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September 23, 2025 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Colonialism

Colonization (and the ‘Peopling of the Pacific’) began about 40,000 years ago with movement from Asia; by BC 1250, people were settling in the eastern Pacific. (Kirch) By BC 800, Polynesians settled in Samoa. (PVS)

Using stratigraphic archaeology and refinements in radiocarbon dating, studies suggest it was about 900-1000 AD that “Polynesian explorers first made their remarkable voyage from central Eastern Polynesia Islands, across the doldrums and into the North Pacific, to discover Hawai‘i.” (Kirch)

The motivations of the voyagers varied. Some left to explore the world or to seek adventure. Others departed to find new land or new resources because of growing populations or prolonged droughts and other ecological disasters in their homelands. (PVS)

At some point, Polynesians probably reached the coast of South America, returning with the sweet potato (a plant of undoubted American origins.) By AD 1000, sweet potato was transferred into central Polynesia. (Kirch)

The central Society Islands were colonized between AD 1025 and 1120 and dispersed to New Zealand, Hawaiʻi and Rapa Nui and other locations between AD 1190 and 1290. (PVS)

The Pacific settlement took a thousand years. However, after the 14th-century, the archaeological evidence reveals a dramatic expansion of population and food production in Hawai‘i. Perhaps the resources and energies of the Hawaiian people went into developing their land rather than travel. (Kawaharada; PVS)

Over in the Atlantic, Europeans were sailing close to the coastlines of continents before developing navigational instruments that would allow them to venture onto the open ocean; however, voyagers from Fiji, Tonga and Samoa began to settle islands in an ocean area of over 10-million square miles.

The pioneer in European expansion was Portugal, which, after 1385, was a united kingdom, and, unlike other European countries, was free from internal conflicts. Portugal focused its energies on Africa’s western coast. It was Spain that would stumble upon the New World. (Mintz & McNeil)

In 1492, Columbus was trying to find a new route to the Far East, to India, China, Japan and the Spice Islands. If he could reach these lands, he would be able to bring back rich cargoes of silks and spices.

By the time European explorers entered the Pacific in the 15th-century almost all of the habitable islands had been settled for hundreds of years and oral traditions told of explorations, migrations and travels across this expanse. (Kawaharada)

The 15th and 16th century voyages of discovery brought Europe, Africa and the Americas into direct contact, producing an exchange of foods, animals and diseases that scholars call the “Columbian Exchange.”

For more than a century, Spain and Portugal were the only European powers with New World colonies. After 1600, however, other European countries began to emulate their example.

By the end of the 16th century, a thousand French ships a year were engaged in the fur trade along the St Lawrence River and the interior, where the French constructed forts, missions and trading posts.

England established its first permanent colonies in North America during the 17th century. Between 1660 and 1760, England sought to centralize control over its New World Empire and began to impose a series of imperial laws upon its American colonies. (Mintz & McNeil) (The associated conflict was later resolved through the Revolutionary War and formation of the United States.)

By the time Europeans arrived in Hawai‘i in the 18th-century, voyaging between Hawai‘i and the rest of Polynesia had ceased for more than 400 years, perhaps the last voyager being Pāʻao or Mōʻīkeha in the 14th-century. (Kawaharada)

Although New Zealand was originally settled by Polynesian migrants (the ancestors of Maori) around AD 1250–1300, links with Polynesia were lost until European vessels renewed those connections.

With the expansion of European and North American whaling activities in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the protected anchorages of New Zealand’s Bay of Islands became an important base for the provisioning of Pacific-bound vessels, particularly from America. (Te Ara)

Maori agriculture was transformed by servicing whaling ships. Forests were cleared to make way for cultivation of potatoes, wheat and maize, and Polynesians were recruited aboard American ships bound for the Pacific whaling grounds.

Many of these vessels deliberately left New England short-handed, intending to pick up a full crew in New Zealand, Hawaiʻi or elsewhere amongst the Pacific Islands.

The foundation of the New South Wales penal colony in 1788, and the expansion of European settlement to Hobart Town in Tasmania, and across the Tasman Sea to New Zealand, soon fostered sporadic trade linkages with the Pacific Islands. (Te Ara)

The first European colonies in Oceania were Australia (1788) and New Zealand (1840.) Soon after, the French seized French Polynesia (1842) and New Caledonia (1853.) Britain, at first, resisted pressure to annex scattered South Pacific Islands; however, Fiji was taken in 1874.

Then came the emergence of the Panama Canal and the rush of annexations by Britain, France, Germany and the US between 1884 and 1900. In 1899, Samoa was split between Germany and the US, with Tonga and the Solomon Islands were added to Britain. (Stanley)

Early on, in the Pacific, some thought the US was a colony of Great Britain. Until Thomas ap Catesby Jones’s visit to the Society Islands in 1826, “the inhabitants supposed the United States to be a colony of Great Britain, upon a par with Sydney, New South Wales, &c, &c.”

Jones then went to Hawaiʻi; an astonished Kalanimōku (who was the equivalent to Prime Minister in the Islands) noted “It is so…. Is America and England equal? We never understood so before.”

“We knew that England was our friend and that Capt Charlton was here to protect us, but we did not know that Mr Jones, the Commercial Agent, was the representative of America.” (Jones Report to Navy Department, 1827) During Jones’ visit in 1826, he signed an Articles of Arrangement (the first treaty between the US and Hawaiʻi.)

Later, on June 28, 1880, Kalakaua’s Premier Walter Murray Gibson, introduced a resolution in the legislature noting, “the Hawaiian Kingdom by its geographic position and political status is entitled to claim a Primacy in the family of Polynesian States …”

“The resolution concluded with an action “that a Royal Commissioner be appointed by His Majesty, to be styled a Royal Hawaiian Commissioner to the state and peoples of Polynesia …” (Kuykendall) They proposed a Polynesian Confederacy, with Kalakaua as its ruler.

“Then the idea of a great island confederacy dawned upon and fascinated him (Gibson.) He discerned but little difficulty in the way of organizing such a political union, over which Kalakaua would be the logical emperor, and he (Gibson) the Premier of an almost boundless empire of Polynesian archipelagoes.” (Wheeler) “Kalakaua’s dream of empire” failed.

The Polynesian Triangle is a geographical region of the Pacific Ocean with Hawaiʻi (1), New Zealand (Aotearoa) (2) and Rapa Nui (3) at its corners; at the center is Tahiti (5), with Samoa (4) to the west.

September 22, 2025 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Unexpected Partners

Lorrin Andrews Thurston was born on July 31, 1858 in Honolulu. His father was Asa Goodale Thurston and Sarah Andrews. On his father’s side he was grandson of Asa and Lucy Thurston of the Pioneer Company of missionaries; on his mother’s side, he was grandson of another early missionary, Lorrin Andrews.

Thurston was fluent in the Hawaiian language and gave himself the nickname Kakina. He attended Oʻahu College (Punahou,) and, later, law school at Columbia University.

He followed his father and became a member of the Hawaiʻi Legislature. In 1887, Thurston authored what became known as the Bayonet Constitution. He became the Minister of Interior.

In 1892, Thurston led the Annexation Club and participated in the revolution and overthrow of the constitutional monarchy (1893.) Thurston headed the commission sent to Washington DC for American annexation. (Smith)

A volcano enthusiast, in his childhood on Maui, he would act as an informal tour guide; Thurston first visited Kīlauea on the Island of Hawaiʻi in 1879 at the age of 21 with Louis von Tempsky. Thurston wrote that “we hired horses in Hilo and rode to the volcano, from about eight o’clock in the morning to five in the afternoon.” (NPS)

Ten years later Thurston’s first mark upon the Volcano landscape appeared. In 1889, using his position as Minister of the Interior, he oversaw the construction of an improved carriage road from Hilo to Volcano.

The road was completed in 1894 allowing four-horse stages to transport visitors from Hilo to Volcano in seven hours. This feat would greatly increase the number of people able to view the volcano at Kīlauea. (NPS)

In 1891, Thurston bought the Volcano House in the Island of Hawaiʻi.

George Lycurgus first left his native Sparta in Greece around 1876, when he was about 17 years old. He served in the Greek Army for 18 months. George sailed from Greece to Liverpool sometime in 1880 and from there docked in New York. Here the young boy, not knowing any English, started out by selling lemons.

The later found himself in San Francisco; however his brother John and a cousin, Peter Kamarinos, were in Hawaiʻi. By the fall of 1889, George was sailing on the ‘Australia’ to Hawaiʻi.

Lycurgus opened the California Wine Company in Honolulu. Another Lycurgus enterprise in Honolulu during those years was the Union Grill. He then got in the hotel business, with the ‘Sans Souci’ in Waikiki. (Maggioros)

“In 1893 Sans Souci was a rambling hostelry, nestled among the coconut and palm trees of Waikiki Beach. The guests occupied small bungalows, thatched-roof affairs about ten by twelve, the bed being the principal article of furniture. It was in one of these bungalows that Stevenson had established himself, propped up with pillows on the bed in his shirt-sleeves.” Scribner’s Magazine, August, 1926.

Lycurgus was a royalist and was implicated with other counter-revolutionists in supplying arms (1895.) He was arrested, thirteen counts of treason were filed against him and he was held at ‘The Reef’ (Oʻahu Prison) for 52-days. (Chapin)

Later, Thurston sold the Volcano House to Lycurgus. (Smith)

Starting in 1906, Thurston, a revolutionist, and Lycurgus, a counter-revolutionist, started to work together to have the volcano area made into Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park.

In January 1912, geologist Thomas Jaggar arrived to investigate the volcano. A building for scientific instruments was built in a small building next to the hotel. Jaggar stayed in Volcano for the next 28 years.

Thurston and Lycurgus were instrumental in getting the volcano recognized as Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park. On August 1, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed the country’s 13th National Park into existence – Hawaiʻi National Park. At first, the park consisted of only the summits of Kīlauea and Mauna Loa on Hawaiʻi, and Haleakalā on Maui.

Eventually, Kilauea Caldera was added to the park, followed by the forests of Mauna Loa, the Kaʻu Desert, the rain forest of Olaʻa and the Kalapana archaeological area of the Puna/Kaʻu Historic District.

The National Park Service, within the federal Department of Interior, was created on August 25, 1916 by Congress through the National Park Service Organic Act.

In 1916, Thurston, recognizing the long tradition of soldiers and sailors who had visited the area, proposed the establishment of a military camp at Kīlauea. Thurston promoted his idea and was able to raise enough funds through public subscription for the construction of buildings and other improvements. By the fall of 1916, the first group of soldiers arrived at Kīlauea Military Camp (KMC.) (NPS)

Later, in the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) built research offices, hiking trails and laid the foundations for much of the infrastructure and roads within the Hawaiʻi Volcanoes and other parks across the country.

On, July 1, 1961, Hawaiʻi National Park’s units were separated and re-designated as Haleakalā National Park and Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park.

September 21, 2025 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Haleʻakala

Orphaned when young and with only an 8th grade education, Charles Reed Bishop arrived in the Islands on October 12, 1846 and became an astute financial businessman, and one of the wealthiest men in the kingdom from banking, agriculture, real estate and other investments.

In early 1847, Bishop met Bernice Pauahi Paki (she was still a student at the Chiefs’ Children’s School;) despite the opposition of Pauahi’s parents who wanted her to marry Lot Kapuaiwa (later, Kamehameha V,) Bishop courted and married Pauahi in 1850.

For the first few months of their marriage, Pauahi and Charles lived in homes of Judge Lorrin Andrews, first in his downtown residence, and later in a cottage in upper Nuʻuanu Valley, opposite the site of the present Maunaʻala (Royal Mausoleum.)

Like many Hawaiian homes of the time, this one had a name, Wananakoa, for the grove of koa trees in the yard. This was only temporary – they were building a home on property Bishop bought on the Diamond Head/Mauka corner of Hotel and Alakea Streets.

Meanwhile, Pauahi’s father, Paki, had completed the construction of his new residence on King Street (between Fort and Alakea.) (Bishop Street had not been built, yet, the property would be on the ʻEwa/Mauka corner of what is now Bishop and King Streets.)

This new home replaced Paki’s prior modest, thatched-roof home he called ʻAikupika (‘Egypt’) that had been on the same piece of property. (ʻAikupika is where Pauahi was born.)

The name Paki gave his new home has been translated by some as ‘House of the Sun’ or Haleakala, but he probably meant it to be Haleʻakala or the ‘Pink House,’ after the color of the stone used in its construction. (Kanahele)

By the standards of the day, Haleʻakala was a splendid structure that was probably the equal of any of the better homes and gardens in town.

It was a large two-story stone-and-frame building with lanai (porches), supported by pillars on both first and second floors, extending around at least three sides of the house. Its extensive gardens combined shrubbery, flowers and trees and included the special tamarind tree planted at Pauahi’s birth.

Clarice B Taylor stated that he really built the house “hoping Pauahi would marry Prince Lot and make her home with her parents.” It was bigger than he and his wife needed; Paki had sold his lands at Mākaha to raise the money for its construction. (Kanahele)

Paki and his wife Laura Konia raised Pauahi there. When Liliʻuokalani was born, she was hanai (adopted) to Paki and Konia. The two girls attended the Chief’s Children’s School (Royal School,) a boarding school, together, and were known for their studious demeanor.

The history of the home goes beyond the Paki family living quarters; some other interesting bits of Hawaiian history happened here.

Liliʻuokalani and John Dominis were married at Haleʻakala, “I was engaged to Mr Dominis for about two years and it was our intention to be married on the second day of September, 1862. … our wedding was delayed at the request of the king, Kamehameha IV, to the sixteenth of that month”.

“It was celebrated at the residence of Mr and Mrs Bishop, in the house which had been erected by my father, Paki, and which … is still one of the most beautiful and central of the mansions in Honolulu.”

“To it came all the high chiefs then living there, also the foreign residents; in fact, all the best society of the city. My husband took me at once to the estate known as Washington Place, which had been built by his father, and which is still my private residence.” (Queen Liliʻuokalani)

“There was a Baptism at the Residence of the Honorable CR Bishop, “Haleʻakala;” baptized was the child of the honorable (Princess Ruth) Keʻelikolani and JY Davis, and he was called, “Keolaokalani Paki Bihopa.”

The Honorable CR Bishop and Pauahi were those who bestowed the name, and Rev C Corwin is the one who performed the baptism.” (Hoku o ka Pakipika, February 2, 1863) (Keolaokalani was hanai to Pauahi; unfortunately, he died later that year.)

Duke Kahanamoku was born at Haleʻakala on August 24, 1890. (With respect to his name “Duke,” he was named after his father. The elder Kahanamoku was born during the Duke of Edinburgh’s visit to the islands in 1869 and was named after him.)

Haleʻakala was converted to Arlington Hotel.

On the afternoon of January 16, 1893, 162 sailors and Marines aboard the USS Boston in Honolulu Harbor came ashore. The property that Liliʻuokalani was raised in (Haleʻakala) served as ‘Camp Boston,’ the headquarters for the USS Boston’s landing force at the time of the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy, January 17, 1893.

In 1901, Honolulu had three high-class hotels, the Hawaiian Hotel (in downtown Honolulu, now the State Art Museum on Hotel Street,) the Arlington Hotel and the Moana Hotel (in Waikiki.)

“The Arlington Hotel has, for its principal building, a house once occupied by a Hawaiian princess, by whose estate it is now leased to the hotel proprietor (Thomas E Krouse.”) (Chipman, 1901) Krouse, unfortunately, committed suicide at the Arlington the next year.

“A Mrs Dudoit ran the place for a while as a boarding house, and she was followed by a Mr Hamilton Johnson. Both these houses were, however, on a small scale. Just seven and a half years ago it became known as the Arlington, six cottages were attached, the aviary and the cages of animals so familiar to us all were added.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, September 6, 1900)

“The place was maintained as a chief’s residence for many years. It can only have been turned to other uses during the past fifteen years at the outside. Mrs Bernice Pauahi Bishop left the estate to her husband, who turned the property over to the Kamehameha estates.” (Sereno Bishop; Pacific Commercial Advertiser, September 6, 1900)

“(Haleʻakala) has a most unique and interesting history. It is one of the most historic spots in all Honolulu, embracing as it does the scenes of joyousness under royalty, through the stirring days of ’93 … the pettinesses of a boarding house and down to the present day as the Arlington Hotel.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, September 6, 1900)

“The estate which had been so dear to us both in my childhood, the house built by my father, Paki, where I had lived as a girl, which was connected with many happy memories of my early life, from whence I had been married to Governor Dominis,”

“I could not help feeling ought to have been left to me. … This wish of my heart was not gratified, and at the present day strangers stroll through the grounds or lounge on the piazzas of that home once so dear to me.” (Liliʻuokalani)

September 20, 2025 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Cane Trash

When we were kids and went fishing (trolling), I remember the frustrating – and repeated – need to pull in and clean the lines from floating bagasse (cane trash) that entangled at the lures.

It wasn’t a new thing, floating masses of bagasse have littered beaches/shorelines, affected fishers, and impacted marine resources for decades before. Several attempts to use bagasse rather than dump it (fuel to operate the mill, canec, etc) helped, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that the dumping finally stopped.

Sugar was a canoe crop; the early Polynesian settlers to Hawaiʻi brought sugar cane with them and demonstrated that it could be grown successfully in the islands.

In pre-contact times, sugarcane was not processed as we know sugar today, but was used by chewing the juicy stalks. Its leaves were used for inside house thatching, or for outside (if pili grass wasn’t available.) The flower stalks of sugar cane were used to make a dart, sometimes used during the Makahiki games. (Canoe Crops)

The first written record of sugarcane in Hawaiʻi came from Captain James Cook, at the time he made initial contact with the Islands.

On January 19, 1778, off Kauai, he notes, “We saw no wood, but what was up in the interior part of the island, except a few trees about the villages; near which, also, we could observe several plantations of plantains and sugar-canes.” (Cook)

Cook notes that sugar was cultivated, “The potatoe fields, and spots of sugar-canes, or plantains, in the higher grounds, are planted with the same regularity; and always in some determinate figure; generally as a square or oblong”. (Cook)

Sugarcane, a tall perennial grass, is grown in tropical and semitropical climates. (USDA) “Sugar cane, described in botany as Saccharum officinarum, is a giant-stemmed perennial grass that grows from eight to twenty-four feet long. … As a rule, sugar cane consists of about eighty-eight per cent of juice and twelve per cent of fiber”. (Rolph)

The first reported processing of sugar was noted … “in 1802 sugar was first made at these islands, by a native of China, on the island of Lanai. He came here in one of the vessels trading for sandal wood, and brought a stone mill, and boilers, and after grinding off one small crop and making it into sugar, went back the next year with his fixtures, to China.” (Torbert; Polynesian, January 31, 1852)

As production grew, the early sugar ventures were either Hawaiian-owned or regulated by Hawaiian rulers. In most instances, the Hawaiian-owned sugar processing was managed by either Chinese sugar boilers or American shopkeepers in rural districts. (MacLennan) Although sugar cane had grown in Hawaiʻi for many centuries, its commercial cultivation for the production of sugar did not occur until 1825.

In that year, John Wilkinson and Governor Boki started a plantation in upper Mānoa Valley. Within six months they had seven acres of cane growing, and by the time Wilkinson died, in September 1826, they had actually manufactured some sugar. The sugar mill was later converted into a distillery for rum, prompting Kaʻahumanu to have the cane fields destroyed around 1829. (Schmitt)

Shortly thereafter, King Kamehameha III, seeking to encourage commercial cultivation of sugar by native Hawaiians offered the “acre system,” giving “out small lots of land, from one to two acres, to individuals for the cultivation of cane.”

“When the cane is ripe, the King finds all the apparatus for manufacturing & when manufactured takes the half. Of his half one fifth is regarded as the tax due to the aupuni (government) & the remaining four fifths is his compensation for the manufacture. These cane cultivators are released from all other demands of every description on the part of chiefs.” (Armstrong (1839;) MacLennan)

About this time, the initial signs of commercial sugar are found on Maui, in Wailuku. In 1840, the King ordered an iron mill from the US, and it was erected by August. Hung & Co in 1841 advertised the sale of sugar and sugar syrup from its 150-acre plantation in Wailuku. More than likely, this was sugar from the King’s Mill. (MacLennan)

Early plantations were small and didn’t fare too well. Soon, most would come to realize that “sugar farming and sugar milling were essentially great-scale operations.” (Garvin)

Then, the King sought to expand sugar cultivation and production, as well as expand other agricultural ventures to support commercial agriculture in the Islands. In a speech to the Legislature in 1847, the King notes:

“I recommend to your most serious consideration, to devise means to promote the agriculture of the islands, and profitable industry among all classes of their inhabitants. It is my wish that my subjects should possess lands upon a secure title; enabling them to live in abundance and comfort, and to bring up their children free from the vices that prevail in the seaports.”

“What my native subjects are greatly in want of, to become farmers, is capital with which to buy cattle, fence in the land and cultivate it properly. I recommend you to consider the best means of inducing foreigners to furnish capital for carrying on agricultural operations, that thus the exports of the country may be increased …” (King Kamehameha III Speech to the Legislature, April 28, 1847; Archives)

A few things helped kick-start this vision – following finding gold in 1848, the California gold rush stimulated a small boom in commercial agriculture for the Islands – particularly in potatoes and sugar. However, by the end of the 1850s, the boomlet became a depression (California started to supply its own needs.)

The American Civil War virtually shut down Louisiana sugar production during the 1860s. Hawaiian-grown sugar soon replaced much of this southern sugar through the duration of the conflict.

By the end of the war, over thirty extremely prosperous plantations were in operation and expanded to new levels previously unheard of before the war’s commencement.

Hawaiʻi’s industrial plantations began to emerge at this time (1860s;) they were further fueled by the Treaty of Reciprocity – 1875 between the United States and the Kingdom of Hawai‘i eliminated the major trade barrier to Hawai‘i’s closest and major market.

A century after Captain James Cook’s arrival in Hawaiʻi, sugar plantations started to dominate the landscape. Hawai‘i’s economy turned toward sugar in the decades between 1860 and 1880; these twenty years were pivotal in building the plantation system.

The industry came to maturity by the turn of the century; the industry peaked in the 1930s. Hawaiʻi’s sugar plantations employed more than 50,000 workers and produced more than 1-million tons of sugar a year; over 254,500-acres were planted in sugar.

Sugarcane is crushed in the mill to extract and process the sugar. Several waste products are produced by the sugar industry – one was bagasse (the fibrous residue that remains after sugarcane stalks are crushed to extract the juice), and the mills would flume it out of the mill and simply dump it in the ocean.

Later, some of the bagasse was made into fiber board. In 1929, Hawaiian Cellulose Ltd, a subsidiary of the Waiākea Mill Company applied for a patent for the manufacture of it. (County of Hawai‘i) They made ‘canec.’

Canec was originally the brand name for pressed fiber board made by Hawaiian Cane Products, Ltd, but it became commonly used to refer to all pressed board of this type.

Also, later, “After passing through the last mill, as much cane pulp (bagasse) as needed is fed into the mill fireroom for use as fuel.” (EPA) The bagasse was pelletized and fueled the boiler.

In 1971, ecological studies of coral communities along the Hamakua Coast of the island of Hawaii resulted in the instigation of a number of Environmental Protection Agency restrictions regarding ocean disposal by sugar mills.

These included, among other things, the elimination of bagasse discharge into the ocean and significant reductions in total suspended solid (TSS). Compliance with EPA standards was achieved in 1979. (Grigg)

Mats of bagasse no longer clogged and smothered rocky bottom habitats. Also mats of bagasse on the ocean surface no longer fouled fishing boats and fishing gear. (Grigg)

September 18, 2025 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Spanish Lake

While there is only one global ocean, the vast body of water that covers 71 percent of the Earth is geographically divided into distinct named regions. The boundaries between these regions have evolved over time for a variety of historical, cultural, geographical, and scientific reasons.

Historically, there are four named oceans: the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, and Arctic. However, most countries – including the United States – now recognize the Southern (Antarctic) as the fifth ocean. The Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian are the most commonly known. (NOAA)

The first Europeans to arrive in North America were likely the Norse, traveling west from Greenland, where Erik the Red had founded a settlement around the year 985. In 1001 his son Leif is thought to have explored the northeast coast of what is now Canada and spent at least one winter there.

While Norse sagas suggest that Viking sailors explored the Atlantic coast of North America down as far as the Bahamas, such claims remain unproven. In 1963, however, the ruins of some Norse houses dating from that era were discovered at L’Anse-aux-Meadows in northern Newfoundland, thus supporting at least some of the claims the Norse sagas make.

Portuguese mariners built an Atlantic empire by colonizing the Canary, Cape Verde, and Azores Islands, as well as the island of Madeira. Merchants then used these Atlantic outposts as debarkation points for subsequent journeys.

From these strategic points, Portugal spread its empire down the western coast of Africa to the Congo, along the western coast of India, and eventually to Brazil on the eastern coast of South America.

It also established trading posts in China and Japan. While the Portuguese didn’t rule over an immense landmass, their strategic holdings of islands and coastal ports gave them almost unrivaled control of nautical trade routes and a global empire of trading posts during the 1400s.

The history of Spanish exploration begins with the history of Spain itself. During the fifteenth century, Spain hoped to gain advantage over its rival, Portugal. The marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile in 1469 unified Catholic Spain and began the process of building a nation that could compete for worldwide power.

Their goals were to expand Catholicism and to gain a commercial advantage over Portugal. To those ends, Ferdinand and Isabella sponsored extensive Atlantic exploration. Spain’s most famous explorer, Christopher Columbus, was actually from Genoa, Italy.

Columbus (who was looking for a new route to India, China, Japan and the ‘Spice Islands’ of Indonesia to bring back cargoes of silk and spices (ginger, turmeric, and cinnamon)) never saw the mainland United States.

Spain’s drive to enlarge its empire led other hopeful conquistadors to push further into the Americas, hoping to replicate the success of Cortés and Pizarro.

The exploits of European explorers had a profound impact both in the Americas and back in Europe. An exchange of ideas, fueled and financed in part by New World commodities, began to connect European nations and, in turn, to touch the parts of the world that Europeans conquered. (Lumen)

“On May 3, 1493, Pope Alexander VI, to prevent future disputes between Spain and Portugal, divided the world by a north-south line (longitude) 100 leagues (300 miles) west of the Cape Verde Islands.”

“In 1494, by the terms of the Treaty of Tordesillas, Spain and Portugal agreed to move that line to a meridian 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands [in the Atlantic].” (Lloyd)

“Strictly speaking, there was no such thing as ‘the Pacific’ until in 1520-1 Fernao de Magalhãis, better known as Magellan, traversed the huge expanse of waters, which then received its name.” (Spate)

On November 28 1520, Ferdinand Magellan entered the “Sea of the South” (Mar Del Sur, which he later named the Pacific) and thereby opened up to Spain the possibility of an alternative route between Europe and the spices of the Orient.” (Lloyd)

“After Magellan’s daring voyage round South America and across to the Philippines (1519-1521), the magnet of Pacific exploration was Terra Australis Incognita, the great southern continent supposed to lie between the Cape of Good Hope and the Straits of Magellan.” (The Journal; Edwards)

With the conquest of Mexico in 1522, the Spanish further solidified their position in the Western Hemisphere. The ensuing discoveries added to Europe’s knowledge of what was now named America – after the Italian Amerigo Vespucci, who wrote a widely popular account of his voyages to a “New World.”

By 1529, reliable maps of the Atlantic coastline from Labrador to Tierra del Fuego had been drawn up, although it would take more than another century before hope of discovering a “Northwest Passage” to Asia would be completely abandoned. (Alonzo L Hamby)

“Alvaro de Mendana, the Spanish voyager, sailed from Callao in Peru in 1567 and reached the Solomon Islands. It was not until 1595 that he went back, with Pedro Fernanadez de Quiros, found the Marquesas and got as far as the Santa Cruz Islands.” (The Journal; Edwards)

Then, almost 50 years after the death of Christopher Columbus, Manila Galleons finally fulfilled their dream of sailing west to Asia to benefit from the rich Indian Ocean trade.

“The Spanish Galleons were square rigged ships with high superstructures on their sterns. They were obviously designed for running before the wind or at best sailing on a very ‘broad reach.’”

“Because of their apparently limited ability to ‘beat their way to windward’ (sail against the wind), they had to find trade routes where the prevailing winds and sea currents were favorable.” (Lloyd)

Starting in 1565, with the Spanish sailor and friar Andrés de Urdaneta, after discovering the Tornaviaje or return route to Mexico through the Pacific Ocean, Spanish Galleons sailed the Pacific Ocean between Acapulco in Nueva España (New Spain – now Mexico) and Manila in the Philippine islands.

The galleons leaving Manila would make their way back to Acapulco in a four-month long journey. The goods were off-loaded and transported across land to ships on the other Mexican coast at Veracruz, and eventually, sent to European markets and customers eager for these exotic wares. (GuamPedia)

Spain had a long presence in the Pacific Ocean (1521–1898). The Pacific coastline of Nueva España and Peru connected to the Philippines far to the west made the ocean a virtual Spanish Lake.

The “Spanish Lake” united the Pacific Rim (the Americas and Asia) and Basin (Oceania) with the Spanish in the Atlantic. (Buschmann etal)

The great wealth that poured into Spain triggered great interest on the part of the other European powers. With time, emerging maritime nations such as England, drawn in part by Francis Drake’s successful raids on Spanish treasure ships, began to take interest in the New World. (State Department)

The USA is named after an Italian, Amerigo Vespucci (March 9, 1454 – February 22, 1512,) an explorer, financier, navigator and cartographer. He sailed in 1499, seven years after Christopher Columbus first landed in the West Indies.

Columbus found the new world; but Vespucci, by travelling down the coast, came to the realization that it was not India at all, but an entirely new continent.

Later, it was a German clergyman and amateur geographer named Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann, his Alsatian proofreader, who are reported to have first put the name “America” (a feminized Latin version of Vespucci’s first name) on the new land mass (April 25, 1507.)

The name ‘United States of America’ appears to have been used for the first time in the Declaration of Independence (1776.) At least no earlier instance of its use in that precise form has been found. (Burnett)