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Paper short abstract:

How did technological change and continuity both enable and constrain indigenous fishing in Oceania during the nineteenth century? These technological shifts and adaptations in fishing gear reflect wider cultural, political and economic forces active in the region.

Paper long abstract:

During the nineteenth century, native fisheries of Pacific island groups underwent significant change and upheaval as colonial pressures and the expansion of commercial fisheries changed the nature of human marine resource extraction in the region. Trade networks, shifting migration patterns and the exchange of marine knowledge changed the material culture of indigenous fisheries. In many instances, traditional materials for producing hooks, lines and spears were traded for new articles. Cotton webbing for nets replaced coconut fibre, iron replaced wood components on spears and by the close of the nineteenth century 'whaleboats' replaced canoes in some island groups. Labour exchange also brought material change across Pacific native fisheries.

This process of material change was not linear nor universal. Some forms of traditional fishing and equipment manufacture persisted and adapted to the changing Pacific world. Fishing equipment was often produced with an amalgamation of new and traditional materials. Beyond strictly material technology, as in the case of the Kingdom of Hawaii, certain traditional fishing regulation measures (tabu) were formalised in law and thereby adapted to Euro-American practices while retaining, for some time, the fundamentals of the traditional marine management system.

How did technology and knowledge exchange and interchange enable or constrain fishing practices in Oceania throughout the nineteenth century?