Movements, sites, and encounters of (post-)colonial knowledge in and of the Pacific

This chapter explores the ‘Pacific’ as an inhabited, geographically conceptualized, historicized, academically scrutinized, and imagined space and investigates how these ideas shape research within the history of knowledge and science. In recent years, historians of science have applied the transregional paradigm by following people, ideas, and instruments as they move across regional and national borders as well as across continents and bodies of water. Science is interpreted as the result of interactive practices, which are exercised simultaneously at specific sites and within asymmetrical global networks. Rather than presenting a comprehensive history of ‘the scientific Pacific’, this chapter considers discussions about the encounters, creation, and circulation of knowledge within a (post-)colonial framework and within Pacific histories.