The Pacific Basin

Wood, Gordon L.; Mc3ride, Patricia (1930). The Pacific Basin. Melbourne, Australia: Oxford University Press.

Abstract: Like one of its own typhoons, a great change is sweeping across the Pacific Basin. The South Seas of song and story are passing, if, indeed, they are not already a mere idyll of sun-kissed lands and childlike peoples. Japan has emerged from an age-long isolation to embrace the ideas and institutions of the West. China finds herself torn between those who would welcome a similar change and those who would resist it to the death. Disappointment and disillusion- ment await the traveller whose expectations have been built upon the pictures left by the writers of fact and fable. Places and peoples from China to Chile have been caught up in the great changes going forward. From the merciful haze of other days merciful because it hid so much that was brutish and sordid the Pacific has emerged to our sight as a whole series of problems calling scientist and statesman for help in their solution. For the realities of the day are forced upon us whenever the quiet of an island valley is broken by the hoot of a motor, or the calm of a Pacific dawn shattered by the siren of an incoming steamer. The new order affronts us in the American sewing-machine flaunting its newness on the porch of this native house, or in the strains of the Bir- mingham gramophone floating out from the interior of that one. The picture palace and the Paris model mock us from one side of the Pacific to the other, and bear witness to the speed and certainty with which the West is standardizing and vulgarizing the East. The old order of hermit countries and uninhabited islands has gone for ever. The new régime of competition, by placing a premium on utility, has forced these lands into the world economy. Competition, however, means rivalry...

Extra details:

DOI: 10.4324/9780429039430-6
MAG: 3195349177
CorpusID: 238738850
OpenAlex: W3195349177