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 .