocean to Table" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

    For early San Franciscans, seafood was an important source of

    nutrition and a feature of social life, inspiring culinary developments
    that remain components in California cuisine more than a century later.
    Consumers interested in flavorful alternatives to meat and associated
    health benefits could follow recipes for nearly fifty types of marine
    life from state waters, such as salmon, flounder, and oysters. Others
    are no longer available, out-of-vogue, or simply forgotten. Further,
    overfishing and environmental damage decimated many local seafood
    stocks, providing a cautionary tale with global significance.

    In San Francisco Seafood: A History from Ocean to Table (Bloomsbury,

    2026), Dr. Paul Stangl traces the development of San Francisco's
    fisheries, seafood markets, cookery, and dining culture from the Gold
    Rush to the 1920s. Migrants from around the world imported fishing
    techniques and cuisines, then slowly adapted as they came to understand
    local resources and each other. Newcomers found the tastiest fish
    through trial and error and assimilated the “best” into a new cuisine.
    Different ethnic and occupational groups collaborated, fought, and
    learned from one another as they irreversibly altered the natural world
    around them. By the end of the First World War, San Francisco's seafood
    cuisine scarcely resembled that of the 1850s, due to cultural
    adaptation, technological advancements, and changes to the natural
    environment. It was no longer derivative of New England and France, but
    included influences from the Southern states, Asia, and South America.San Francisco Seafood
    chronicles the city's transformation from a fish-barren town-where
    restaurants served canned, pickled, and dried fish from the East
    Coast-to a seafood-rich metropolis that harvested seafood from Mexico to
    Alaska. He emphasizes how the impacts on nature and local labor serve
    as a necessary cautionary tale for today's global seafood trade. This is
    a thorough and insightful history of a once emerging, and now
    essential, cuisine for food and history buffs alike.

    This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book

    focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
    negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
    analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
    Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.


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    1 hr 5 min
  • Gregory Smits, "The Ryukyu Islands: A New History from the Stone Age to the Present" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

    Most people only know one of the Ryukyu Islands: the island of Okinawa, home to sandy beaches and one of the U.S.’s most important bases in Asia. There are lots of myths about this island chain, which stretch from southern Japan down to the island of Taiwan: That it owed loyalty to China, given its place in the imperial tribute trade; that it was a pacifist kingdom; that it was quasi-sovereign even within Japan.

    Gregory Smits tackles a lot of these myths in his expansive history of the islands, titled The Ryukyu Islands: A New History from the Stone Age to the Present (University of Chicago Press: 2025). His book, and today’s conversation, dives into all the ways that the Ryukyu Islands will frustrate anyone trying to fit this place into an easy historical or political narrative.

    Gregory Smits is professor of history and Asian Studies at Penn State University. He is the author of several books, including Early Ryukyuan History: A New Mode (University of Hawaii Press: 2024), Maritime Ryukyu, 1050-1650 (University of Hawaii Press: 2019) and Visions of Ryukyu: Identity and Ideology in Early-Modern Thought and Politics (University of Hawaii Press: 1999)

    You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Ryukyu Islands. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

    Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.


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    1 hr 12 min
  • Ruth Mandujano López, "Steamships Across the Pacific: Maritime Journeys between Mexico, China, and Japan, 1867–1914" (U Hong Kong Press, 2025)

    How did the movement of people, goods, and ships reshape connections between Latin America and Asia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries?

    In Steamships Across the Pacific: Maritime Journeys between Mexico, China, and Japan, 1867–1914 (U Hong Kong Press, 2025), Ruth Mandujano López examines this question through the lens of maritime travel. Focusing on Mexico’s participation in emerging steamship networks linking it to China and Japan, the book traces how these routes facilitated new forms of mobility, exchange, and encounter across the Pacific world.

    Steamships Across the Pacific is organized around specific voyages. Each chapter centers on a particular steamship journey and follows the people who traveled on the ships and observed the locations around them, including scientific voyages and chartered steamers filled with would-be immigrants. This structure allows Mandujano López to foreground the lived experience of transpacific travel, showing how these journeys were shaped by — and also shaped — larger processes of imperialism, mobility, and modernization. As such, this book will appeal to readers interested in global history, Pacific worlds, and the history of migration and mobility.


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    1 hr 22 min
  • Gregory Smits, "The Ryukyu Islands: A New History from the Stone Age to the Present" (U Chicago Press, 2026)

    The Ryukyu Islands between Japan and Taiwan consist of around 160 islands and are home to about 1.5 million inhabitants. Across the islands' history, sea-lanes and trade patterns have connected them to the East China Sea region, giving them a unique vantage point on the region's changes and making them a useful lens through which to view and understand those transformations. In this book, Gregory Smits marshals his expertise to canvass the environmental, political, and social history of this fascinating area, emphasizing the diversity of influences from China, Japan, and Korea that have shaped it. Smits begins by tracing the islands' early history from the time of the oldest extant human remains, through massive inflows of settlers from Japan, until the emergence of a centralized state in the sixteenth century. He then traces the development of the Ryukyu Kingdom from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, examining its major cultural formations and the interplay of local and external influences driving its evolution. Finally, Smits ushers readers to the modern era, from the end of the Ryukyu Kingdom in 1879 through World War II, the era of American military control, and on to the present. He concludes with their present-day status as a tourist destination affected by ongoing geopolitical, economic, and environmental challenges. Synthesizing decades of research, this book is an indispensable, comprehensive guide to the islands' history for scholars and nonspecialists alike.

    Gregory Smits is professor of history and Asian Studies at Penn State University. He is the author of several books, including, most recently, Early Ryukyuan History: A New Model.

    Ran Zwigenberg is a professor at Pennsylvania State University.


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    1 hr 17 min

About New Books in Pacific Studies

From the publisher's feed

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.