Thank you for downloading this episode of a history of the world in a hundred objects

from BBC Radio 4. In 1778, the Explorer Captain James Cook was in the Pacific on board

HMS Resolution looking for the Northwest Passage, hoping to find a sea route over the north of Canada that

would connect the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. He didn't find the northwest

passage, but he did redraw the map of the Pacific.

He was charting coastlines and islands, collecting specimens of plants and animals.

In 1778, he and his crew landed in Hawaii, returning again early in 1779. It's impossible for us

to imagine what the island has made of these European sailors, the first outsiders

to visit Hawaii for over 500 years.

Whoever the Hawaiians thought Cook was, however, they presented him with the gift of a chieftain's helmet,

a rare and precious object made of yellow and red feathers.

Cook recognized it as an acknowledgement by one ruler of another, a clear sign of honor.

But a few weeks later, Cook was dead, killed by the same people who had given him the helmet.

Something had gone drastically wrong.

The object is enormously significant as an expression of a particular moment of the very

beginnings of European contact with Hawaii, the very

beginnings of a complex, very troubled history marked by moments of generosity and respect, but also violence, misunderstanding, long-term cultural damage.

The idea that this is for the future so that everyone can understand the way that the Hawaiian people

experience the world as well as how they want to share them.

A history of the world in a hundred objects. Hawaiian Feather Helmut.

From the 18th century.

This week of programs is about the kinds of communication and miscommunication that can perhaps must happen when different worlds collide.

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