Re-conceptualizing the Pacific’s history. A Framework for the Study of Connectivity in the Pacific world

Reconceptualización de la historia del Pacífico. Un cuadro para el estudio de la conectividad en el mundo del Pacífico

Resumo

This study exposes the need for a revised new model for the History of the Pacific to dispel two ideas presented in the topic’s literature; the first being that the eastern
rim (Western Hemisphere) of the Pacific Basin had no substantial interaction with the Pacific Ocean prior to the arrival of European explorers, and the second that the only
method to write a history of the Pacific World is to focus on the trans-Pacific interactions in this planet’s largest body of water. Due to the complexity of this endeavor, the
theoretical foundation for this research is the classical model on Mediterranean History—the first waterbody-centered regional framework—after the historian Fernand Braudel,
in The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (1975), as well as the theoretical schemes of the historians Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, as
found in The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (2000).