In November 2002, Ashgate Variorum published Defining the Pacific: Opportunities and constraints by geographer Paul W. Blank, Humboldt State University, and Fred Spier. This is the first volume of the series: The Pacific World: Lands, peoples and history of the Pacific, 1500-1900.

Defining the Pacific lays the physical and conceptual groundwork for the Pacific world series, exploring both the constraints imposed and the opportunities offered to humanity by the physical environment of the Pacific region. Organized from the perspectives of Big History and macro-geography, the volume presents a series of major studies and surveys by authors from a range of disciplines. It opens with perspectives on the ocean, and closes with questions of human settlement, diffusion, and trans-Pacific contacts.




Praise for Defining the Pacific

-



"The purpose of this volume is not to bury debate about the Pacific, but to praise classic scholars and introduce them to a fresh audience. For this service they deserve the gratitude of a new generation of readers."
Donald Denoon in Bulletin of the Pacific Circle, No 11, October 2003