Amerasia Journal 42:3 (2016)
This short historiographic essay, part of a roundtable on the history of Pacific empires, describes three broadly-defined approaches to Pacific history: critical empire histories focusing on the Pacific as a space of European, US and Japanese military, colonial and commercial projection and inter-imperial war; indigenist histories centering on the societies and cultures of Islanders; and connectionist histories seeking to integrate the Pacific into broader regional, ethnic and global narratives. It discusses the strengths and limitations of each framework and makes the case for dialogues and interchanges between them.