Blog 1: Cultural Death

The cultural death that takes place in G. Obeyesekere’s An Apotheosis of Captain Cook is one that can be identified because of many factors. When James Cook lands in Hawaii, he writes in his memoires that the natives view him as a God, and uses this proposition to help him on his mission to ‘discover’ and ‘civilize’ the land. As part of his plan, Cook systematically plants English gardens, introduces English models for structural purposes and brings foreign domesticated animals with him. He also strategically divided and mapped out the region, renaming the lands with English names. All of these changes were done symbolically as the author points out in the text, however they also served another function crucial in carrying out cultural death in a people.

One comparison G. Obeyesekere draws is between Cooks methods, persona and ways of commanding his ship and the Englishmen to the methods he implemented on the land. "Polynesians were in some manner being brought in line with the judicial norms prevalent on British ships," he says. Though his memoir stuck to guidelines of zero violence, the reality was far from it. Cook and his companions slowly introduced new rules and regulations that Cook was familiar with on his ship and implemented them in unjust and unequal ways. Throughout their journey of conquest, the English had dehumanized the natives in their minds, and that is what made it so easy for them to inflict such violence. The natives were flogged and whipped for stepping out of line or disagreeing with the use of certain materials like wood, their men and womens heads were shaved as an act of identification and they were brutally murdered without a second thought. They had termed resistance with insolence, leaving no space for freedom of thought or freedom to preserve their own laws and customs that make them who they are.

By using ideas, concepts, laws and terms familiar to only themselves, Cook and his crew managed to make all the unfamiliarity’s of the land familiar to themselves to be able to extract the maximum resources and information from the land but in doing so also forced the natives into becoming strangers to their own home. This alienation which leads to loss of identity and community is what made the conquest possible. Cook’s success was rooted in being able to separate the people from their culture which they preceded to annihilate by only recording Cooks journey and his story.