598 the contemporary pacific • 31:2 (2019) credit, Bonshek presents all of these nized. Today, a radically unexpected voices, which are basically focused on finding is required to make much of a the shifting moral authority in and stir in the sails of the relevant dis- of Tikopian society in dialogue with courses. Or so I would have thought. modernity, as open-ended and unfinal- Viveka Hansen’s Textilia Linnaeana: ized rather than as fated to end in one Global 18th Century Textile Tradi- kind of tragedy or another. tions & Trade demonstrates that The history of research on ­Tikopia scholars engaged in the fundamental is rendered in clear concepts and work of their particular disciplines prose. More generally, I want to con- can have subtle yet notable contri- gratulate the publisher for the book’s butions for colleagues working in high production quality. The book is distant fields. Hansen, an expert in beautifully and liberally illustrated by eighteenth-century textiles, makes color photographs, and it is supple- a finely woven contribution to the mented by four generous appendices history of science with insights at the that list (1) all of the objects Firth intersection of emerging eighteenth- ­collected; (2) the holdings of his collec- century botanical science, commerce, tion in the Australian Museum; (3) the and material culture. Her work also names of Firth’s Tikopian donors; and has implications for the study of (4) the objects held in museums prior Oceania’s eighteenth-century age-of- to the Firth collection. As a whole, encounter, the roots of globalization Bonshek’s book is a welcome addition in the region, the sometimes shadowy to postcolonial museum studies and economic motivations for Pacific navi- will indeed make for a useful resource gation, and a more pluralistic vision for Tikopians in the contemporary of the place of “national projects” in Pacific. European Pacific voyaging. david lipset Textilia Linnaeana is the latest volume in the Mundus Linnæi Series University of Minnesota devoted to republishing the transfor- *** mative works of the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, generally known for his Textilia Linnaeana: Global 18th contributions to taxonomic conven- Century Textile Traditions & Trade, tions and the study of sexual repro- by Viveka Hansen. Mundus Linnæi duction among plants. Twenty richly Series. London: The ik Foundation hued chapters illuminate the place & Company, 2017. isbn 978-1- of textiles in the eighteenth century 904145-32-5; 517 pages, illustrations,­ across hundreds of cultures around the appendices, notes, bibliography, globe, as Hansen closely scrutinizes index. us$72.00. the travels, experiences, field science, and findings of Lin­naeus’s seventeen Over more than two centuries, the most favored students, whom he experiences of Cook’s officers, sur- baptized his “Apostles.” These lieuten- geons, naturalists, artists, able-bodied ants, some of whom became scientific sailors, and Pacific Islander inter­ giants in their own right, were stra- locutors have been minutely scruti- tegically deployed by ­Linnaeus for book and media reviews 599 undertaking basic research, gather- floral and faunal species gathered dur- ing botanical and zoological speci- ing Cook’s first voyage for the British mens around the globe, publicizing Museum, presenting emerging work ­Linnaeus’s theoretical­ and method- to the Royal Society, and supporting ological work, and advocating for Banks’s ongoing scientific endeavors, his place in the froth of the Enlight- including a late period of fieldwork in enment’s refashioning of botanical Iceland. However, Solander published science as a formal endeavor. The no primary account whatsoever of his apostles included two of Cook’s best- Pacific experiences. known companions in the first and Andreas Sparrman (1748–1820) second navigations, Daniel Solander was born in Tensta, in Sweden’s and Anders Sparrman. That these two Uppland, and enrolled at Uppsala as naturalists were trained by Linnaeus a precocious nine-year-old. Sparrman has not been missed by prior com- studied medicine and natural history mentators. However, this relationship under Linnaeus and was deployed to has generally been treated as a color- South Africa for the empirical incor- ful fact, little more than a delightful poration of that bioregion into the bit of trivia, and it may have seemed Linnaean project. There, in 1772, unimportant to those less interested ­Sparrman met Johann Reinhold and in the history of botany or the history Georg Forster before Cook’s depar- of ­science more generally. Hansen’s ture from the Cape and was invited volume suggests a different perspective to join them on the Resolution for on the role of these early scientists. the remainder of Cook’s second Daniel Solander (1733–1782) “expedition” from November 1772 was born at Piteå, on the Gulf of to March 1775. Unlike Solander, ­Bothnia, attended Uppsala University, Sparrman did record his observa- and ­studied natural history under tions about his Pacific experiences. ­Linnaeus, who chose him to commu- However, his description of his time nicate the Systema Naturae, published aboard the Resolution­ was never fully in 1735, to the emerging Royal Society documented in English until Hansen’s and the community of British natural- volume. ists in London. Solander became an While Hansen devotes only a chap- employee of the British Museum and ter each to Solander and ­Sparrman, worked from 1763 to catalog its natu- her focus on textiles frames their ral history collections. At some point, Pacific Island experiences and encoun- he became friendly with Joseph Banks, ters significantly varies from numer- despite their differences in social ous prior works that emphasize the status. Under Banks’s patronage, curious activity of natural science in Solander was appointed to the suite the world as it may have seemed to of naturalists aboard the Endeavor on others. Hansen’s discussions nicely Cook’s first navigation in 1768–1771. complement and extend observations Solander died young at age forty-nine. about the “goblin”-like bontaniz- His immensely productive life was ing activities of Solander and Banks, devoted to the primary work of cata- “collecting grasses from the cliffs” loging the tens of thousands of new and “knocking at the stones on the 600 the contemporary pacific • 31:2 (2019) beach,” as described by a young Swedish economy more productive, contemporaneous Māori in Jenny varied, self-sufficient, and less reliant Newell’s exceptional Trading Nature: on foreign trade. Linnaeus’s apostles Tahitians, Europeans and Ecological were not merely individual gentlemen- Exchange (2010, 62). Hansen unpacks scientists. They were part of a national both Solander and Sparrman’s intense project seeking competitive advantage attention to the raw materials neces- in a rapidly changing arena of increas- sary for textile production, including ing productivity and global trade, in mulberry, feathers, flax, and plant and this case a Swedish national economic animal dyes; manufacturing tech- project consciously chartered and niques; durability and color-fastness; intended to bear long-term fruit by use for purposes other than clothing importing new cultivars from distant function; trade in textiles; the signifi- lands to expand and enhance exist- cance of textile gifts; and the collec- ing domestic agriculture. Most Pacific tion of artifacts and textile samples. scholars will be long familiar with In the most unexpected way, Hansen and comfortable discussing Cook’s conveys how both Solander and Sparr­ voyages in terms of linkages between man (and all of Linnaeus’s apostles) navigation and astronomy, the expan- were profoundly shaped in relation- sion of English sea power, “discovery” ship to textiles by the extraordinarily of alienable lands, and other British restrictive and exceptionally punitive national projects. Linnaeans were in Swedish sumptuary laws (28–29, 203) a sense pursuing a unique scientific-­ that limited individual choices of cut, economic project just to the side of color, and style for Swedes during British science and its goals. At the this period, in contrast to the riotous same time, Sweden was pursuing its freedom (as it seemed to Solander) own national project in the economic that England offered for the pursuit potential of emerging botanical science of fashion. Hansen argues powerfully through Linnaeus and his students. that these two Swedish voyagers had Solander ultimately failed to a unique perspective and particular make good his debt to Linnaeus (and fascination with the fashion systems of Sweden), as Linnaeus saw it, offering Pacific peoples, including how textiles little economic or practical return. showed well-being, power, position, ­Sparrman, however, worked ener- and tradition and how Oceania’s rela- getically to advance the economic tionships with newly arriving Euro- and practical benefit to Sweden of peans were mediated through percep- Pacific cultivars, particularly flax tions about their clothing. from Aotearoa. He too failed to start Moreover, we learn, the apostles’ any meaningful new industries, and chartered mission was not merely it seems the curious case of Sweden’s ­philosophical or scientific. A key attempt to piggyback on British Pacific dimension of Linnaeus’s place in voyaging in Cook’s era was not ulti- Swedish society and his eventual mately successful. Nevertheless, this ennoblement by the Swedish Royal chapter of textile history so vividly Court was his use of botanical realized in Hansen’s excellent vol- research to pursue ways to make the ume is another easily overlooked and book and media reviews 601 informative opening into the diverse eventual immigration to the United and ­intersecting motives of eighteenth-­ States. century European navigational Swept up in the pandemonium projects in Oceania, a reminder of the during North Vietnam’s capture of need to read critical early moments Saigon in April 1975, Trần was sepa- of encounter prismatically, with rated from his family, who remained ­distinct facets that reveal histories and in Vietnam while he captained one of ­counter-histories complementary to the ships in the evacuation fleet that more familiar accounts. escaped to Subic Bay in the Philip- alexander mawyer pines and then moved on to Guam. He faced immense loss and longing: University of Hawai‘i “I had lost not only my house, my at Mānoa jeep, and my career, I had lost my wife and our children. I felt the absurdity *** of it, transferring from one ship to another, journeying to where . . . I felt Ship of Fate: Memoir of a Vietnam- so depressed thinking about my lot— ese Repatriate, by Trần Ðình Trụ. how could my life be so lost, so lonely Translated by Bac Hoai Tran and like this?” (54). Jana K Lipman. Intersections: Asian On 13 May, his ship arrived in and Pacific American Transcultural Guam, which the United States had Studies Series. Honolulu: University designated as a way station before of Hawai‘i Press, 2017. isbn cloth, presumed settlement in the country. 978-0-8248-6717-1; paper, 978-0- Though he had been there before early 8248-7249-6; 224 pages, illustra- in his career, the circumstances of his tions, maps. Cloth, us$68.00; paper, return colored his view of the island: us$28.00. “Guam’s isolation reminded me of my own separation from my loved ones” Ship of Fate: Memoir of a Vietnamese (137). His refuge on Guam lasted until Repatriate brings to mind the words 15 October 1975. of Elie Wiesel, “It is the duty of the The US government brought over survivor to speak of his experience one hundred thousand Vietnamese and share it with his friends and con- to Guam. There they were detained temporaries.” This book is a powerful in a dozen camps prior to relocation and compelling litany of loves and to other countries or to the United losses and of journeys to and from States, where they would be held in both. Through a powerful and com- camps before being integrated into pelling litany of loves and losses and American society. According to the of journeys to and from both, in this common public understanding of memoir, Trần Ðình Trụ recounts in what happened to the evacuees, Trần rich detail his childhood, treasured states, “the Vietnamese refugees only marriage, prestigious naval career, needed to know how to accept their evacuation from Saigon to Guam, new American reality, how to adjust to repatriation to Vietnam, thirteen-year their new circumstances, and learn to captivity in reeducation camps, and work hard. After that, every difficulty