London's Pacific stories are most frequently concerned with three interrelated subjects: an anthropologically-oriented interest in indigenous cultures and racial groups; an assessment of imperialism's detrimental effects on native populations and its Western practitioners; and a search for wholeness and meaning through local mythologies, folklore, and religions – modes of inquiry London hoped might moderate the alienation wrought by the capitalistic marketplace and scientific rationalism.

Most of these stories were inspired by his 1907–08 Snark cruise to the Hawaiian Islands and South Seas. During this extensive journey, London came across a remarkable array of cultures and ethnic groups. He wrote about race with a particular intensity in his Pacific fiction, often making native Hawaiians, Tahitians, and Melanesians central, exceptional, and valiant characters – an uncommon perspective at odds with the period's publishing preferences and audience expectations. Even though he was at the height of his fame and the Pacific stories are some of his most expertly crafted tales, his repeated focus on non-white characters prompted magazine editors to often reject these stories.

London had a keen interest in the traditions and customs of diverse cultures, yet his perspective remained constrained by the prevailing discourse of Eurocentric racism. While his racial emphases often advance strong critiques of an imperial-racist matrix, he sometimes uses racist and exoticized categories. In recent decades, London's fluctuating views on race have vexed critics. At times, he replicates the racist norms of the dominant culture, while in other instances he protests against them. ‘London was not,’ Christopher Gair notes, ‘an isolated voice able to transcend his own historical moment, but rather a participant in a historically specific network of statements, which defined the limits of possible thought’ (CR 38). His Pacific stories present tangled ideological strands of racial stereotypes as well as anti-racist and anti-imperialist invectives. These writings reveal that he could not fully escape his culture's imperial and racial biases, but they also show that London possessed a unique compassion and respect for the local cultures he encountered during the Snark voyage.

His first Hawaiian story, ‘The House of Pride’, offers one of London's more effective critiques of Western racial attitudes toward Polynesian culture.