HMS Resolution was a sloop of the Royal Navy, a converted merchant collier purchased by the Navy and adapted, in which Captain James Cook made his second and third voyages of exploration in the Pacific. She impressed him enough that he called her "the ship of my choice", and "the fittest for service of any I have seen".

Johann Reinhold Forster was a German Reformed (Calvinist) pastor and naturalist who made contributions to the early ornithology of Europe and North America. He is best known as the naturalist on James Cook's second Pacific voyage, where he was accompanied by his son Georg Forster. These expeditions promoted the career of Johann Reinhold Forster and the findings became the bedrock of colonial professionalism and helped set the stage for the future development of anthropology and ethnology. They also laid the framework for general concern about the impact that alteration of the physical environment for European economic expansion would have on exotic societies.