Conclusion: Race in 1850/Oceania in 1850

Abstract

Dates are historians’ tools. Continuity, rupture, turning point, transition, watershed are historians’ artefacts, however compelling their apparent reality. I conclude this book by reflecting on the status of its primary concept and the condition of its main spatial focus in about 1850. This end date for my study marks the culmination of the era of seaborne exploration under sail, the book’s principal historical ground. However, 1850 is also a useful standpoint from which to survey global ideas of human difference and the regional situation of Indigenous Oceania. In historical retrospect, both conceptually and spatially, this looks like a liminal period, a hiatus before portentous events. But a more existential, non-teleological stance can leave space for other possible outcomes.