Smith, Vanessa. Cambridge University Press. ISBN hardback and paperback. The book focuses on an understanding of friendship and cultural exchange recorded in the writings of European visitors to the South Pacific in the later eighteenth century. The author explores the many levels of friendship, including the special bond and name exchange that might eventually arise from such associations, as well as the exchange of gifts between Europeans and native peoples.
She argues that the significance of taio and its many levels or ramifications was not understood, or was misconstrued, by European visitors. Smith observes that Captain Cook followed Admiralty instructions and "charted the Pacific according to codes of friendship, repeatedly getting it wrong.
The book's title, Intimate Strangers , supports her conclusions. Much of the book focuses on Tahiti, with occasional references to other locations. The time span covers approximately 40 years. It begins with Samuel Wallis and Dolphin , Louis-Antoine de Bougainville , followed by the voyages of Endeavour , Resolution and Adventure , and Resolution and Discovery She covers the visits by Captain Bligh in Bounty and Providence She briefly deals with George Vancouver's visits to Tahiti and Hawaii and ; several Spanish visits ; the Russian expedition in ; and, finally, the first London Missionary Society visit to the Marquesas The book's organisation, however, is not strictly chronological.
The first half of the book considers taio relationships in four parts. Part one considers "Crowd Scenes", taio greetings and exchange on ship or on shore.
Part two is entitled "Receiving Strangers," an example of which is the implications of Cook's instructions to Endeavour 's men upon landing at Tahiti in The third part is "Calculated Affection," the European tension between intimacy and calculation rather than separation of these concepts by Oceanians.
