Gifts of Friendship: intimacy and exchange in cross-cultural contact

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Gifts of Friendship: intimacy and exchange in cross-cultural contact. This project will investigate an apparently contradictory phenomenon: the existence of explicit policies of friendship-making within Euro-American imperial exploration and colonial settlement. Focusing on the Pacific islands in the period 1767-1830, it will look at the interaction of European and Polynesian traditions and practices of friendship, particularly in relation to practices of exchange. The project will examine a huge body of archival evidence, which initial findings suggest will prove to be much more self-conscious and anxious about the ethical and ideological implications of cross-cultural friendship-formation than current understandings of the operations of colonial discourse would allow.