History of French Polynesia

From the http://www.VideoSource.com Global Village Travel Guide and DVD, "Islands of the South Pacific". Stock footage available from http://videosource.com/search.html
Transcript:
Up until recent times, all of Tahiti's' guests have arrived by sea ,
and the Kay , here along the Boulevard Pomare,
is the heart of the city.
These modern adventurers follow in a time-honored tradition.
Tahiti has been known as a mecca for world cruising voyagers,
ever since the first explorers arrived.
France is only the latest of nations
to drop anchor in Tahitian waters.




Captain Cook made three voyages here
in 1769, 1773 and 1777. Not only did Cook
give the European world the first complete map of the entire Pacific, but his journals and the
records of his ship's historian and artist, brought straight-forward
accounts of the cultures of Tahiti and The Society Islands to
the attention of the rest of the world.
It was Captain Cook who established Papeete
as the cultural and political center of the islands.
Before the Europeans, the islanders lived in territories divided by
river valleys and mountains.
Cook wrongly concluded that the then chief
of Papeete was the chief of all Tahiti and gave him tools made of iron,
which the islanders had never seen.
With these, the chief made war canoes so quickly that by
the turn of the century he became, in fact,
the chief of the whole island, having defeated all his rivals.
In the 1820s, Queen Pomare expanded the village
to trade with whalers, Navy ships and merchants
and it was a thriving center when France annexed it j
as a protectorate in 1842...........

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