Pt. 1. Visions of the Pacific -- 1.'South Sea' to 'Pacific Ocean' / O.H.K Spate -- 2. Mercator's southern continent: its origins, influence and gradual demise / W.A.R. Richardson -- 3. Shared vision: Herman Moll and his circle and the Great South Sea / Dennis Reinhartz -- Pt. 2. The Imperial Sciences Of Exploration -- 4. Finding the way home: Spanish exploration of the round-trip route across the Pacific Ocean / Harry Kelsey -- 5. Eighteenth century science and the voyages of discovery / J.C. Beaglehole -- 6. A Royal Society appointment with Venus in 1769: the voyage of Cook and Banks in the Endeavour, 1768-71 and its botanical results / William T. Stearn -- 7. The ship as a scientific instrument in the 18th century / Richard Sorrenson -- 8. Banks, Bligh and breadfruit / David Mackay -- 9. Scientific books and instruments for an 18th-century voyage around the world: Antonio Pineda and the Malaspina expedition / Barbara G. Beddall -- 10. Of fish and men: Spanish marine science during the late 18th century / Iris H. Wilson Engstrand --11. The search for a sea passage from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific via North America's coast: on the history of a scientific competition / Alexei V. Postnikov --
Pt. 3. Cultural Contact, Comparison And Classification --12. (En)-countering knowledge traditions: the story of Cook and Tupaia / David Turnbull -- 13. 'Le Président des Terres Australes': Charles de Brosses and the French enlightenment beginnings of oceanic anthropology / Tom Ryan --14. Seamen and philosophers in the South Seas in the age of Captain Cook / Glyndwr Williams -- 15. Melanesians and Polynesians: ethnic typifications inside and outside anthropology / Nicholas Thomas --16. The 'oriental renaissance' in the Pacific: orientalism, language and ethnogenesis in the British Pacific / Tony Ballantyne -- 17. Minute particulars and the representation of South Pacific discovery / Jonathan Lamb