Race relations in the United States have long been volatile - marked on the one hand by distrust and violence, but tempered on the other by periods of conciliation, integration and relative harmony. This path-breaking blend of history, sociology, political science and economics argues that the key factor determining the quality of race relations is economic: When economic equality spreads so do social and political equality. Conversely, economic downturns and widening income disparities promote political inequality, polarizing blacks and whites. To support this provocative thesis the author examines key events and eras in American history since the Reconstruction - particularly the black migration and the New Deal policies of the interwar years, the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, and the rise and decline of affirmative action in the late twentieth century. He also analyzes the racial policies and politics of the major political parties and shows how they "played the race card" to win support.
The French entered the Pacific in the late 17th century, but the ocean remained largely a Spanish preserve until British navigators began to cross its vast expanse in the mid 1760s. France's concerns that Britain might establish its superiority in the area, meant they welcomed Louis de Bougainville's voyage of exploration undertaken in 1766-9. After handing over the colony he had established in the Falkland Islands to Spain, he sailed through the still relatively unknown Straits of Magellan into the poorly charted South Pacific. He made a number of discoveries in the south west, but was too late to discover Tahiti, where Samuel Wallis had preceded him by less than a year. Reports on Bougainville's reception there and on life in the island were to create wide interest and controversy in Europe. He then sailed to the Samoan Islands and on to Vanuatu, as far as the Great Barrier Reef, and north towards New Guinea and the Samoan Islands making a number of discoveries and all the while leaving his name to a number of features, the best known of which are the island of Bougainville and the Bougainvillea flower. He returned home by way of the Dutch East Indies and the Indian Ocean. Although Bougainville published an account of his voyage in 1771, his original journal was published only in 1977; the present volume makes the latter text available for the first time in English translation.
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