Volume I of The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean provides a comprehensive survey from earliest times to 1800. Bringing together an international team of scholars, this volume introduces varied concepts of the Pacific environment and its impact on human history.

"There has never been a more appropriate time for a comprehensive history of the Pacific Ocean as we attempt in this collection. The dramatic rise of East Asian economies in the decades after World War Two has given rise to one of the most dramatic and rapid realignments of global economic and political influences in world history. Energy resources and raw materials flow into East Asia from Australia, South America, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean world to fuel the new workshop of the world in the Peoples Republic of China. China has become the fulcrum point of the global economy in what has been deemed to be the Pacific Century. The massive flow of trade goods across the Pacific Ocean between the United States and China lies at the heart of this Pacific-centred realignment, accompanied by increasing tensions over rival spheres of influence in the Pacific between these two great superpowers. Recent maritime confrontations in the Pacific have largely been analysed by international relations experts and legal scholars with limited reference to the rich but fragmented history of cultural exchanges across and within the Pacific Ocean"--