The “Hawaiian pear is now fully ripe, and this is the golden hour for the United States to pluck it,” declared the U. S. minister to the Hawaiian Islands John L. Stevens in 1893. Five years later, Hawaii was “picked” by the United States and officially annexed by the government of President William McKinley. The archipelago was fully incorporated into the nation when it became the 50th state in 1959. The U. S. government had been eager to absorb the Hawaiian Islands into its plans for expansion into the Pacific and Asia at the end of the 19th century. However, it was private American citizens more than government officials who took the lead in wresting the islands away from the Hawaiian monarchy and securing them under U. S. sovereignty.
Hawaii is composed of eight main islands (including Kauai, Oahu, Maui and Hawaii, also called the “Big
Island”) and located nearly 2,500 miles from the U. S. mainland. Various Polynesian peoples, principally the Marque-sans and Tahitians, originally settled the archipelago more than 1,000 years before English naval captain James Cook first reached it in 1778. Over the course of its early history, Hawaii existed in virtual isolation and remained unknown to the world beyond Polynesia.
The unification of the Hawaiian Islands under a single indigenous monarch, Kamehameha I (also known as “the Great”) occurred almost simultaneously with the arrival of the first European explorers. As late as the 1780s Hawaii was divided into three kingdoms. By the end of the 1790s Kamehameha had conquered a significant portion of the archipelago, including the islands of Hawaii, Oahu, and Maui. In 1810 the islands of Kauai and Niihau submitted to his rule and signaled the unification of the entire island chain under the Kamehameha dynasty, which would last until the 1890s.
During Kamehameha’s early struggle for domination over Hawaii, Captain James Cook and the crews of his ships the HMS Resolution and the HMS Discovery first sighted Oahu on January 18, 1778. Two days later, they made landfall on the island of Kauai, introducing the isolated archipelago to the western world. Cook stumbled across the islands as he was attempting to find the legendary pathway across the North American continent known as the Northwest Passage. The initial interaction between the British and the Hawaiians was generally very cordial; the British traded various metal trinkets, which completely fascinated the Hawaiians, for essential provisions.
Almost immediately, social and sexual fraternization began between Cook’s crew and Hawaiian women. The local kahunas (Hawaiian shamans) encouraged this interaction as a way to test the divinity of the British in the belief that if these men were gods, they would not desire the women. Cook’s men proved themselves to be quite mortal. Unfortunately, sexual exchange introduced various forms of venereal and other diseases to the Hawaiians. The Native population, which was estimated to have been about 300,000 at the time of Cook’s arrival, fell to under 150,000 by 1820.
Cook named the island chain the Sandwich Islands in honor of his patron, the British noble John Montagu, the Fourth Earl of Sandwich. The name would eventually be replaced as American influence overtook that of the British in subsequent decades. Despite this auspicious beginning, which included Cook’s deification as a local god, hostility developed between the British and Hawaiians over the theft of one of Cook’s boats. This antagonism turned into armed conflict on a return visit in 1779 during which Cook was killed.
Cook’s death, however, did not signal the end of relations between Hawaii and the West. The islands became a significant provisioning port for American and European trading ships sailing to and from Asia. The Hawai-ians felt the impact of the West, and not only in terms of trade and the unfortunate consequences of disease. Kamehameha made use of two captured sailors, John Young and Isaac Davis, as well as a confiscated American vessel and cannons, in his efforts to consolidate power over the archipelago.
Whites, called haoles by the Native population, began settling the islands in the early 19th century. Although most of the white settlers were sailors and entrepreneurs, Christian missionaries also came to Hawaii in search of new converts. They played a significant role in imposing western domination over the islands. Under their influence, the traditional Hawaiian cultural system, kapu, was terminated, the Hawaiian language was altered, and an extensive public school system was created. Not only were whites exercising social influence in the islands, but they came to dominate local politics and threaten the power of the Hawaiian monarchy throughout the 1800s. In 1840 Kamehameha III called for a change in rule from an autocracy to a constitutional monarchy with a bicameral legislature. Hawaiians also adopted their first constitution and bill of rights that same year. Missionaries were influential in these reform efforts.
Under the Great Mahele, carried out in 1848, royal lands were made public and commoners were granted the right to purchase their own property. Unfortunately for the majority of Hawaiians who hoped to benefit from this land distribution, foreigners were granted permission to buy lands in 1850. By the end of the century, rich white businessmen had purchased almost four times as much land as Hawaiians, reducing much of the local population to propertyless tenancy.
White settlement also had great economic impact on the islands. The early 19th century witnessed the massive expansion of whaling in the northern Pacific. As a consequence, Hawaii became the chief port for whaling vessels, particularly those owned and operated by Americans. Much of Hawaii’s agriculture was directed towards provisioning whaling vessels. Yet by the 1850s, interest in whaling was declining and sugar production, introduced to the islands by the American George Wilfong in the late 1840s, was expanding. Sugar production in Hawaii exploded in the second half of the 19th century as an almost insatiable demand for refined sugar in the United States grew. The sugar industry would irrevocably change Hawaiian society.
Because sugarcane production is labor-intensive and the Hawaiian labor force was declining as a result of disease, planters began to import labor in massive numbers with the passage of the 1850 Masters and Servants Act. More than 200,000 laborers, mostly Japanese and Chinese, would be brought to the islands by the turn of the century. This demographic shift would make Hawaii a veritable rainbow of ethnic diversity. However, it would also push indigenous Hawaiian influence to the periphery of social and political life.
The final blow to Hawaiian rule came in the 1890s. American planters and merchants, led by Sanford B. Dole, instigated the overthrow of the Hawaiian government. The Americans saw their economic interests endangered by indigenous rule and sought closer ties to the United States. They carried out an outrageous, if bloodless, coup in January 1893. They were given armed assistance by Marines from the USS Boston and easily toppled the Hawaiian monarchy. Not wanting to see any of her people killed, Queen Liliuokalani reluctantly capitulated. Upon taking over the government, Americans sought the islands’ annexation by the federal government, which happened in August 1898. In June 1900 Hawaii became a U. S. territory, and all those residing in Hawaii, whether they wanted to or not, became U. S. citizens.
Further reading: Edward Joesting, Hawaii: An Uncommon History (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1972).
—Charles Hawley
Hicks, Elias (1748-1830) Quaker reformer A Quaker reformer, Elias Hicks was born in Hempstead Township, Long Island, New York. His parents were formally Anglicans, but his father joined the Society of Friends (Quakers) shortly before his birth. As a youth, Hicks received little formal education and was apprenticed as a carpenter. In 1777 he inherited his family farm, which he managed until his death 53 years later. Throughout his early manhood, Hicks behaved like a typical Quaker of his class. Being well versed in the Bible, early Quaker literature, and basic Christian history, he was commonly present at annual gatherings of Friends in New York and Philadelphia. However, by the early 19th century, he began espousing a radically different interpretation of his sect’s beliefs.
During childhood, Hicks had apparently experienced visitations of “divine grace.” As he matured, he frequently lectured on the fundamental necessity of acknowledging the “Inner Light.” This manifestation of God’s will and love, he maintained, was self-evident and open to all. Furthermore, in placing great emphasis on personal revelation from God, he openly downplayed the significance of the Bible as a guide to salvation. He also reinterpreted the story of Jesus as an example of a perfect man aware of the presence of God within him. Hicks’s teachings were a radical departure from the established tenets of Quakerism and the source of a contentious schism among the Friends. Henceforth, from 1828, the Quakers became divided between two distinct sects. The so-called Hicksites embraced their founder’s notion of personal revelations for spiritual guidance, while the more traditional Orthodox reaffirmed their emphasis on the Bible and the teachings of Christ as the only source of salvation. Hicks’s centrality of the importance of personal salvation also called into question the moral and religious authority of elders guiding the Quaker movement.
In a more practical sense, Hicks was at odds with modernity. He waxed highly critical of fellow Quakers who had grown wealthy and participated actively in the larger community about them. He demanded that they remain aloof from the world and not pursue money or other activities that ground “the faces of the poor.” Moreover, Hicks was profoundly abolitionist in outlook and openly condemned Quakers who owned slaves. His beliefs mandated that African Americans should enjoy the same intrinsic right to liberty as all human beings, and he advocated the boycott of slave-produced goods such as rice and cotton.
Hicks died at his farm in Jericho, New York, on February 27, 1830. The schism he started, and the theological recriminations it engendered, endured among the Society of Friends long after his passing. For this reason, Hicks is regarded as a major religious reformer of the early to mid-19th century.
See also religion.
Further reading: Paul Buckley, “‘Thy Affectionate Friend’: The Letters of Elias Hicks and William Poole” (unpublished master’s thesis, Earlham School of Religion, 2001); Bruce Dorsey, “Friends Becoming Enemies: Philadelphia Benevolence and the Neglected Era of American Quaker History,” Journal of the Early Republic 18, no. 3 (1998): 395-428; H. Larry Ingle, Quakers in Conflict: The Hicksite Reformation (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1986).
—John C. Fredriksen
World History
