In search of an empirical foundation: Firearms trade and Pacific history

Abstract

While the importance of economic relationships and structures to the functioning of the Empire has received considerable attention for other regions, the Pacific has only begun to be more fully integrated into these discourses. This article explores how histories of maritime trade might take advantage of recent innovations in digitised sources to rectify this exclusion. The firearms trade is the key focus, as this item was almost a universal trade good for much of the nineteenth century Pacific. Given that these weapons were both a complex industrial product and also often attributed to devastating social impacts, they offer unique potential both for indicating the global nature of nineteenth century Pacific trade, and for querying the role of Europeans in impacting indigenous island populations. The use of data provided by careful cross referencing of traditional primary material with large digital archives such as the Australian National Library's TROVE database offers the potential to lift such discussion above supposition and assumption, providing valuable contributions for many regional histories in the Pacific and beyond.