Images of Old Hawaiʻi

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Chinese in Hawaiʻi

Shortly after the arrival of Captain James Cook and his crews in 1778, the Chinese found their way to Hawaiʻi.  Some suggest Cook’s crew gave information about the “Sandwich Islands” when they stopped in Macao in December 1779, near the end of the third voyage.

In 1788, British Captain John Meares commanded two vessels, the Iphigenia and the Felice, with crews of Europeans and 50-Chinese.  Shortly thereafter, in 1790, the American schooner Eleanora, with Simon Metcalf as master, reached Maui from Macao using a crew of 10-Americans and 45-Chinese.  (Nordyke & Lee)

Crewmen from China were employed as cooks, carpenters and artisans, and Chinese businessmen sailed as passengers to America. Some of these men disembarked in Hawai’i and remained as new settlers.

The growth of the Sandalwood trade with the Chinese market (where mainland merchants brought cotton, cloth and other goods for trade with the Hawaiians for their sandalwood – who would then trade the sandalwood in China) opened the eyes and doors to Hawaiʻi.

The Chinese referred to Hawaiʻi as “Tan Heung Shan” – “The Sandalwood Mountains.” The sandalwood trade lasted for nearly half a century – 1792 to 1843.  (Nordyke & Lee)

The Chinese pioneered another Hawaiʻi industry – sugar.

Although ancient Hawaiians brought sugar with them to the Islands centuries before (it was a canoe crop,) in 1802, Wong Tze-Chun brought a sugar mill and boilers to Hawaiʻi and is credited with the first production of sugar.  Later, Ahung and Atai built a sugar mill on Maui.

Sugar gradually replaced sandalwood and whaling in the mid-19th century and became the principal industry in the islands.

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.

The first to arrive were the Chinese (1852.)

“When they (Chinese contract laborers) reached Honolulu, they were kept in the quarantine station for about two weeks. They were made to clean themselves in a tank and have their clothes fumigated.  Planters looked them over and picked them for work in much the same way a horse was looked at before he was bought.”  (Young – Nordyke & Lee)

“These Chinese were taken to the plantations. There they lived in grass houses or unpainted wooden buildings with dirt floors. Sometimes as many as forty men were put into one room. They slept on wooden boards about two feet wide and about three feet from the floor.  … (T)hey cut the sugarcane and hauled it on their backs to ox drawn carts which took the cane to the mill to be made into sugar”  (Young – Nordyke & Lee)

The sugar industry grew, so did the Chinese population in Hawaiʻi.  Between 1852 and 1884, the population of Chinese in Hawai’i increased from 364 to 18,254, to become almost a quarter of the population of the Kingdom (almost 30% of them were living in Honolulu.)  (Young – Nordyke & Lee)

Concerned that the Chinese had secured too strong a representation in the labor market, the government passed laws reducing Chinese immigration.  Further government regulations introduced between 1886 to 1892 virtually ended Chinese contract labor immigration.

The Chinese pioneered another Hawaiʻi industry – rice; with the collapse of the taro industry in 1861-1862 (as the Hawaiian population declined, the demand for taro also declined,) rice was raised in former taro loʻi.

During the 1860s and 1870s, the production of rice increased substantially. It was consumed domestically by the burgeoning numbers of Chinese brought to the Islands as agricultural laborers.

In 1862, the first rice mill in the Hawaiian Islands was constructed in Honolulu (prior to that it was sent unhulled and uncleaned to be milled in San Francisco.)  By 1887 over 13 million pounds of rice were exported.

In 1899, Hawaiʻi’s rice production had expanded so that it placed third in production of rice behind Louisiana and South Carolina.

In 1886, calamity struck the Honolulu Chinatown when a fire raged out of control and destroyed over eight blocks and the homes of 7,000 Chinese and 350 Native Hawaiians and most of Chinatown. Later, in 1900, fires were deliberately set in an effort to wipe out the bubonic plague which was spreading through Chinatown.

Most Chinese plantation workers did not renew their five-year contracts, opting instead to return home or to work on smaller private farms or for other Chinese as clerks, as domestics in haole households, or they started their own businesses.

Chinatown reached its peak in the 1930s. In the days before air travel, visitors arrived here by cruise ship. Just a block up the street was the pier where they disembarked — and they often headed straight for the shops and restaurants of Chinatown, which mainlanders considered an exotic treat.

Because of excellent employment opportunities in Hawai’i, as well as the high value placed by Chinese on education (even though most immigrants had little formal schooling), Chinese parents encouraged their sons to get as much education as possible.  (Glick)

This strong emphasis on education has resulted in a highly favorable position for Chinese men and women in Hawai’i. Nearly three-fourths of them are employed in higher-lever jobs – skilled. clerical and sales, proprietary and managerial, and professional. As a result, the Chinese enjoy the highest median of income of all ethnic groups in Hawai’i.  (Glick)

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by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Honuʻapo

Honuʻapo is literally translated as “caught turtle” (Pukui,) but others suggest Honuʻapo was originally Honua‘apo, meaning “embraced land”, or land embraced by a kapu. “Honua‘apo” has its origin with a cave that was a place of refuge and was therefore kapu.  (Haun)

When Captain James Cook traveled this part of the Island in January 1799, King, who accompanied Cook on the voyage, wrote:
“It is not only the worst part of the Island but as barren waste looking a country as can be conceived to exist…”

“… we could discern black streaks coming from the Mountain even down to the seaside… horrid and dismal as this part of the Island appears, yet there are many villages interspersed, and it struck as being more populous than the part of Opoona (Puna) which joins Koa (Kaʻū.) There are houses built even on the ruins (lava flows) we have described.”

In July 1823, Protestant missionary Reverend William Ellis visited Kaʻū and said this of Honuʻapo:  “From the manner in which we were received at Honuʻapo, we should not think this village had been often visited by foreigners…”

“… for on our descending from the high land to the lava on which the town stands, the natives came running out to meet us from all quarters, and soon gathered so thickly around us, that we found it difficult to proceed…”

“We passed through the town to the residence of the head man, situated on the farthest point towards the sea. He invited us to his house, procured us water to wash our feet with, and immediately sent to an adjacent pond for some fish for our supper.”

“While that was preparing, the people assembled in crowds around the house, and a little before sun-set Mr. Thurston preached to them in the front yard. Upwards of 200 were present…”

Soon after Ellis’s visit to Honuʻapo there was an influx of Westerners. The ever-growing population of Westerners throughout Hawai‘i forced socioeconomic and demographic changes.  (Rechtman)

At the time of the Māhele (1848,) Honuʻapo ahupuaʻa (totaling 2,200 acres) was awarded as Konohiki Land to William Charles Lunalilo.

In 1868, a series of earthquakes were felt and lava began flowing on the slopes of Mauna Loa. These initial eruptions “destroyed a large stone church at Kahuku, and also all the stone dwelling houses in that place, including the houses….at the foot of the mountain”.

Then on April 4th an even larger eruption occurred. Fredrick S Lyman, who witnessed the eruption first hand, wrote: “Soon after four o’clock p.m. on Thursday we experienced a most fearful earthquake. First the earth swayed to and fro from north to south, then from east to west, then round and round, up and down, and finally in every imaginable direction, for several minutes, everything crashing around, and the trees thrashing as if torn by a hurricane, and there was a sound as of a mighty rushing wind.”

“It was impossible to stand: we had to sit on the ground, bracing with hands and feet to keep from being rolled over…we saw…an immense torrent of molten lava, which rushed across the plain below…swallowing everything in its way;–trees, houses, cattle, horses, goats, and men, all overwhelmed in an instant. This devouring current passed over a distance of about three miles in as many minutes, and then ceased.”

Within minutes of the initial quake, the ocean rose up and a tsunami pounded the coast, washing inland in some locations as far as 150 yards. It was recorded that the wave destroyed 108 houses in Ka‘ū and drowned forty-six people.

The tsunami devastated coastal villages and forced people to move inland to towns such as Nāʻālehu and Pāhala. Lyman wrote:  “The villages on the shore were swept away by the great wave that rushed upon the land immediately after the earthquake. The eruption of earth destroyed thirty-one lives, but the waves swallowed a great number.”  (Lyman; Journal of Science, 1868)

The coastal trail (alaloa) that Ellis walked was later modified to accommodate horse and cart as foreign population into the area increased. The trail maintained its original alignment at least through Nīnole and Punaluʻu. The 1868 earthquake and tsunami devastated the Kaʻū coastline and washed out much of the trail.

The trail was then straightened, realigned and widened, and took a mauka course and eventually became the Government Road and was the most direct means to reach villages and commerce.

With the treaty of Reciprocity and growing demand for Hawaiʻi sugar, there was a rise of sugar plantations throughout Kaʻū, including Honuʻapo; mills were built in Pāhala (1868,) Hīlea (1878) and Honuʻapo (1881.)

The sugar industry quickly set down roots in Honuʻapo and erected a sugar mill, a large sugar warehouse and various out buildings. All of these developed areas were connected with a small gauge railroad network.

Sugar from the Pāhala sugar mill was originally transported to Punaluʻu wharf for shipping. After the dredging of Honuʻapo Bay in the 1870s and construction of the landing at Honuʻapo by 1883, most of the sugar in Kaʻū was shipped out of Honuʻapo.

Honuʻapo wharf served the communities of Waiʻōhinu, Nāʻālehu, Hīlea and Honuʻapo. Punaluʻu harbor served the sugar plantation at Pāhala, as well as the communities of Nīnole and Punaluʻu.

First, government ships then private interests provided inter and intra-island transportation.  Competitors Wilder Steamship Co (1872) and Inter-Island Steam Navigation Co (1883) ran different routes, rather than engage in head to head competition.

On Hawaiʻi Island, Mahukona, Kawaihae and Hilo were the Island’s major ports; Inter-Island served Kona ports.  From Kailua, the steamer went south stopping at the Kona ports of Nāpoʻopoʻo, Hoʻokena, Hoʻopuloa, rounding South Point, touching at Honuʻapo and finally arriving at Punaluʻu, the terminus of the route.  (From Punaluʻu, a 5-mile railroad took passengers to Pāhala, then coaches hauled the visitors to the volcano to site see.)

By 1890, Honuʻapo and Hīlea plantations became the property of Hutchinson Sugar Company, while Pāhala was owned by Hawaiian Agriculture.   The mill at Hīlea was gone by 1907.

The concrete pier still visible at Honuʻapo Bay was constructed in 1910. The harbor at Honuʻapo continued operations until 1942. After that, sugar was trucked to Hilo for off-island shipment.

In 1928, the plantation camps of the Hutchinson Sugar Plantation were torn down and the residents were moved to Nā‘ālehu.)  The Honuʻapo mill was shut down in 1973 and sugar plantation activities in Kaʻū were then centered at the Pāhala plantation; in 1996, the Pāhala plantation ceased operation marking the end of the sugar plantation era in Kaʻū.  (Lots of information here from Rechtman and Haun.)

When I was at DLNR, we partnered with the community, County, NOAA (CELCP) and Trust for Public Land to purchase and preserve the historic and scenic Honuʻapo Estuary and coastal area along the Kaʻū coast adjoining Whittington Beach Park.

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Mākaha

The ahupuaʻa of Mākaha, between Waiʻanae Ahupuaʻa to the southeast and Keaʻau Ahupua‘a to the northwest, extends from the coastline to the Waiʻanae Range.

Pukui noted Mākaha means “fierce;” Roger C. Green suggests it relates to “fierce or savage people” once inhabiting the valley.

Green refers to “…the ʻŌlohe people, skilled wrestlers and bone-breakers, by various accounts [who] lived in Mākaha, Mākua, and Keaʻau, where they often engaged in robbery of passing travelers.”  (Cultural Surveys)

Earliest accounts describe Mākaha as a good-sized inland settlement and a smaller coastal settlement.  These accounts correlate well with a sketch drawn by Bingham in 1826 depicting only six houses along the Mākaha coastline.

Green describes Mākaha’s coastal settlement as “…restricted to a hamlet in a small grove of coconut trees on the Keaʻau side of the valley, some other scattered houses, a few coconut trees along the beach, and a brackish water pool that served as a fish pond, at the mouth of the Mākaha Stream.” (Cultural Surveys)

This stream supported traditional wetland agriculture – kalo (taro) – in pre-contact and early historic periods

Supporting this, Māhele documents note Mākaha’s primary settlement was inland where waters from Mākaha Stream could support lo‘i and kula plantings. Although there is evidence for settlement along the shore, for the most part, this was limited to scattered, isolated residents.

A “cluster” of habitation structures was concentrated near Mākaha Beach, near the Keaʻau side of Mākaha where there is also reference to a fishpond.

John Papa ʻĪʻī described a network of Leeward O‘ahu trails, which in early historic times crossed the Waiʻanae Range, allowing passage from Central O‘ahu through Pōhākea Pass and Kolekole Pass.

The old coastal trail probably followed the natural contours of the topography. With the introduction of horses, cattle and wagons in the 19th century, many of the coastal trails were widened and graded to accommodate these new introductions.  The Pu‘u Kapolei trail gave access to the Waiʻanae district from Central O‘ahu, which evolved into the present day Farrington Highway.

Kuhoʻoheihei (Abner) Pākī, father of Bernice Pauahi, was given the entire ahupuaʻa of Mākaha by Liliha after her husband, Boki, disappeared in 1829.

In 1855, after Chief Pākī died, the administrators of his estate sold the Mākaha lands to James Robinson and Co. Later, in 1862, one of the partners, Owen Jones Holt, bought out the shares of the others.

The Holt family dominated the social, economic and land-use activities in Mākaha until the end of the 19th century. During the height of the Holt family presence, from about 1887 to 1899, the Holt Ranch raised horses, cattle, pigs, goats and peacocks.

Mākaha Coffee Company bought land for coffee cultivation in the Valley, although coffee never caught on. On Holt’s death in 1862, the lands went into trust for his children.

By 1895 the OR&L rail line reached Waiʻanae.  It then rounded Kaʻena Point to Mokuleʻia, eventually extending to Kahuku.  Another line was constructed through central O‘ahu to Wahiawa.

The Holt Ranch began selling off its land in the early-1900s.

In 1908, the Waiʻanae Sugar Company moved into Mākaha and by 1923, virtually all of lower Mākaha Valley was under sugar cane cultivation.  The plantation utilized large tracks of Lualualei, Waiʻanae and Mākaha Valley.

In the 1930s, Waiʻanae Plantation sold out to American Factors Ltd (Amfac.)  They started looking for a water source to increase production of the thirsty crop.  They tunneled for water; Glover Tunnel, named for the contractor, was 4,200-feet long and had a daily water capacity of 700,000-gallons. The water made available was mainly used for the irrigation of sugar.

For a half century, Mākaha was predominantly sugarcane fields.  However, by the middle of the century, the operations were no longer profitable and the plantation started to liquidate.

In 1946, the Dillinghams announced that they were discontinuing rail service, citing decline in tonnage, rising labor costs and tsunami damage in the system. On October 17, 1946 the stockholders of American Factors (owners of the Waiʻanae Sugar Company) voted to liquidate.

Chinn Ho’s Capital Investment Corporation bought the Mākaha lands and looked to resort development in the Valley.  He envisioned a travel destination that would be the next Kaʻānapali or even Waikiki, with golf courses, condominiums and hotels.

When the Mākaha big surf break was discovered and the eventual Mākaha International Surfing Championship was underway, tourists starting coming to Waiʻanae in the 1950s, as pioneer surfers made Mākaha Beach famous.

In 1969, the Mākaha Resort was built, including Mākaha Inn and Country Club, with an 18-hole course with tennis courts, restaurant and other golf facilities was opened for local and tourist use.

Over the decades, the resort has had several starts and stops, as well as a number of transfers of ownership.

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Sugar in Hawai‘i in 1915

“Sugar is the commercial life blood of Hawai‘i. There are 46,000 persons actually on the pay roll of the Hawaiian sugar plantations, with twice as many more directly dependent on the industry, and almost the entire population indirectly dependent thereon.”

“It takes, with a few exceptions, from eighteen to twenty-four months, and on the higher lands, as many as thirty months to make a crop, instead of a year, as is the case in almost every other sugar country, with the consequent increase of cost …”

“… for all expense of upkeep and overhead charges for the longer time must come out of one crop. There are always two crops in the ground, and during several months of the year, three, all under care.”

“With the exception of certain districts, Hawai‘i is too dry to produce sugar cane without artificial irrigation. The cane from which one half of the sugar output is produced has to be irrigated every week or ten days. One-third of the employees of irrigated plantations are continuously engaged in watering the cane.”

“There is more water used per day for irrigating cane in Hawai‘i, than the daily . capacity of the New York aqueduct – 700,000,000 gallons.”

“Sixty per cent of the cost of sugar in Hawai‘i is for labor; and on sugar plantations in Hawai‘i, laborers are better and more expensively cared for, and are paid more than in any other cane producing country.”

“Under the United States coastwise shipping law, Hawaii is compelled to use high priced American ships only, to carry freight to and from the mainland; while other sugar producing countries can use the cheap freight rates of foreign shipping.”

“The opening of the Panama Canal has reduced the freight rate on sugar, from Hawai‘i to New York, from $9.50 to $8.50 per ton, and it may go somewhat lower; but the freight on Cuban sugar to New York, Hawai‘I’s chief competitor, is only $2.50 per ton.”

“The average cost of marketing a ton of Hawaiian sugar, covering freight, insurance, charges and commissions, is from $10 to $15 per ton.”

“The freight on merchandise from New York to Hawai‘i ranges from $8 to $20 per ton. The canal has reduced the rate by an average of about ten per cent. Later the reduction may be somewhat increased.”

“Hawaii has to plant cane anew about every third crop. In Cuba they are said to be still harvesting cane growing from cuttings planted by the grandfathers of the present sugar planters. It is common to continue harvesting annually in Cuba from cane planted ten to twenty years before.”

“There are other minor handicaps to Hawai‘I’s disadvantage, among them that Hawaii is so bedeviled with insect pests, and cane diseases …”

“… and the problems of meeting the naturally adverse conditions are so ever pressing and imperative, that the Hawaiian sugar planters are compelled to maintain, at their own expense, an experiment station, demonstration farm and corps of scientists that cost from $80,000 to $160,000 per annum.”

“The foregoing partially explains why it costs more to produce sugar in Hawai‘i than in any other sugar producing country in the world, except on the mainland of the United States.”

“The great world sugar producers, Cuba, Java and the European beet sugar countries; have cheap material, cheap labor and cheap freights.”

“Hawai‘i is inside the sacred circle of the American tariff, with its resulting higher basis of cost as to everything which enters into the production of sugar.”

“If it, too, can receive reasonable protection, it can continue, and better its past magnificent record of development; but it cannot buy and produce in a protected market and sell in the open market.”

“In this respect, Hawai‘i is in the same boat with the cane sugar industry of Louisiana and the beet sugar producers of the North and West.”

“Although Hawaii has some advantages over them, they also have advantages over the sugar producer in Hawai‘i, such as cheaper material, cheaper freights and near-by market.”

“There are forty-five complete sugar plantations in Hawai‘i. They are nearly all incorporated and owned by thousands of stockholders.”

“Twenty-four of these are listed on the stock exchange, and their financial affairs are open to all. They are a fair representation of the whole.” (Thurston, History of the Panama Canal, 1915) (Images from Babcock – 1926)

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Sugar, the Early Years

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 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)

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)

It appears Cook was the first outsider to put sugarcane to use.  One of his tools in his fight against scurvy (severe lack of vitamin C (ascorbic acid) in your diet) was beer.

On December 7, 1778 he notes, “Having procured a quantity of sugar cane; and having, upon a trial, made but a few days before, found that a strong decoction of it produced a very palatable beer, I ordered some more to be brewed, for our general use.”

“A few hops, of which we had some on board, improved it much. It has the taste of new malt beer; and I believe no one will doubt of its being very wholesome. And yet my inconsiderate crew alleged that it was injurious to their health.”  (Cook)

While the crew “would (not) even so much as taste it”, he “gave orders that no grog should be served … (he) and the officers, continued to make use of this sugarcane beer, whenever (they) could get materials for brewing it.”  (Cook)  Others later made rum from the sugarcane.

But beer and rum were not a typical sugar use; shortly after, the first reported processing of sugar was noted.  “(I)n 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.  Stephen W Reynolds, crew on the New Hazard, kept a diary; his March 5, 1811 entry (presumably in Honolulu) notes:

“Sent a boat ashore after water. Went ashore in cutter with captain; saw the King’s cane mill and boiler, ship—a small one hauled up of about 175 tons, fort, etc.” (This suggests that King Kamehameha was making sugar in Honolulu in 1811.)  (Cushing)

A friend of the King, Don Francisco de Paula Marin is also credited with early sugar processing.  In Robert Crichton Wyllie manuscripts of Marin’s journals, Wyllie noted an entry concerning sugar, “On the 25th of February, 1819, he was engaged in making sugar.”  There are eight additional entries that mention sugar or molasses.  (Cushing)

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)

“The first successful sugarcane plantation was started at Kōloa, Kauaʻi in 1835. Its first harvest in 1837 produced 2 tons of raw sugar, which sold for $200. Other pioneers, predominantly from the United States, soon began growing sugarcane on the islands of Hawaii, Maui, and Oahu.”  (HARC)

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.)

A decade later, 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.  (That plummeted to 492,000-tons in 1995; a majority of the plantations closed in the 1990s.)  The image shows sugarcane.

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