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Pursuing Respect in the Cannibal Isles. By Nancy Shoemaker. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019. Pp. 352. $45.00 hardcover.)

In her fascinating new book, Nancy Shoemaker reconstructs intimate portraits of three Americans who spent time “hobnobbing with cannibals” on the Fiji Islands during the early nineteenth century. Comprised of a series of interconnected micro-histories, the book focuses on David Whippy, a runaway sailor turned beachcomber; Mary Wallis, a sea captain’s wife turned ethnographic travel writer; and Captain John Williams, a New England merchant turned island power broker. Drawing on letters, diaries, period newspapers, business records, missionary reports, and published travel narratives, Shoemaker vividly reconstructs their experiences as some of the first foreign residents of the so-called “Cannibal Isles” and their tangled, often contentious, relationships with the Native inhabitants. Importantly, Shoemaker also illuminates the diverse perspectives and agency of the Fijians who, depending upon their status within their multi-tiered society, variously facilitated, co-opted, or resisted Americans’ enterprises on the islands. Members of the ruling elite, for example, eager to acquire imported goods (such as guns and gunpowder), initially guaranteed foreign traders’ access to desirable natural resources and coerced their own people to provide the necessary labor. To contextualize these interactions, Shoemaker considers the Fijians’ complex social hierarchies, kinship networks, gender relations, governance system, political rivalries, and shifting regional alliances that most outsiders at the time found confusing and impenetrable. Based on an analysis of the recorded voyages by American vessels to the Fiji Islands between 1800 and 1850 (included as appendixes), Shoemaker highlights three phases of economic development: First, the 1810s saw a short-lived boom in sandalwood, which Americans exported to China where the aromatic wood was prized. Second, during the 1820s, attention shifted to bêche-de-mer (sea slugs), a culinary specialty in China that likewise generated huge profits. Third, in the 1830s—after both those natural quarries were depleted—a land rush