Background:
Tahiti previously also known as Otaheite is the largest island in the Windward group of French Polynesia. The island is located in the archipelago of the Society Islands in the central Southern Pacific Ocean, and is divided into two parts: the bigger, northwestern part Tahiti Nui and the smaller, southeastern part Tahiti Iti.
Portuguese navigator Pedro Fernandes de Queirós, serving the Spanish Crown in an expedition to Terra Australis, was perhaps the first European to set eyes on the island of Tahiti. He sighted an inhabited island on 10 February 1606 which he called Sagitaria (or Sagittaria). According to other authors the first European to arrive in Tahiti was Spanish explorer Juan Fernández in his expedition of 1576–1577.
The first European to have visited Tahiti according to existing records was lieutenant Samuel Wallis, who was circumnavigating the globe in HMS Dolphin, sighting the island on 18 June 1767, and eventually harboring in Matavai Bay.
This bay was situated on the territory of the chiefdom of Pare-Arue, governed by Tu (Tu-nui-e-a a-i-te-Atua) and his regent Tutaha, and the chiefdom of Ha apape, governed by Amo and his wife Oberea (Purea). Wallis named the island King Georges Island. The first contacts were difficult, since on the 24 and 26 June 1767, Tahitian warriors in canoes showed aggression towards the British, hurling stones from their slings. In retaliation, the British sailors opened fire on the warriors in the canoes and on the hills. In reaction to this powerful counter-attack, the Tahitians laid down peace offerings for the British. Following this episode, Samuel Wallis was able to establish cordial relations with the female chieftain “Oberea “ (Purea) and remained on the island until 27 July 1767.
In July 1768, Captain James Cook was commissioned by the Royal Society and on orders from the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty to observe the transit of Venus across the sun, a phenomenon that would be visible from Tahiti on 3 June 1769. He arrived in Tahitis Matavai Bay, commanding the HMS Endeavour on 12 April 1769. On 14 April, Cook met with Tutaha and Tepau. On 15 April, Cook picked the site for a fortified camp at Point Venus along with Banks, Parkinson, Daniel Solander, to protect Charles Greens observatory. The length of stay enabled them to undertake for the first time real ethnographic and scientific observations of the island. Assisted by the botanist Joseph Banks, and by the artist Sydney Parkinson, Cook gathered valuable information on the fauna and flora, as well as the native society, language and customs, including the proper name of the island, Otaheite. On 28 April, Cook met Purea and Tupaia, and Tupaia befriended Banks following the transit. On 21 June, Amo visited Cook, and then on 25 June, Pohuetea visited, signifying another chief seeking to ally himself with the British.
Cook and Banks circumnavigated the island from 26 June to 1 July. On the exploration, they met Ahio, chief of Ha apaiano o or Papenoo, Rita, chief of Hitia a, Pahairro, chief of Pueu, Vehiatua, chief of Tautra, Matahiapo, chief of Teahupo o, Tutea, chief of Vaira o, and Moe, chief of Afa Ahiti. In Papara, guided by Tupaia, they investigated the ruins of Mahaiatea marae, an impressive structure containing a stone pyramid or ahu, measuring 44 feet high, 267 feet long and 87 feet wide. Cook and the Endeavour departed Tahiti on 13 July 1769, taking Raiatean navigator Tupaia along for his geographic knowledge of the islands.
In between the visits of Cook and Bonechea, the war of succession resumed amongst the Tahitian clans. This time Tutaha and his allies fought Vehiatua and his. Several famous battles were fought, including Taora ofa i (shower of stones) and Te-tamai-i-te-tai-ute ute (the battle of the red sea). Tutahua and Tepau were eventually killed in battle, while Vehiatua died of old age. Vehiatuas son, Paitu, became Vehiatua II, while Tu became paramount chief of the island, ari i maro ura.
Cook returned to Tahiti between 15 August and 1 September 1773, greeted by the chiefs Tai and Puhi, besides the youg ari i Vehiatua II and his stepfather Ti itorea. Cook anchored in Vaitepiha Bay before returning to Point Venus where he met Tu, the paramount chief. Cook picked up two passengers from Tahiti during this trip, Porea and Ma i, with Hitihiti later replacing Porea when Cook stopped at Raiatea. Cook took Hitihiti to Tahiti on 22 April, during his return leg. Then, Cook departed Tahiti on 14 May 1774.
During his final visit, Cook returned Mai to Tahiti on 12 Aug. 1777, after Mai\'s long visit in England. Cook also brought two Maori from Queen Charlotte Sound, Te Weherua and Koa. Cook first harbored in Vaitepiha Bay, where he visited Vehiatua IIs funeral bier. On 23 Aug., Cook sailed for Matavai Bay, where he met Tu, his father Teu, his mother Tetupaia, his brothers Ari ipaea and Vaetua, and his sisters Ari ipaea-vahine, Tetua-te-ahama i, and Auo. Cook also observed a human sacrifice, ta ata tapu, at the Utu-ai-mahurau marae, and 49 skulls from previous victims.
On 29 Sept. 1777, Cook sailed for Papetoai Bay on Moorea. Cook met Mahine in an act of friendship on 3 Oct., though he was an enemy of Tu. When a goat kid was stolen on 6 Oct., Cook in a rampage, ordered the burning of houses and canoes until it was returned. Cook sailed for Huahine on 11 Oct., Raiatea on 2 Nov., and Borabora on 7 Dec.
On 26 October 1788, HMS Bounty, under the command of Captain William Bligh, landed in Tahiti with the mission of carrying Tahitian breadfruit trees (Tahitian: uru) to the Caribbean. Sir Joseph Banks, the botanist from James Cooks first expedition, had concluded that this plant would be ideal to feed the African slaves working in the Caribbean plantations at very little cost. The crew remained in Tahiti for about five months, the time needed to transplant the seedlings of the trees. Three weeks after leaving Tahiti, on 28 April 1789, the crew mutinied on the initiative of Fletcher Christian. The mutineers seized the ship and set the captain and most of those members of the crew who remained loyal to him adrift in a ships boat. A group of mutineers then went back to settle in Tahiti.
In about 1790, the ambitious chief Tū took the title of king and gave himself the name Pōmare. Captain Bligh explains that this name was a homage to his eldest daughter Teriinavahoroa, who had died of tuberculosis, an illness that made her cough (mare) a lot, especially at night (pō). Thus he became Pōmare I, founding the Pōmare Dynasty and his lineage would be the first to unify Tahiti from 1788–1791. He and his descendants founded and expanded Tahitian influence to all of the lands that now constitute modern French Polynesia.
In 1791, HMS Pandora under Captain Edward Edwards called at Tahiti and took custody of fourteen of the mutineers. Four were drowned in the sinking of the Pandora on her homeward voyage, three were hanged, four were acquitted, and three were pardoned.

Bankes, Thomas
Geographers of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries recognized two great divisions of their discipline. These were General or Universal geography, which dealt with ‘the whole Earth in general, and explained its properties without regard to particular countries’; and ‘Special’ or ‘Particular’ geography, which dealt with ‘the Constitution and Situation of each single Country by itself. As the second great age of modern geographical exploration developed in the second half of the eighteenth century, ‘Particular’ geography, as here defined, became the dominant emphasis of English geographers, who now had a fifth great geographical region, the Pacific Ocean, to describe.
The geography books which appeared in the closing decades of the eighteenth century, by Salmon, Guthrie, Middleton, Millar, Bankes, Adams, and others, retain some signs of an earlier mathematical emphasis in their organization. Their titles customarily announce a ‘New System of Universal Geography’, and they contain a ‘Complete Guide to Geography, Astronomy, the Use of the Globes, Maps, &c’. These authors’ primary concern is with ‘Particular’ geography, however, and, as a consequence, these books are of considerable significance to students of the history of ideas, for the light they shed on English interest in geography and geographical exploration at the end of the eighteenth century.
One of the most imposing of these usually quite imposing books is Thomas Bankes, Edward Warren Blake, and Alexander Cook\\\'s A New, Royal and Authentic System of Universal Geography, Antient and Modern: All the late important Discoveries made by the English, and other celebrated Navigators of various Nations, in the different Hemispheres, from the Celebrated Columbus, the first Discoverer of America, to the Death of our no less celebrated Countryman Captain Cook, & c. and the Latest Accounts of the English Colony of Botany Bay. A massive folio volume of 990 double-columned pages, this was a popular work, running to six editions in the ten years from 1787 to 1797.
These editions have never been accurately described, however, and, since none of the titlepages is dated, much doubt persists about their dating and sequence. Bibliographers and bock-collectors have an abiding concern with dates and editions, of course; but there is another reason, too, for wanting to establish the dates of these editions. Bankes revised the text of his New Holland section at intervals in the 1790s, in the light of the latest accounts to hand of the English colony at Port Jackson. Even though quite brief summaries of substantial narratives, these successive accounts reflect English interest in the colony and the progress of English ideas about the colony. To give one example of the importance of having a date for a particular account. In one edition, and presumably with approval, Bankes repeats Watkin Tench\\\'s view that if taken in a commercial view, [the colony\\\'s] importance will not appear striking, as the New Zealand hemp, of which sanguine expectations were formed, is not a native of the soil; and an adjacent.
Many of the illustrations were derived from Cook\\\'s Voyages, and were the most generally available representations of the natives of the Pacific Northwest, Tasmania, New Zealand, Hawaii & the Pacific accessible to the public at the time. It is these contemporary images which make this work scarce as so many have been broken up.