Book on the history of the South Pacific

We are about to leave for Hawaii and Fiji. When we travel, we like reading about the history of the countries we visit. I have researched extensively on Amazon and have failed to come up with a book on the history of Fiji, Melanesia or even the whole South Pacific region.
When we travelled to Australia, this forum recommended, among others, Fatal Shores, which was an amazing book. I was wondering if anyone could come up with a suggestion for a good informative read
I look forward to reading your suggestions. Thank you!!

Pacific Island Books is a good place to look for anything to do with the South Pacific. For Fiji, try finding Fiji and the Fijians by William Thomas.

The USP bookshop is also great, with a number of titles on history.

Thank you both (Watsoff and Laszlo) ofr the links. Both rather eclectic collections of books. Many I read while living in Solomon Islands are not there, but that isn't really surprising.
Perhaps the most interesting book about South Pacific characters I have read is James Michener's "Rascals in Paradise", which is on Amazon, Easy to read short stories. His other South Pacific Books, "Tales of the South Pacific" and "Return to Paradise" tend to be mostly about American World War II and more recent history.

Actually for Aussies in particular, the Pacific Book House must be another great shop to browse even online. Its catalogue has a whole section devoted to Fiji, and another to Solomons, Vanuatu & New Caledonia.

That last link is fascinating, Laszlo. I have bookmarked it, as well as the first 2, for future reference.
If the OP wants a serious book this one is excellent.
I am not sure if the link will go to the main site or the link, so I'll name the book: 32453 CROCOMBE, Ron. THE SOUTH PACIFIC. [2008 UPDATED AND REVISED 7TH EDITION]

You wanted to post a link to this book, right?
It is cheap in the USP shop! As are many other books - when I was in Suva, I actually bought maybe 2 dozen books, and was given a 40% discount, too. :-)
I only have the previous, 2001 edition of Crocombe's book - already very good.

Another book with a similarly wide scope, but with great photography added, is The Pacific Islands: An Encyclopedia . It's not cheap, but I didn't regret buying it!

Though I haven't got/read it myself, this looks like the kind of general history book OP originally asked about.

Yes, that's the one. I've never heard of Fischer, though.
However, I am not a historian, so was only reading for my own interest, mainly things specific to Solomon Islands, where I was living and working.

If you are wanting a good historical feel of Hawaii you might consider Micheners "Hawaii" I know it is an old novel but it really does explain who and what Hawaii is....at least until up to the 1950s.....much new change since then ....sugar no longer king.

If you were to be near Palau I would strongly recommend Edge of Paradise, written by a former peace corpsman who participated in the early days of the formation of the republic. Brilliant introduction to the modern culture of Palau. Beyond that and the recommendations above, Amazon allows you to search their books by topic- I have used that and come up with some great books. the only one that comes to mind in Kon Tiki, about the

Any copy of David Stanley's South Pacific Handbook is a good start. Each country has a section on its history, customs,. etc., and the main intro also has some general history.

For the Cook Islands, try to find an old copy of my "Cook Islands Companion" (out of print now).

Raro

Good to see you back, Raro.

A billion years ago when I was working on our first South Pacific, these are the books I worked my way thru for SP historical background (regional, not country specific)...
The Cambridge History of the Pacfic Islanders, Ian Cambell's A History of the Pacific Islands, the USP's New Politics in the South Pacific, the Fiji Times' The Pacific Islands Yearbook, A. Price's The Explorations of Captain James Cook in the Pacific, Eric Conte's Tereraa, Jack Golson's Polynesian Navigation, Jeff Evan's The Discovery of Aotearoa, the Cultural Atlas of Australia, NZ and the South Pacific, Jacques Brosse's Great Voyages of Exploration, Hugo Verlomme's Travel by Cargo Ship, R & B Kane's Cargo Ship Cruising, K Howe's Tides of History, Thomas, Tuia & Huntsman's Songs and Stories of Tokelau, Huntsman & Hopper's Tokelau: A Historical Ethnobiography.
(Any errors or gaps in that book, btw, were my fault, not theirs!)

Since then there've been a number of much better James Cook books. I'd put Anne Salmond's at the top, but Nicholas Thomas' book is good too. Plus the new book about Cook's "superior officer" Tupaia. Individual countries have all number of great historical books - for some reaon I really loved "From Darkness to Light in Polynesia" about the Cooks. And I'd even suggest reading Margaret Mead's book about US Samoa, as long as you then follow it by reading "the Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead".

There's a lot of really entertaining crackpot-history books too, from Heyerdahl and his acolytes thru to the books linking Tongatapu's stone mounds to Hanuman's jetpack.

Errol, would you consider posting the above to a sticky? It only appeared in my profile when I clicked on "more" because of time differences.

Thank you Errol,
this is really helpful!

For more on Captain James Cook I'd recommend J. C. Beaglehole's 1974 "The Life of Captain James Cook," Stanford University Press 1974, ISBN 0 8047 0848 7, LC 73 87124. Considered by many to be one of the best books on Cook's voyages. It contains many original drawings and logs from the three voyages.

Two more publications made of original journal and log entries are:

"The Explorations of Captain James Cook in the Pacific" published by Dover and edited by A. Grenfell, ISBN0-486-22766-9, LC 79-145750.

"Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World" by James Cook, ISBN 1419111965. Available from Amazon in Kindle format. It will give you a lot of insight as to how things were when western man first contacted the Polynesians.

I've had the opportunity to speak with some locals who actually have an oral history of some of the events recorded in these books. It's really interesting to get both sides of the story, even 235 years later!

Note: if you read any of the early ship's logs and journals keep in mind that the ship's day started at 12:00 noon instead of 00:00 or midnight. Not knowing this simple fact almost drove me nuts trying to understand what was going on when I first started reading original logs and journals of the early English explorers.