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 . |
