Cultural Death - The Apotheosis of Captain Cook

In the Apotheosis of Captain Cook, Obeyesekere, writes about the different forms of punishments that Cook levied upon the indigenous people that he encountered. He writes about how this act of punishing achieved two things: firstly it imposed British judicial norms upon the Polynesians and secondly expressed the British view that the Polynesians, including their chiefs were subordinate to the authority of the captain, in this case Cook. In my opinion, these punishments are useful for understanding the larger process of cultural death brought on colonialism.

It can be argued that these punishments, ranging from lashings to shootings to having a cross carved onto one’s body by a knife, all arise from a specific culture. In the case of lashings, it was the British Admiralty that deemed them to be an appropriate punishment to use for the crew – a principle that Cook later extended to the Polynesians – as well as the number of lashings that a person could receive. The far more extreme punishment of carving a cross onto the body of a Polynesian, which Cook had done to a native caught thieving, while not specified under any rule of the British Admiralty, still originates from with the Christian British culture where the cross had a great symbolic value.  

It can also be argued that the Polynesian punishments for similar crimes might have been completely different and as such it can be argued that the crimes for which Cook had natives shot, lashed or carved, received completely different responses from their own local cultures. Due to Cook’s actions the British sense of what punishment was appropriate, as well as the form of the punishment dominated what the Polynesians might have thought was appropriate. These punishments then become significant in that they represent the domination of the British cultural understanding of justice and punishment over that of the Polynesians.

The fact that Cook gave out these punishments to Polynesian Chiefs is also significant. By having Chiefs also lashed and punished, in front of their people, Cook expresses the view that the local hierarchies and cultural patterns of societal organization do not hold any value in comparison to that of the British. Obeyesekere writes about how while the Chiefs were seen to be of a higher rank than the crew members of Cook’s ships, they were still seen to be below Cook and his officers and were as such subject to the same system of punishments as the crew. This very clearly represents the hierarchy in which the colonizers placed themselves and their own culture. No matter the place the Chiefs occupied within the local society and culture, they would still be punished like any other British crew member – even if their local position effectively meant that they would have always evaded punishment within their local society. This essentially means that all local hierarchies and power structures, all deriving from a particular culture, held little to no value for the British. Consequently the culture itself was disregarded when it opposed that of the British.

These processes, as demonstrated by Cook’s punishments, when expanded would result in cultural death and domination as all those elements not in line with British sensibilities would simple be disregarded and abolished.