Each of the Hawaiian islands was
forced up like a vast mass of
candle drippings by submarine
volcanic action, all fueled by the
same "hot spot," which
has remained stationary as the
Pacific plate drifted above. The
oldest islands are now mere atolls
way off to the northwest; the
process is continuing at Kilauea
on the Big Island, with lava
exploding into the sea to add new
land day by day. Until two
thousand years ago, these unknown
specks in the ocean were
popu-lated only by the descendants
of what few organisms had been
carried here by wind or wave. The
first known human inhabitants were
the
Polynesians , who
arrived in two separate
migrations: one from the Marquesas
in the eighth century, and another
from Tahiti four or five hundred
years later.
No western ship chanced upon
Hawaii until Captain Cook
arrived at Kauai in January 1778.
He was amazed to find a
civilization sharing a culture -
and language - with the peoples of
the South Pacific. The Hawaiians,
too, were amazed, having long
since lost contact with the
outside world. Cook himself was
killed in Hawaii in 1779, but he
had started an irreversible
process of change. The first
Polynesians had brought the plants
and animals necessary to create a
self-sufficient way of life.
Westerners took things further,
and in reshaping the islands to
suit their economic and
agricultural needs decimated most
of the indigenous flora and fauna
- as well as the Hawaiians
themselves. Cook's men estimated
that there were a million
islanders; the popu lation today
is roughly the same, but a mere
eight thousand pure-blood
Hawaiians are left.
As well as bringing venereal
and other diseases, Cook's voyage
opened the fur trade between the
Pacific Northwest and China.
Passing ships traded arms to the
Hawaiians, and within a few years,
Kamehameha became the first
king to unite all the islands. The
sudden advent of capitalism was
devastating. When the fur traders
realized that Hawaiian sandalwood
fetched enormous prices in China,
the mass of the population
abandoned taro-farming and
fishing.
With the dislocation of
traditional ways, Hawaiian religion
fell apart. After the death of
Kamehameha in 1819, the female
regent Kaahumanu set out to break
the kapu ( taboo )
system that held society together.
Her public defiance of the
injunctions forbidding women to
eat alongside men, or to eat
bananas or pork, threw the islands
into moral anarchy - just as the
first Puritan missionaries
arrived from New England in 1820.
Their wholehearted capitalism and
harsh strictures on the easygoing
Hawaiian lifestyle might have been
calculated to compound the chaos.
White advisers and ministers soon
dominated the government, and the
children of the missionaries
became Hawaii's wealthiest and
most powerful class.
Although the Civil War severely
disrupted whaling , which
once the forests were denuded had
supplanted sandalwood as the
island's main source of revenue,
it triggered a Hawaiian sugar
boom, to replace Southern sugar in
the markets of the north. From
then on, the machinations of the
sugar industry to get favorable
prices on the mainland moved
Hawaii inexorably towards annexation
by the US. In 1887 an all-white
group of "concerned
businessmen" forced King
David Kalakaua to surrender power
to an assembly elected by property
owners (of any nationality) rather
than citizens. When, after his
death, his sister Liliuokalani
announced her desire to proclaim a
new constitution, the businessmen
called in the US warship Boston
and declared a provisional
government. US President Cleveland
(a Democrat) responded that
"Hawaii was taken possession
of by the United States forces
without the consent or wish of the
government of the islands ? (It)
was wholly without justification ?
not merely a wrong but a
disgrace." The provisional
government found defenders in the
Republican US Congress, however,
and declared itself a republic on
July 4, 1894.
On August 12, 1898, Hawaii was
formally annexed as a
territory of the United States. At
this point there was no question
of Hawaii becoming a state; the
whites were outnumbered ten to
one, and had no desire to afford
the natives the protection of US
labor laws, let alone to give them
the vote. Consequently, Hawaii was
for the first half of the
twentieth century the virtual
fiefdom of the Big Five ,
conglomerations started by the
missionary families and rooted in
their massive landholdings. By
controlling agriculture, they also
dominated transportation, banks,
utilities, insurance - and
government. The inevitable
integration of Hawaii into the
American mainstream was hastened
by its crucial role in the war
against Japan, and the expansion
of tourism thereafter. The islands
finally became the fiftieth of the
United States in 1959, after a
plebiscite showed a
seventeen-to-one majority in
favor. The only group to oppose
statehood were the few remaining
native Hawaiians.
Support has been growing over
the last couple of decades for the
concept of Hawaiian sovereignty
, on the basis that those of
Hawaiian descent should gain at
least the rights already held by
Native American nations on the
mainland. In 1993, the US Congress
and President Clinton issued a
formal apology to native Hawaiians
"on the occasion of the 100th
anniversary of the illegal
overthrow of the Kingdom of
Hawaii"; debate rages as to
what form restitution might take,
with some campaigners arguing for
a complete restoration of independence.
