History of Tahiti

avigation. Bougainville made Tahiti famous in Europe when he published Voyage autour du monde. He described the island as an earthly paradise where men and women live happily in innocence, away from the corruption of civilization. His account illustrated the concept of the noble savage, and influenced utopian thoughts of philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau before the French Revolution. In April 1769, Captain James Cook made his first visit to the island on orders from the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty and the Royal Society to view the transit of Venus on 2 June. He, along with Charles Green and Daniel Solander, set up camp at Matavai Bay and stayed on until 9 August. Cook estimated the population to be 200,000 including all the nearby islands in the chain. This estimate was later lowered to 35,000 by anthropologist Douglas L. Oliver, the foremost modern authority on Tahiti, at the time of discovery in 1767. On later visits Cook made harbour at Tautira Bay which is sometimes known as Cook's Anchorage.

The Viceroy of Peru, Manuel de Amat y Juniet, following the instructions of the Spanish Crown, decided to take possession of the island in 1772, largely to control the expansion of other countries and also to evangelize. So, he sent two expeditions under the command of Domingo de Bonechea within the period 1772-1775, but de Bonechea died on January 20, 1775 in Tahiti, where his grave was rediscovered in the 20th century. The Spanish mission on Tahiti was abandoned on November 12 the same year and the whole enterprise came to an early end when Charles III of Spain finally cancelled the mission as a consequence of his secular policy. Most notable of these expeditions was the drafting of a diary by a soldier of the Marine named Maximo Rodriguez, covering a period of 12 months, revealing many ethnological details about the Tahitians of the 18th century.

Pōmare I