Mapping middle-class manliness: exploring the construction of identity in James Cook's second voyage journals
Date
2001
Authors
Grazley, Robin Christine
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Abstract
This thesis considers Captain James Cook's construction of himself as an ideal manly, middle-class, and English figure in the published versions of the journals from his second Pacific voyage, 1772-1775. Focusing in particular on Cook's writings about food, both in the context of health maintenance on the ships and of native "custom" on shore, the thesis explores the ways in which discourses about gender, class, nation, and race shaped Cook's observations. The journal passages which deal with the maintenance of shipboard health, comprised of dietary (often antiscorbutic) measures and hygienic practices, illustrate Cook's attempts to assert himself as a commander. Cook took a modified form of this investment in his own authority to shore, constructing himself as the bearer of a particularly imperial, middle-class, English standard of civilization to Pacific peoples. His accounts of native "custom," especially those pertaining to diet and agriculture, contain implicit and explicit messages about appropriate gender behaviour and societal organization. Furthermore, an examination of Cook's second voyage journals with an eye to the workings of manliness and class on discourses about civilization reveals some departures from previous understandings of Cook's approach to race. Cook's conceptions of appropriate manly behaviour led him to favour some Pacific peoples, such as the Maori and the New Caledonians; he presented these peoples with "useful" domesticated animals, usually pigs, in an effort to help them ascend the ladder of civilization.