Rainer F. Buschmann is a professor of history at California State University, Channel Islands, and has just published "Hoarding New Guinea," about the German obsession for collecting through their Pacific imperialist years in 1880s to World War I.
We talked about the European and U.S. desires for overseas empires, and the subsequent carving up large swathes of the globe. The Germans helped themselves to Namibia, Togo, Cameroon, Ghana, Burundi, Rwanda in Africa as well as large portions of New Guinea and the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific. From the beginning, the Germans amassed huge amounts of artifacts and art from these territories for their museums, as well as from and through private traders. The reckoning for these appropriations continues to this day.
We also talked about the great Polynesian navigators, Buschmann's own journey on a traditional sailing vessel, his youth in Barcelona and elsewhere in Catalonia, coming to America and life in Ojai.
We did not talk about Ohtani's progress on returning to the mound for the Dodgers, Olympic water ballet or copper production in southeast Arizona.
He has also written "Iberian Visions of the Pacific Ocean," and "Anthropology's Global Histories." You can find out more about him at https://ciapps.csuci.edu/FacultyBios/FacultyBiography/Details/613
