European Vision and the South Pacific

Bernard Smith (1916-2011) was arguably Australia's greatest art historian and one of the most important humanist thinkers internationally on ideas concerning cultural contact. His European Vision and the South Pacific, first published in 1960, showed how the ideas of the Enlightenment and the empirical structuring of scientific and geographical knowledge during the great eighteenth-century voyages of discovery affected notions of identity—both for Europeans and the Indigenous peoples with whom they came in contact. Not only did Smith's investigation of art, science, and imperialism of this period explore the conditions of frontier contact, it opened up the dialogue on de-colonisation and allowed us 'to think beyond or after it.' He was undoubtedly a pioneer of post-colonialism and the book remains 'a lighthouse' in pacific studies.

Sheridan Palmer is an art historian and author of Hegel’ s Owl: The Life of Bernard Smith and co-editor with Rex Butler of Antipodean Perspective: Selected Writings of Bernard Smith. Bernard William Smith (1916– 2011) was Australia’ s most eminent twentieth century art historian and a major thinker in the humanities. His first book Place, Taste and Tradition: a study of Australian art since 1788 is a key text in Australian art history, while European Vision and the South Pacific, first published in 1960, remains a pioneering masterpiece in the art and sciences of empire, imperialism and cultural contact in the Pacific.