Traditionally, Germany has been considered a minor player in Pacific history: its presence there was more limited than that of other European nations, and whereas its European rivals established themselves as imperial forces beginning in the early modern era, Germany did not seriously pursue colonialism until the nineteenth century. Yet thanks to recent advances in the field emphasizing transoceanic networks and cultural encounters, it is now possible to develop a more nuanced understanding of the history of Germans in the Pacific. The studies gathered here offer fascinating research into German missionary, commercial, scientific, and imperial activity against the backdrop of the Pacific’s overlapping cultural circuits and complex oceanic transits.

List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgments

Introduction: German Histories and Pacific Histories
Ulrike Strasser, Frank Biess, and Hartmut Berghoff

PART I: MISSIONARIES, EXPLORERS, AND KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER

Chapter 1. German Apothecaries and Botanists in Early Modern Indonesia, the Philippines and Japan
Raquel A. G. Reyes

Chapter 2. A Bohemian Mapmaker in Manila: Travels, Transfers, and Traces between the Pacific Ocean and Germans Lands
Ulrike Strasser

Chapter 3. German Naturalists in the Pacific Around 1800: Entanglement, Autonomy, and a Transnational Culture of Expertise
Andreas W. Daum

Chapter 4. Georg Wilhelm Steller and Carl Heinrich Merck: German Scientists in Russian Service as Explorers in the North Pacific in the Eighteenth Century
Kristina Küntzel-Witt

Chapter 5. Johann Reinhold Forster and the Ship Resolution as a Space of Knowledge Production
Anne Mariss

Chapter 6. Engineering Empire: German Influence on Chinese Industrialization, 1880–1925
Shellen Wu

PART II: EXPANSION, ENTANGLEMENTS, AND COLONIALISM IN THE LONG NINETEENTH CENTURY

Chapter 7. Expanding the Frontier(s): The Spreckels Family and the German-American Penetration of the Pacific, 1870–1920
Uwe Spiekermann

Chapter 8. Work and Non-Work in the “Paradise of the South Sea”: Samoa, cA. 1890–1914
Jürgen Schmidt

Chapter 9. German Women in the South Sea Colonies, 1884–1919
Livia Maria Rigotti

Chapter 10. Sacrifice, Heroism, Professionalization and Empowerment: Colonial New Guinea in the Lives of German Religious Women, 1899–1919
Katharina Stornig

Chapter 11. Rape, Indenture, and the Colonial Courts in German New Guinea
Emma Thomas

Chapter 12. The Trans-Pacific "Ghadar" Movement: The Role of the Pacific in the Indo-German Plot to Overthrow the British Empire during World War I
Douglas T. McGetchin

Chapter 13. The Vava’u Germans: History and Identity Construction of a Transcultural Community with Tongan and Pomeranian Roots
Reinhard Wendt

Epilogue: German Histories and Pacific Histories: New Directions
Matt Matsuda

Index