A Brief History The history of Hawaii reads like the story of a mythical kingdom. The first wave of Polynesian settlers crossed the equator and arrived from the Marquesas in the South Pacific perhaps as early as a.d.   400. These immigrant voyages were breathtaking and treacherous, requiring the crossing of 2,500 miles (4,000 km) of open seas aboard dugout catamarans and outrigger canoes. Their destination was even more resplendent with forests than the paradise we see today, but hoary bats and monk seals were the only mammals in residence. The first Polynesian settlers brought much of what they needed, however, from pigs and chickens to bananas and taro, the root crop that would sustain them. Paddies of taro are to this day a signature crop in rural Hawaii. A second wave of Polynesian immigrants from Tahiti arrived centuries later. By a.d.   1300 they had erased the vestiges of a Marquesan outpost and developed a Hawaiian society of their own. Rival chiefs ruled each island; fish farms and temples were laid out; and tribal and inter-island warfare was common. The chiefs governed their feudal domains by force, ritual, and taboo. The system of taboo (kapu) gave society its laws and the people a complex moral code. To fend off natural and cosmic cata­stro­phes, the rituals of human sacrifice came into play, intended to placate the more violent of the local gods, such as those of the volcanoes and typhoons. While such island societies might seem less than Edenic, the early Hawaiians led a pleasurable life, singing their own histories to the beat of gourds, riding the waves on long wooden surfboards, and developing an elaborate, graceful form of story-dance, the hula. Captains and Kings The first Westerner to reach Hawaii was Captain James Cook, the British commander whose mission was to dis­cover the mythic Northwest Passage linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. He, too, had set out from Tahiti when he came upon the Hawaiian Islands. The year was 1778; his landfall was the northerly island of Kauai; and the name he gave his new discovery was the Sandwich Islands (after the Lord of the Admiralty, the Earl of Sandwich). The name did not stick, and had Captain Cook known his fate, he would not have stuck around either. The natives seemed friendly enough, rowing out to greet Cook’s ships, which received much-needed provisions in exchange for fastenings and other trinkets. When Cook later tied up on the Big Island of Hawaii, at Kealakekua Bay, he was hailed as the god Lono and feasted on a grand scale. But returning later to regroup after being slapped by an angry storm, a dispute arose over stolen property. Cook took a chief hostage, and in turn he was ritualistically hacked to pieces. Cook’s cohorts had opened fire, to no avail. Among those wounded that day was the young man who would soon unite the Hawaiian kingdom for the first time in its long history. Known as Kamehameha the Great, he considered the unification of Hawaii his divine fate, one which he was to fulfill before he turned 30. He did so with the help of a foreign navy vessel. After Cook’s voyage, a small but steady flow of American and European vessels, already engaged in the China trade, started to use Hawaii as a convenient, much-needed stopover. The warring chiefs demanded guns in exchange for food. Kamehameha, as chief of the Big Island, not only got his share of guns, but finally captured a cannon and ship. Maui fell first, followed by Oahu, Lanai, and Molokai. Kauai, where Cook had begun his fateful voyage of Hawaiian discovery, became Kamehameha’s vassal in 1810. As the first king of all Hawaii, Kamehameha established a new empire that preserved the old ways, including the rituals performed at the outdoor temples (heiau), while creating an overlay of British-style government. A viceroy ruled each island at the King’s pleasure. These Western ideas, which seemed to amuse Kamehameha, were introduced by a new friend, another famous English explorer, Captain George Vancouver, who had once served under Captain Cook. The King encouraged the arrival of Westerners, giving land grants to some of his favorite foreigner visitors. Vancouver had left scores of cattle and sheep on the islands to supply passing ships. To round them up, the King brought cowboys from Spain and Mexico, initiating the paniolo (Hawaiian cowboy) tradition. Another seafarer, the American John Kendrick, launched the sandalwood trade in 1791, when China had run out of its own supply. By 1825, Hawaii’s sandalwood forests had been thoroughly cut away, too, and non-native flora and fauna were imported to fill in, altering the landscape of paradise. There were other changes, too. Among the commodities exchanged when foreign ships called were Hawaiian women, who soon gained a measure of economic independence through prostitution and other endeavors involving outsiders. Foreign ships carried new diseases to the islands as well. Measles, cholera, and syphilis soon riddled the population, which was cut in half over just a few decades. By the time the first great king of Hawaii died, in 1819, the underpinnings of native society were disintegrating. Missionaries, Whales, and Sugarcane The year of 1820 was a pivotal one in the story of the King­dom of Hawaii. It was the year the first missionaries arrived from America. But more immediately, it was when the kapu system of taboos broke down completely under the leadership of young King Kamehameha II (the first king’s son, Liholiho) and the regent, Kaahumanu (the favorite of the 21 wives of the first king). Hawaii’s royalty resisted replacing the old religious system with newly-arrived Christianity until Kaahumanu was nursed back to health and converted by the wife of one of the first missionaries, Hiram Bingham. Madam Regent attended church and the mission schools (which you can still visit in Honolulu) and burned images of the old Hawaiian gods, while Kamehameha II entertained lavishly in the company of his wives. In 1824, the King decided to travel abroad, but immediately upon disembarking in England he contacted measles, dying in London. Many in the church and among the native population viewed the King’s overseas death as a judgement. The regent Kaahumanu, ruling in the name of her young charge, Kamehameha III, seized the opportunity and followed many of the strictures favored by the Calvinist Congregationalists, who were modernizing the country through the establishment of schools and the printing of books in the Hawaiian language (which they formulated in a written form for the first time). Among Kaahumanu’s many reforms was the banning of prostitution, a ruling which led to pitched battles in whaling ports such as Lahaina. Alcohol sales, gambling, and dancing were banned for a time in Honolulu. The Calvinistic reforms were soon reversed when Kaahumanu died and Kamehameha III ascended to power in 1824. The new King resumed the ways of the two previous monarchs, abolishing laws against adultery and prostitution and taking up with his half sister; but powerful interests, particularly those of the flourishing foreign business community (which would be increasingly dominated by the descendants of the first missionaries), were intent on usurping the throne, in effect if not in name. The new King was eventually persuaded to issue a decree guaranteeing religious freedom, and the next year, 1840, he established a constitutional monarchy. The most famous Prime Minister under Hawaii’s new political system was an American missionary and physician, Gerrit P. Judd, who served in the post from 1842 to 1854. During this period, foreigners were allowed to buy large parcels of land for the first time (much of it used for the sugarcane plantations), and ties to America, both economic and political, were dramatically tightened, with talk of possibly annexing Hawaii reaching the White House. However, many Hawaiians were opposed to surrendering their sovereignty. When a new king, Kamehameha IV, ascended to the throne in 1854, Judd was tossed out. The missionary influence waned, and the royal court asserted its power, as well as its love of luxury. The Hawaiian economy was rising, sustained in part by whaling. But the demand for whale oil would decline steeply after 1859, with the discovery of oil in Pennsylvania and the start of the American Civil War in 1860. No matter — Hawaii had a great crop in reserve: sugar. The first refinery appeared in 1849 on Maui. The cane plantations, increasingly in the hands of American tycoons, found a ready market in the US. Duty-free sugar imports from Hawaii were eventually granted by the US, in exchange for rights to a military base at Pearl Harbor in the future. The growth of the sugar market led to waves of immigration from China (1852), the Azores (1878), and Japan (1885). Native Hawaiians were finding themselves overwhelmed and outnumbered. Disease had lowered the Hawaiian population to just 20% of what it was when Captain Cook arrived. The Kamehameha line ended with the death of Kamehameha V, in 1872, and the election first of William Lunalilo, then of David Kalakaua in 1874 as Hawaii’s constitutional monarch. The Merry Monarch The Hawaiian people loved their King, who was soon dubbed the “Merry Monarch. ” In 1881, King David Kalakaua launched a world tour, visiting the heads of state in Japan, Thailand, Egypt, and England. The next year, he built himself a palace, Iolani, which can still be toured in Honolulu. He also legalized the hula, Hawaii’s traditional dance. But the King’s nationalism upset the vested interests of foreigners. Sanford Dole, head of a missionary family, and others led a successful movement to curb Kalakaua’s powers. When the King died during a tour of San Francisco, in 1891, he was succeeded by his sister, Liliuokalani, who proved to be an expectedly fierce defender of Hawaiian ways and the monarchy. Dole and others thought it high time for a US coup, and they were able to persuade the US naval forces to assist in deposing the Queen in 1893. When the US refused to annex Hawaii, and instead demanded the reinstitution of the Queen, the sugar industry simply declared Hawaii a Republic, with Sanford B. Dole its president. A new US President, McKinley, made annexation official in 1898. In 1900, Hawaii became a US Territory; the first territorial governor was Dole. Queen Liliuokalani lived out her life near Honolulu, quietly and defiantly; she composed songs, including Hawaii’s most famous, Aloha Oe. Pineapples and War The mythical kingdom of Hawaii was now a dream of the past. Political and economic power resided with non-Hawaiians. Dole and other business families were turning vast fields into pineapple plantations and importing new workers to plant and cultivate them. Puerto Ricans began arriving in 1900, followed by Koreans in 1903 and Filipinos from 1907 on. Like the Japanese, Chinese, and Portuguese before them, many of the new peoples would stay on in Hawaii, adding to the ethnic and racial mix that has become a hallmark of the islands. By 1920, the Japanese in Hawaii outnumbered Hawaiians two to one. Yet Hawaii was still an island paradise in the eyes of travelers, if not in those of its original people. Kilauea volcano on the Big Island had been attracting tourists since the 1860s, but it wasn’t until after 1901, with the opening of the Moana Hotel in Waikiki, that organized tourism took hold. Steamships of the Matson Line soon were arriving regularly at Aloha Tower, bearing tourists from San Francisco who had been at sea for five long days. America’s rich made up a goodly portion of these early travelers. They arrived with maids and trunks, and often stayed for months. In 1936, Pan American Airways introduced daily passenger air service from San Francisco. The annual number of visitors had increased to over 30,000 by the time World War II began. The war broke out in Hawaii as nowhere else in America with the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor (7 December 1941). The US declared war on Japan. Hawaii, as America’s western outpost and major Pacific military base, was ruled by martial law. The Waikiki hotels housed soldiers; the white sands were strung with barbed wire; and even the American currency in local circulation was stamped as HAWAII dollars, so that the enemy could not spend it on the world market if the islands fell. Statehood and Tourism After the war, sugarcane and pineapple production remained strong for a time, but tourism began its rise to ascendancy. Spurred on by the “Hawaii Calls” live radio program broadcast weekly to the US, Canada, and Australia from Waikiki, millions fell under the spell of a new island paradise of surf and hula aimed at tourists. Trader Vic’s opened garish Polynesian-themed restaurants; Arthur Godfrey brought the ukulele to television; Burt Lancaster and Debra Kerr rolled in the wet sands of Oahu; and jet air service brought in vacationers by the hundred thousands. The surge was topped off by Hawaii’s statehood, on 21 August 1959, but the vision of a mythical kingdom on America’s Pacific frontier was still expanding. Hilton built a resort village right on Waikiki Beach; Sheraton and other hotel chains followed. Among the millions of visitors lured there in the 1980s were huge waves of Japanese vacationers, newly rich and ready to spend big bucks in an East-West paradise. By 1990, Hawaii was welcoming nearly 7 million visitors annually, seven times its own resident population, which is the most ethnically and racially diverse in the US. The same year, the University of Hawaii campus at Manoa became the site of the Center for Cultural and Technical Interchange Between East and West (popularly known as the East West Center), a unique and venerated resource for advanced Pacific Rim studies. More recently, the overwhelmed native Hawaiian culture underwent a renewal as well. The return and preservation of ancient traditions was a response, in part, to the increasing demand of savvy tourists for a cultural as well as a leisure experience, but a leading component was a growing movement by native Hawaiians to restore the rights stolen from them when the royal monarchy was overthrown. This movement has led to calls for self-determination and increased native sovereignty, even full independence as a new nation for the estimated 250,000 people of Hawaiian ancestry. But perhaps the greatest legacy to travelers today who arrive at the world’s premier island beach resort is the warmth, friendliness, and sense of family that Hawaiian culture has created in the land of its rise, fall, and renewal.