He keiki aloha nā mea kanu
Beloved children are the plants
(ʻŌlelo Noʻeau 684)

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.”

While HSPA – HARC states, “The first successful sugarcane plantation was started at Kōloa, Kauai in 1835. Its first harvest in 1837 produced 2 tons of raw sugar, which sold for $200”, others suggest the first commercial production actually started on Maui.  (Hawai‘i Agriculture Research Center (HARC – successor entity to Hawai‘i Sugar Planters Association (HSPA))

A couple guys named Ah Hung and Ah Tai combined their names in order to identify their company – a 1939 news ‘Short’ says Hungtai “is said to have been one of the earliest manufacturers of sugar in the islands, at Wailuku, Maui in 1823.” (Star Bulletin, April 6, 1939) Others say Hungtai started commercial sales in 1828; still, seven years before Koloa.

Hungtai had a plantation and a water-powered mill in Wailuku and sold the sugar in their store at Merchant and Fort Streets in Honolulu. They were still selling that sugar as late as 1841, when they were advertising in local newspapers.  (TenBruggencate)

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)

Likewise, King Kamehameha III 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 noted:

“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)

Capital was scarce, profits were uncertain, and failures frequent. There was a market In California and Oregon, but the tariff and competition from Philippine and American producers created difficulties for the Hawaiian planters. (Davis)

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.

The gold rush and settlement of California opened a lucrative market.  Then, there was a jump in price and demand for the Hawaiian Islands product following the outbreak of the Civil War.  The Civil War virtually shut down Louisiana sugar production during the 1860s, enabling Hawai‘i to compete with elevated prices for sugar.

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)

Though a demand for the product was essential for success, two other factors had to be provided before the demand could be met – more arable land and a larger labor supply. For the first, water was necessary, only along the Hāmākua coast of the island of Hawai‘i and in a few other places was this resource abundantly present together with a suitable land area.

Most plantations depended upon rain for this basic need. There had been a few efforts at irrigation, notably the Lihue Ditch constructed on Kauai in 1856 by William Harrison Rice and extended several times after that date.

But the most Important expansion came on Maui with the construction of the Hāmākua Ditch during the period of 1876 to 1878, and of the Spreckels Ditch in 1879. By means of these two great Irrigation projects water was brought from the mountains to the dry but potentially fertile plains, and thousands of additional acres of land suitable for sugar cane growing were made available.

By 1875 economic and political pressures in Hawai‘i and the US led to additional benefits. The United States saw a double danger in the Sandwich Islands which reciprocity might overcome.

First, there was the influence of a strong group consisting of both Hawaiians and Europeans whose sympathies and ties were with England rather than America and who would like to see the Hawaiian Kingdom allied closely with that country. Second, there was the possibility of losing the Hawaiian trade to Australia, New Zealand, and British Columbia.  (Davis)

As a result, the Reciprocity Treaty was negotiated in 1875 and put into effect on September 9, 1876. This agreement provided for the tariff-free entry of a number of Items into each country. For Hawaiian sugar planters the most Important was the admission of unrefined sugar without duty into the USs.  The Reciprocity Treaty with the United States brought about the phenomenal growth of the sugar industry in Hawaii.

Hawaiians had provided the original labor supply, and as late as 1873, 79% of the workers on 36 plantations were from that group. This number included more than 50% of the able-bodied native males.  But the indigenous population had been decreasing at an alarming rate over a period of many years, probably reaching its lowest ebb about the time of the Reciprocity Treaty.

Hence, even if the long, hot, arduous days in field or mill continued to attract Hawaiians, they were numerically unable to fill the increased need. Importation of workers seemed the only answer. (Davis)

Though the demand for sugar and the conditions for producing it continued to improve, this one necessity was lacking. Sugarcane went to ruin in the fields, building and development were delayed, production fell short of estimates, all for lack of enough workers.

The Hawaiian government favored the importation of South Sea Islanders so that the declining Polynesian population could be rebuilt. Several other groups were considered but rejected for various reasons – American Negroes, Hindus, Malaysians. (Davis)

Labor for the expanding plantations was hired under contracts regulated by the ‘Act for Government of Masters and Servants,’ originally passed in 1850 and amended several times thereafter.

This Act applied to workers of any kind, Including household servants, yard and stable boys, washerwomen, shop clerks, and others. The contract could cover any period not to exceed five years and might be made in a foreign country for service In Hawai‘i.

There were severe penalties for absence from or refusal to work, and some protection against a master’s cruelty, misuse, or violation of contract. Its form was determined by law, and It required that both parties Involved appear before an agent of the Hawaiian Government, listen to the terms of the contract, voluntarily assent to it and accept its obligations.

There were many who objected to this system as a kind of slavery or serfdom in which most of the legal safeguards were on the side of the employer, but it was defended by planters as essential to the success of the sugar Industry. Only by means of the contract, they felt, could labor of the type needed by the plantations be controlled and held to the land.

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)

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.

At the industry’s peak in the 1930s, Hawai‘i’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.  That plummeted to 492,000 tons in 1995.

With statehood in 1959 and the almost simultaneous introduction of passenger jet airplanes, the tourist industry began to grow rapidly.

A majority of the plantations closed in the 1990s.

As sugar declined, tourism took its place – and far surpassed it.  Like many other societies, Hawai‘i underwent a profound transformation from an agrarian to a service economy.

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