These companion books are the dual product of a conference held at the Australian National University in 2013 entitled “Local Intermediaries in International Exploration.” The first collection emphasizes the archival issues and possibilities involved in looking for, and understanding, Indigenous intermediaries in the history of exploration. The second emphasizes the utility of the localized, biographic method for drawing out the agency of such people in fresh ways, given the slanted and complicated archives left to us. The pair works well to add to our store of knowledge regarding the Indigenous guides, translators, cooks, entertainers, and hosts that were integral to all missions of so-called discovery in the Austral-Pacific between the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The introduction to the first volume refutes any easy assumption that exploration archives inevitably hide the history of Indigenous people. At the same time, though, it is careful to acknowledge that recovery work involves...

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