Whaling
The war for independence against the British on the American continent (1775-1783) closed the colonial trade routes within the British empire.
The merchantmen and whalers of New England swarmed around South America’s Cape Horn, in search of new markets and sources of supply. A market was established in China.
China took nothing that the US produced; hence Boston traders, in order to obtain the wherewithal to purchase teas and silks at Canton, spent 18-months or more of each China voyage collecting a cargo of sea-otter and other skins out of the northwest side of the American continent, highly esteemed by the Chinese.
Years before the westward land movement gathered momentum, the energies of seafaring New Englanders found their natural outlet, along their traditional pathway, in the Pacific Ocean.
Practically every vessel that visited the North Pacific in the closing years of the 18th century stopped at Hawai‘i for provisions and recreation; then, the opening years of the 19th century saw the sandalwood business became a recognized branch of trade.
Sandalwood, geography and fresh provisions made the Islands a vital link in a closely articulated trade route between Boston, the Northwest Coast and Canton, China.
The central location of the Hawaiian Islands between America and Orient brought many ships to the Islands. They needed food and water, and the islands supplied this need from its fertile lands.
Hawai‘i’s whaling era began in 1819 when two New England ships became the first whaling ships to arrive in the Hawaiian Islands.
At that time, whale products were in high demand; whale oil was used for heating, lamps and in industrial machinery; whale bone was used in corsets, skirt hoops, umbrellas and buggy whips.
Rich whaling waters were discovered near Japan and soon hundreds of ships headed for the area.
Whalers’ aversion to the traditional Hawaiian diet of fish and poi spurred new trends in farming and ranching. The sailors wanted fresh vegetables and the native Hawaiians turned the temperate uplands into vast truck farms.
There was a demand for fresh fruit, cattle, white potatoes and sugar. Hawaiians began growing a wider variety of crops to supply the ships.
In Hawaiʻi, several hundred whaling ships might call in season, each with 20 to 30 men aboard and each desiring to resupply with enough food for another tour “on Japan,” “on the Northwest,” or into the Arctic.
The whaling industry was the mainstay of the island economy for about 40 years. For Hawaiian ports, the whaling fleet was the crux of the economy. More than 100 ships stopped in Hawaiian ports in 1824.
“At present the whale ships visit the Sandwich Islands in the months of March and April and then proceed to the coast of Japan, the return again in October and November remain here about six weeks, and then proceed in different directions …”
“… some to the Coast of California, others cruise about the Equator when they return thither again in March and April and proceed a second time to the Coast of Japan; it usually occupies two seasons on that coast to fill a ship that will carry Three Hundred Tons.” (Jones report to Henry Clay, Secretary of State, 1827)
“The number of hands generally comprising the Company of a whale ship will average Twenty Five; and owing to the want of discipline, the length and the ardourous duties of the voyage, these people generally become dissatisfied and are willing at any moment to join a rebellion or desert the first opportu(nity) that may offer …”
“… this has been fully exemplified in the whale ships that have visited these islands, constant disertions have taken place and many serious mutinies both contributing to protract and frequently ruin the voyage.” (Jones report to Henry Clay, Secretary of State, 1827)
The effect on Hawaiʻi’s economy, particularly in areas in reach of Honolulu, Lāhainā and Hilo, the main whaling ports, was dramatic and of considerable importance in the islands’ history.
Over the next two decades, the Pacific whaling fleet nearly quadrupled in size and in the record year of 1846, 736-whaling ships arrived in Hawai‘i.
Then, whaling came swiftly to an end.
In 1859, an oil well was discovered and developed in Titusville, Pennsylvania; within a few years this new type of oil replaced whale oil for lamps and many other uses – spelling the end of the whaling industry.
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Sugar Changed the Social Fabric of the Islands
The early Polynesian settlers to Hawaiʻi brought sugar cane with them and demonstrated that it could be grown successfully in the islands; sugar was a canoe crop.
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 Kauaʻi, 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)
As a later economic entity, sugar gradually replaced sandalwood and whaling in the mid‐19th century and became the principal industry in the islands, until it was succeeded by the visitor industry in 1960.
Since it was a crop that produced a choice food product that could be shipped to distant markets, its culture on a field scale was started in about 1800 and has continued uninterruptedly up to the present time.
The first sugar to be made in Hawai‘i is credited to a man from China. The newspaper Polynesian, in its issue of January 31, 1852, carried this item attributed to a prominent sugar planter on Maui, LL Torbert:
“Mr. John White, who came to these islands in 1797, and is now living with me, says that in 1802, sugar was first made at these islands by a native of China, on the island of Lānaʻi.”
“He came here in one of the vessels trading for sandalwood, 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.”
The first commercially-viable sugar plantation, Ladd and Co., was started at Kōloa on Kaua‘i in 1835. It was to change the face of Hawai‘i forever, launching an entire economy, lifestyle and practice of monocropping that lasted for well over a century.
Hawaiʻi had the basic natural resources needed to grow sugar: land, sun and water. Hawai‘i’s economy turned toward sugar in the decades between 1860 and 1880; these twenty years were pivotal in building the plantation system.
Sugar‐cane farming gained this prestige without great difficulty because sugar cane soon proved to be the only available crop that could be grown profitably under the severe conditions imposed upon plants grown on the lands which were available for cultivation. (HSPA 1947)
A century after Captain James Cook’s arrival in Hawaiʻi, sugar plantations started to dominate the landscape.
What encouraged the development of plantations in Hawaiʻi? For one, the gold rush and settlement of California opened a lucrative market. Likewise, the Civil War virtually shut down Louisiana sugar production during the 1860s, enabling Hawai‘i to compete with elevated prices for sugar.
In addition, the Treaty of Reciprocity-1875 between the US and the Kingdom of Hawai‘i eliminated the major trade barrier to Hawai‘i’s closest and major market. Through the treaty, the US gained Pearl Harbor and Hawai‘i’s sugar planters received duty-free entry into US markets.
However, a shortage of laborers to work in the growing (in size and number) sugar plantations became a challenge. The only answer was imported labor.
Starting in the 1850s, when the Hawaiian Legislature passed “An Act for the Governance of Masters and Servants,” a section of which provided the legal basis for contract-labor system, labor shortages were eased by bringing in contract workers from Asia, Europe and North America
There were three big waves of workforce immigration:
• Chinese 1852
• Japanese 1885
• Filipinos 1905
Several smaller, but substantial, migrations also occurred:
• Portuguese 1877
• Norwegians 1880
• Germans 1881
• Puerto Ricans 1900
• Koreans 1902
• Spanish 1907
It is not likely anyone then foresaw the impact this would have on the cultural and social structure of the islands.
The sugar industry is at the center of Hawaiʻi’s modern diversity of races and ethnic cultures. Of the nearly 385,000 workers that came, many thousands stayed to become a part of Hawai‘i’s unique ethnic mix.
Hawai‘i continues to be one of the most culturally-diverse and racially-integrated places on the globe.
For nearly a century, agriculture was the state’s leading economic activity. It provided Hawai‘i’s major sources of employment, tax revenues and new capital through exports of raw sugar and other farm products.
Sugar changed the social fabric of Hawai‘i.
The sugar industry was the prime force in transforming Hawaiʻi from a traditional, insular, agrarian and debt‐ridden society into a multicultural, cosmopolitan and prosperous one. (Carol Wilcox)
The image is a sculpture at the Koloa Sugar Monument (commemorating the islands’ first successful sugar plantation and depicting various immigrant sugar workers.)
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Beyond the Boundaries
In ancient Hawai‘i, most of the makaʻāinana (‘common people’) were farmers, a few were fishermen. Tenants cultivated smaller crops for family consumption, to supply the needs of chiefs and provide tributes.
Access to resources was tied to residency and earned as a result of taking responsibility to steward the environment and supply the needs of aliʻi. The social structure reinforced land management – the primary land unit was the ahupuaʻa.
Resources not only sustained the occupants, they were also used to pay tributes to the King. Missionary Samuel Ruggles noted in his journal (June 17, 1820:) “The King’s rent has been brought in from all parts of the Island and from Onehow (Niʻihau) a small Island about 15 miles to the westward.”
“It consisted of hogs, dogs, mats, tappers, feathers, pearl fishhooks, calabashes and paddles. This rent is to go to Owhyhee (Hawaiʻi) as a present to the young King.”
“It was interesting to see the natives come, sometimes more than a hundred at a time, with their loads on their backs and lay down their offerings at the feet of their great and good Chief as they call him.” (Ruggles)
A typical ahupuaʻa was a long strip of land, narrow at its mountain summit top and becoming wider as it ran down a valley into the sea to the outer edge of the reef. If there was no reef then the sea boundary would be about one mile from the shore.
Shaped by island geography, ahupuaʻa varied in shape and size (from as little as 100-acres to more than 100,000-acres.) Each ahupuaʻa had its own name and boundary lines. Often the boundary markers were natural features such as a large rock or a line of trees or even the home of a certain bird. A valley ahupuaʻa usually used its ridges and peaks as boundaries.
The traditional land tenure system in ancient Hawaiʻi had at its core the presence of water (however, some ahupuaʻa did not have perennial streams or springs.) Although of many shapes and sizes, the typical ahupuaʻa consisted of three area types: mountain, plain and sea. Ahupuaʻa contained nearly all the resources Hawaiians required for survival.
In ancient Hawaiian times, relatives and friends exchanged products. The upland dwellers brought poi, taro and other foods to the shore to give to kinsmen there. The shore dweller gave fish and other seafood.
The emphasis on economic self-sufficiency in Hawaiian ahupua‘a resonates in our modern world with concerns for environmental and economic sustainability.
But the general perception of ahupua‘a self-sufficiency is quite different from demonstrated large scale movement of basalt and volcanic glass artifacts between island districts and sometimes between islands. (Mills)
Although control over agricultural production was doubtless central to the Hawaiian political economy, to this we can add a significant role of an exchange economy based on the control and distribution of other kinds of goods and resources.
One such resource, which fortunately is well represented in the archaeological record, consists of high-quality, fine-grained volcanic rock. (Kirch)
Many sources of stone within most ahupua‘a could have been used to make adzes (albeit of lesser quality.) It was the structure of ancient Hawaiian culture that led to the development of preferred sources outside of the ahupua‘a being used.
The ahupuaʻa of Kaʻohe in the Hāmākua district of Hawaiʻi Island, and its rich resource of basalt for adze making, helps illustrate this.
Kaʻohe is an irregular ahupua‘a because it only occupies a narrow (and relatively resource-poor) band along the coast where most of the residents would have lived.
But as Kaʻohe ascends the eastern slope of Mauna Kea and emerges above the forest near 6,000-ft in elevation, it expands to occupy the entire summit region.
The uplands of Kaʻohe would have contained few food resources beyond ground-nesting birds. The primary evidence of pre-contact human utilization of Kaʻohe’s vast mountain region is the adze quarry, which would have provided Kaʻohe with a valuable resource to exchange with other ahupua‘a. (Mills)
Likewise, Kahikinui on Maui, shows that, although the district’s residents exploited local stone sources for the majority of their tool production, they nonetheless imported slightly more than one-quarter of their lithic resources from outside of their own political district.
Clearly, even though they were capable of being self-sufficient in stone resources, they chose to import a significant quantity of high-quality volcanic rock, either as raw material or as finished adzes. (Kirch)
Moreover, archeologists have found disproportionately high frequency of fine-grained volcanic rock artifacts (from outside the specific ahupuaʻa) in high-status residence sites or ritual, temple complexes.
This strongly suggests that control over access to and distribution of these stone resources was controlled by aliʻi, who would likely have included the district chief (aliʻi ‘ai moku) and ahupua‘a-level sub-chiefs (aliʻi ‘ai ahupua‘a,) as well as the land managers (konohiki) and priests (kāhuna.) (Kirch)
Some early historical texts also hint at other kinds of exchange with others from other districts, including peddlers who traveled with goods between districts, regular exchange of foodstuffs, woods and fibers between moku, and even ‘fairs’ for barter between different districts. (Mills)
This exchange economy may also have consisted of perishable materials (ie, salt, fiber plants and cordage, lauhala matting, large hardwood logs for canoe hulls, and the red and yellow feathers of certain species of forest birds;) however, none of these preserve in most archaeological contexts. (Kirch)
Of course, following contact, the economic exchange of goods and services expanded – Sandalwood, supporting Whaling, Sugar, Pineapple, Visitor Industry etc. (Lots of information here is from Kirch and Mills.) (The image shows the adze maker in artwork by Herb Kane.)
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