Dictionary:

Hawaii

  (hə-wä'ē, -wī'ē, -vä'ē)

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A state of the United States in the central Pacific Ocean comprising the Hawaiian Islands. The islands became a U.S. territory in 1900, which was admitted as the 50th state in 1959. Honolulu, on Oahu, is the capital and the largest city. Population: 1,280,000.

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When Captain James Cook arrived in the Hawaiian Islands in the 1770s, he found a people living in the most isolated location on earth who had developed a highly sophisticated agriculture based mainly on the cultivation of kalo (taro), some of which was grown in impressive irrigation systems. The subsistence economy was based on agriculture and the harvest of products from the sea. Items moved between farmers and fishermen through reciprocal gift exchanges that were not driven by values or timetables. Absent any metals, pottery clay, or textile fibers, the people developed a highly advanced culture based on the materials provided by the islands.

Politically, the people were ruled by regional moÛi (kings) of whom there might be several on one island. Religiously and legally the society was regulated by a religion based on a kapu (tabu) system that consisted of prohibitions, restrictions, and directions, all of which depended for their enforcement on the authority and punitive powers of the kahuna (priests). Under this system, women were prohibited from eating certain foods or dining with men and were restricted in other ways. The daily life of Hawaiians was also regulated by the konohiki (landlords), under whom they lived in a semifeudal status.

The makaÛainana (commoners) were subject to arbitrary exactions from the aliÛi (chiefs) in whose presence they were required to prostrate themselves, and were also subject to a formal tax annually during the makahiki season, which occurred late in every year and brought concentrations of people from the surrounding area. The burden of taxation was lightened through its accompaniment by a festival that included sports and games. It was during the makahiki festival that Captain Cook sailed into Kealakekua Bay, where he later met his unfortunate end, and the presence of the unusually large number of people may have caused him to exaggerate the population of the islands.

Early Merchant Trade

Despite their "discovery" by Cook, the islands at first seemed to offer nothing of economic benefit to the West, and their location away from established trade routes discouraged follow-up voyages. John Ledyard, an American who accompanied Cook, was struck, however, by the potential profits to be gained by trading the furs of the Pacific Northwest for the products of China at Canton. Ledyard's efforts to interest American businessmen in such a venture were met with skepticism until his stories were confirmed by the publication of the journals of the expedition, whereupon both English and American merchant ships set out to exploit the trade.

It was the fur trade between the Pacific Northwest and Canton that made the Hawaiian Islands a desirable way station and a convenient stopover between trading seasons. Thus began the rapid transformation of the islands and their people. Reciprocal gift exchanges quickly gave way to barter, then to trade and the beginnings of a commercial agriculture that focused on growing the products sought by the Westerners, many of them newly introduced to the islands. The reliance on stone and other indigenous products for tools and weapons was now supplemented by the use of metals. Western firearms were also introduced. These were used, with the help of Western advisers, by Kamehameha, a moÛi of the island of Hawaii, to unify all of the islands under his control as king of Hawaii.

The discovery of sandalwood in the islands, and its marketability in Canton, gave Hawaii an economic value it had not previously possessed and brought Western (mainly American) merchants to Honolulu to deal in this precious commodity, especially after Kamehameha's death in 1819 ended his monopoly over the trade. The aliÛi scrambled to exploit the sandalwood forests for access to the goods of the West that the fragrant wood provided, incurring debts with foreign merchants to be paid later in deliveries of sandalwood. The beginnings of a monetary economy began to intrude into the traditional subsistence way of life even in the most remote areas.

Forced Westernization and the Rise of the Sugar Industry

After Kamehameha's death, the traditional kapu system was thrown out by his successor, Liholiho, under the influence of Kamehameha's widow, Kaahumanu, whom he had appointed as kuhina nui (regent, prime minister) to advise the new king. The overthrow set the Hawaiian people adrift in a particularly chaotic time. In 1820, two events occurred that would further contribute to the transformation of the islands and to the stresses on the Hawaiian people: the arrival of the first Puritan missionaries from New England and the introduction of the first whaling ships to Hawaii's harbors. Their arrival accelerated the revolution in Hawaiian life that had been inaugurated by Cook's arrival, the main features of which would be: (1) the transition from a society in which wealth, power, and status were based on land to one in which they were increasingly measured in money; (2) the increasing control of that monetary economy—and the wealth and power and status associated with it—by Westerners rather than by the Hawaiian aliÛi; (3) the transition from a rural, largely subsistence lifestyle to an urban, consumerist one, with the accompanying rise of individualism at the expense of the traditional communalism; (4) the replacement of the traditional religion and its related social controls by a religion ill-suited to the Hawaiians in the form of Calvinist Christianity; (5) the destructive effects of the Calvinist missionaries in their efforts to replace all traditional culture with the Calvinists' own version of acceptable diversions, laws, and institutions; (6) the introduction of Western laws, practices, and institutions that were easily understood by the Westerners, but which increasingly placed the Hawaiians at a disadvantage in coping with these alien devices; (7) the blurring of class distinctions between commoners and chiefs that resulted in the loss of power and influence by the traditional leadership of the Hawaiian people, creating a vacuum increasingly filled by the missionaries and other Westerners; and (8) the integration of Hawaii into the global economy, with the accompanying globalization of Hawaiian culture and daily life.

By the 1890s, commercialism, urbanization, and individualism had replaced subsistence agriculture and rural communalism as the key features of life in the islands, while large sugar plantations marketing their products in foreign lands had largely supplanted the kuleana (small fields) of Hawaiian farmers. The Hawaiian religion had been replaced by Christianity, and the kapu system by Puritan law codes, while the traditional prerogatives of the aliÛi and of the moÛi had been usurped by a new white "aliÛi" ruling in the name of a Republic of Hawaii within which the franchise of Hawaiians had been so sharply restricted that they were a minority of voters.

While there were many milestones in the march toward this fate, a major one certainly was passage by the kingdom's legislature of the alien land law in 1850, which made it possible for foreigners for the first time to own land in fee simple. Before this act, the economic penetration by foreign interests had been limited largely to commerce. Once the security of land ownership was provided, however, foreign interests, mainly American, were willing to undertake the investment in productive ventures like sugar plantations and mills. As declining demand for whale oil and whalebone caused whaling to die out in the 1860s and 1870s, the growing, processing, and exportation of sugar rose in importance. The ratification by the United States in 1875 of a reciprocity treaty with the Kingdom of Hawaii enormously accelerated the growth of the sugar industry. The effect, however, was to make the kingdom almost totally dependent on sugar for its prosperity, and the sugar industry, in turn, almost totally dependent on the American market. Like the tentacles of an octopus, the sugar plantations reached out everywhere for lands on which to grow the valuable crop.

Another effect of the reciprocity act was to accelerate the importation of laborers (mainly Chinese and Japanese) to work on the plantations, since there were not enough Hawaiians to do the work. The Hawaiian population, estimated at between 300,000 and 500,000 at the time of Cook's arrival, had shrunk by the end of the 1870s to fewer than 60,000, while between 1876 and 1890 the sugar planters imported 55,000 Chinese and Japanese laborers. In 1876, the Hawaiians, despite their reduced numbers, still accounted for 90 percent of the population of the islands. By 1890, they were not even a majority in their own land.

Annexation

The combination of the reciprocity act and the "bayonet constitution" forced by the white oligarchy on King Kalakaua in 1887 solidified the position and prosperity of that oligarchy in Hawaii. The reciprocity act permitted the shipment of sugar to the American market duty-free, thus putting it on the same basis as domestically produced sugar and at an advantage in competition with other foreign sugar. The 1887 constitution assured these planters and businessmen of control over the government of the kingdom, thus making them secure in their extensive investments in the islands. In the early 1890s, however, both profits and power were undermined by two events, one in Washington and one in Honolulu.

The first was the passage into law of the McKinley Tariff in 1890, which deprived Hawaiian sugar of all the advantages it had received by granting duty-free status to all foreign sugar while providing a bounty to domestic sugar producers. The second was the death of King Kalakaua and the succession of Liliuokalani as queen, who came to the throne determined to recover for the crown the powers it had lost in the 1887 constitution.

In January 1893, a combination of circumstances centering on the queen's proposal to promulgate a new constitution on her own initiative touched off a virtually bloodless coup. At a critical moment, U.S. forces were moved ashore from the USS Boston, then in Honolulu harbor, at the instigation of the U.S. minister to Hawaii, John L. Stevens. A provisional government was established under Sanford B. Dole and a mission was dispatched to Washington, D.C., to negotiate a treaty for annexation of the islands by the United States.

The timing was unfortunate, for a Republican sympathetic to annexation, Benjamin Harrison, was about to turn over the White House to an unsympathetic Democrat, Grover Cleveland. The treaty negotiated with the Harrison administration was stalled in the Senate until Cleveland's inauguration, whereupon Cleveland launched an investigation that seemed to reveal the culpability of the preceding administration in the overthrow. Denied the support of the White House, the annexation treaty drew dust in the Senate until the election of Republican William McKinley in 1896 and the Spanish-American War brought the renewed enthusiasm for expansion that made possible Hawaii's annexation by joint resolution of Congress. On 12 August 1898 the flag of the United States was raised over Iolani Palace in Honolulu.

Once under the U.S. Constitution, the sugar planters might have been more secure in their profits, but their political power was eroded by the guarantee of franchise to all Hawaiian adult males, which made up the majority of eligible voters. In the first territorial election, the Hawaiians' own Home Rule Party elected a majority of the legislature and also the territory's delegate to Congress. Placed on the defensive, the planters negotiated an agreement with Prince Jonah Kalanianaole Kuhio, an heir to the throne of the defunct monarchy, to run on the Republican ticket for delegate to Congress, thereby attracting enough Hawaiian voters to the Republican side to give the planter-controlled Republicans effective political domination until World War II.

During the next forty years, however, conditions were created for the political transformation of Hawaii by the arrival of tens of thousands of new immigrants, mainly now from the Philippines; by the coming to voting age of the sons and daughters of these and earlier immigrants; and by the rise of a labor movement in Hawaii. The Great Depression and New Deal of the 1930s did not impact Hawaii as much as they did the mainland United States, but they did exert an influence. Hawaii received a share of the public-works and work-relief spending that improved its infrastructure just in time for the needs of World War II. These programs were administered by federal officials from the mainland that breathed new life into the Hawaii Democratic Party. Legislation like the National Industrial Recovery Act and the National Labor Relations Act gave enormous stimulus to the unionization of Hawaii's workers. At the same time, the tendency on the part of some in the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration to deal with Hawaii as an "insular possession" like the Philippines and Puerto Rico, rather than as a territory of the United States, as in the case of the Jones-Costigan Sugar Act, convinced many that only statehood could provide the security that Hawaii's economy required.

World War II and Postwar Political Change

Within twenty-four hours of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, life in the islands changed, as the territory came under a rigorous martial law that worked closely with the white oligarchy (generally referred to as the Big Five, which consisted of Alexander and Baldwin, American Factors, C. Brewer and Company, Castle and Cooke, and Theo H. Davies and Company). On the surface it appeared to be only a brief interruption of normal conditions and that the 1930s status quo would return after the war. But numerous new factors were introduced during the war years that accelerated the changes already under way in the 1930s. For one, the war brought many new workers from the mainland who brought their union loyalties and an antipathy to the big businesses that ruled Hawaii and the political party that represented them. Many of these workers stayed after the war ended, as did many servicemen who had been exposed to the islands for the first time. Another factor was that many of Hawaii's minorities went off to fight in the war, most notably the Americans of Japanese ancestry (AJAs) who made up the famed 100th Infantry Battalion, and 442d Regimental Combat Team. Taking advantage of their veterans' benefits after the war, many would go on to receive college degrees and even postgraduate and professional degrees and would commit themselves to bringing reforms to Hawaii.

By 1954, a Democratic Party that had been reinvigorated by the leadership of former policeman John A. Burns, working with AJAs like Daniel K. Inouye and others, was able to capture control of both houses of the territorial legislature. (By 2002, the Democrats were still in control of both houses.) The loss of the Big Five's political control was soon followed by the weakening of their economic control as well. As Hawaii's delegate to Congress, Burns worked tirelessly in behalf of statehood for the islands. He was finally successful in 1959, when Congress approved a statehood bill. On 17 June of that year the voters of Hawaii ratified statehood by a margin of 17–1, and on 21 August, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the bill admitting Hawaii as the fiftieth state in the Union.

Hawaii Since Statehood

In a special 1959 election, the last appointed governor of the territory, Republican William Quinn, became the first elected governor of the state, when he staged a surprising victory over John Burns. But in 1962, Burns defeated Quinn, ushering in an unbroken succession of Democratic governors for the remainder of the twentieth century. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party's strategy changed from that of a working-class party to one racially oriented, based on appeals to the descendants of Hawaii's immigrant plantation laborers of whatever class.

Statehood did not save Hawaii's sugar industry. The combination of rising costs and foreign competition brought the demise of the industry by the end of the twentieth century. Left at least temporarily without a viable industry, the state of Hawaii was forced to rely almost entirely on tourism for its prosperity, with tourists sought from all over the world, particularly Asia. Tourism, however, was dependent on economic conditions in the source countries. Frequent economic crises on the U.S. mainland and in Asia during these decades revealed how fragile Hawaii's economic base had become when they triggered severe recessions in the islands that continued into the twenty-first century.

Meanwhile, traditional Hawaiian culture, so long dormant that its very survival was being questioned, staged a renaissance in the 1970s, inspired in large part by developments on the U.S. mainland including the civil rights and ethnic studies movements of the 1960s. The Hawaiian renaissance encompassed both cultural and political elements, with a resurgence of interest in both traditional and more recent Hawaiian culture and language, together with the beginnings of Hawaiian political activism in opposition to development on Oahu and the U.S. Navy bombing of the island of Kahoolawe. Two laws passed during the Lyndon Johnson presidency contributed to both aspects of the renaissance. The creation of the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities in 1965 provided money to encourage the growth and under-standing of arts and humanities. With government patronage available, Hawaiians and others interested in traditional Hawaiian culture were stimulated to undertake creative activities, pursue traditional arts and crafts, and learn and disseminate information about the culture. The Model Cities program inaugurated by the federal government in 1966 encouraged grassroots political activism and provided broader opportunities for the participation and leadership of Hawaiians.

The influence of the Hawaiian renaissance profoundly affected the state's constitutional convention in 1978, particularly the "Hawaiian package" of amendments that the new constitution included. The new constitution recognized the Hawaiian language as one of the official languages of the state (just eleven years after its use was still prohibited), confirmed the Hawaiians in various traditional rights, and established the Office of Hawaiian Affairs to represent the interests of native Hawaiians. Four years later, the leader of the Hawaiian forces within the convention, John Waihee, was elected lieutenant governor of the state, and in 1986, he was elected to the first of two terms as governor.

The twentieth century ended with many Hawaiians seeking the culmination of the renaissance in some degree of sovereignty, and many others continuing the resurgent interest in Hawaiian culture and language amid new opportunities available in the state's schools and colleges. It also ended with signs of a possible resurgence of the Republican Party as an apparent result of decades that Hawaii had spent in the economic doldrums.

Bibliography

Daws, Gavan. A Shoal of Time: A History of the Hawaiian Islands. New York: Macmillan, 1968.

Fuchs, Lawrence H. Hawaii Pono: A Social History. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1961. Reprint, San Diego: Harcourt, Brace, and Jovanovich, 1983.

Kuykendall, Ralph S. The Hawaiian Kingdom. 3 vols. Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 1938–1967.

This entry is a subtopic of United States.

Located almost dead center in the North Pacific Ocean—2,500 miles west of California—Hawaii consists of a string of 132 coral and volcanic islands extending some one thousand miles from the Big Island to Wake Island. Centuries of volcanic activity have deposited layers of ash that have enriched the soil. Strong sun combined with moderate temperatures and plenty of rain have produced a long growing season in the midst of a tropical paradise—a paradise that lured nineteenth-century European and American merchants and adventurers interested in exploiting Hawaii's natural resources. One result was an economy dominated by King Sugar, which employed waves of immigrants to do the backbreaking work refused by native Hawaiians.

This successive importation of workers left Hawaii with a thriving mélange of cultures, each of which made its own contribution to the twentieth-century phenomenon known as Local Food. A Creole mixture of different cuisines (including Polynesian, Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, Korean, and American), Local Food is centered on carbohydrates—an ancient Hawaiian quest.

The First Polynesian Immigration

When human beings originally landed on Hawaiian shores between 300 and 500 C.E., having probably sailed roughly two thousand miles from Samoa, they encountered over a hundred species of birds, including large fowl, abundant fish and shellfish in shoreline reefs and lagoons, a few fruit trees at high altitude, ferns, several kinds of limu (seaweed), and nearly a thousand flowering plants. These species had arrived gradually on trade winds or sea currents and had evolved in isolation over hundreds of thousands of years.

But the same geologic conditions—deep canyons, high cliffs, forests, bogs, and a wide variation in barometric pressure, rainfall, temperature, and wind—that produced Hawaii's unique flora and fauna had also limited its native foods. Hawaii's astonishing diversity included almost no edible vegetation and no source of edible carbohydrates. Luckily, the early Hawaiians brought at least twenty-seven kinds of foodstuffs, including the coconut, breadfruit, sweet potato, banana, sugarcane, arrowroot, wild ginger, mountain apple, and taro—much revered by the ancient Hawaiians, who pounded the roots into a paste, poi, that remains a starchy staple today. In addition, they imported pigs, chickens, and dogs. By mistake, they brought along rats.

They lived well on their isolated islands. They ate many foods raw, including some fish. Other food was cooked in imus, earthen pits lined with kiawe wood and lava rock. They prepared for bad weather by drying and salting fish. While they had no distilled liquors, they used the roots of awa (kava) and ti (a lily relative) to brew narcotic drinks.

The Second Polynesian Immigration

The early Hawaiians were legendary seafarers who had sailed thousands of miles using the stars, sun, winds and currents, shifting cloud masses, and bird flights. There is some evidence that they continued to sail their hundred-foot-long outrigger canoes to distant islands in the Pacific, bringing back food, plants, and spouses.

Between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, aggressive, roaming Polynesians from Samoa and Tahiti settled in Hawaii and established a feudal regime overseen by their nobles and priests. The new feudal lords protected the ancient stonewalled fishponds, which yielded five thousand pounds of fish daily, and they enhanced traditional irrigation systems by building elaborate rock terraces.

They allocated property rights fairly widely, enabling most Hawaiians to eat well. The new rulers also enforced many complex kapus, or taboos, some of which helped manage scarce resources. Their system of land division is cited by biologists for its habitat protection. The huge freshwater and seawater fishponds were integrated with agriculture, and river valleys were managed as unified systems. The upland forest, left uncut by taboo, helped supply rivers with nutrients for downstream fields and fishponds. Seasons for gathering or catching scarce food or game were strictly enforced. Some taboos were exclusionary, particularly toward women, who were barred from preparing food for or eating with men. They were not allowed to eat the best foods, such as coconuts, shark meat, and pork. Breaking the taboos was punishable by death.

The Arrival of Westerners

By the time Captain James Cook landed on Kauai in 1778, Hawaiians had developed a comfortable economic system overseen by a feudal government. The Westerners would soon change all that.

Cook was the first of many seamen to use Hawaii as a way station to refuel and resupply ships in the middle of the ocean. He was renowned for having solved the immense problem of scurvy among sailors, which he concluded was due to a lack of fresh fruits and vegetables. At every port he sought out fruit (particularly citrus), vegetables (including onions and new potatoes), fish, and meat.

The lush islands had much to offer Cook, who ruthlessly took immense amounts of food on his first trip, exploiting Hawaiian generosity. While Hawaiians had welcomed him with a lavish feast on his first visit, they knifed him to death when he returned in 1779.

Cook gave Hawaiians the first specimens of Western flora and fauna—goats, English pigs, and melon, pumpkin, and onion seeds. Close behind him came whalers and traders at the end of the eighteenth century, then the American missionaries, mainly Congregationalists, in 1820.

The missionaries introduced the church, school, printed word, woolen clothes, wood houses, and many foods. They sought to clean, clothe, and feed Hawaiians according to Christian standards to make them more responsive to the gospel. Beef was already available because cattle had been imported in 1793 by Captain George Vancouver, who had convinced King Kamehameha to permit women as well as men to eat it, as long as they ate from different cows.

The Congregationalists brought their prized New England foods—potatoes, apples, salted cod, corned beef, butter, and cheese. Food became a vital tool in Christianizing Hawaiians and turning them away from their traditional practices. When Queen Regent Kaahumanu converted to Christianity in 1824, she held a service at the edge of the Halemaumau fire pit sacred to the goddess Pele. Declaring her allegiance to Jehovah, she ate ohelo berries, which were both sacred to Pele and taboo to women. Not a murmur was heard from the volcano goddess.

Dominance By Plantations

Meanwhile, Westerners had also introduced their diseases, which reduced the native Hawaiian population from an estimated 300,000 at Cook's arrival to 60,000 by the mid-1800s and 40,000 by the end of the century. The rapidly expanding sugar industry—many plantations were owned by missionaries and their descendants—imported thousands of Chinese and then Japanese laborers to replace the Hawaiians. Just as the arrival of Westerners nearly wiped out native Hawaiians, the domination of agriculture first by sugar and later by pineapples wiped out the Hawaiian system of small farming overseen by religious laws, which regulated both hunting and farming.

Although wealthy whites received important administrative posts in the Hawaiian government, thereby governing indirectly, they became increasingly unhappy with the monarchy, which they deemed corrupt and inefficient. They wanted secure property rights to build their plantations and they wanted no restrictions on their importation of labor. They overthrew the monarchy in 1893. (Hawaii became a U.S. territory in 1900 and the fiftieth state in 1959.)

Between 1852 and 1930, Chinese, then Japanese, Okinawans, Norwegians, Germans, Koreans, Puerto Ricans, Portuguese, and Filipinos were imported by the immensely powerful factors that supplied plantations with all their needs, including workers. The workers wanted their own food, and the plantation stores procured it from abroad if it could not be grown locally. What could be grown was. Thus rice became Hawaii's third most important crop, after sugar and pineapples. Most immigrants brought seeds with them, though they could not always get them to grow. Manufacturers sprang up to produce tofu, noodles, kimchi, and sake.

Into this diversity came yet another set of missionaries—home economists, most trained by Columbia University's Teachers College. Convinced of the legitimacy of their field, the home economists taught at the newly established University of Hawaii, a land-grant university. Working with the electric and gas companies in the 1920s, they developed recipes that required the new appliances—stoves, ovens, and refrigerators. They promulgated the nutritional messages and agricultural advice of the Extension Services. They catalogued locally grown tropical foodstuffs and analyzed the nutritive values of the Hawaiian diet. They encouraged the consumption of American food, including milk, which many adult Hawaiians were unable to digest properly. They trained school cafeteria managers to produce Salisbury steak, mashed potatoes, and creamed corn. And they wrote the first cookbooks on Local Food.

The Development of Local Food

Hawaii's sad story of colonial exploitation is tempered by its exuberant ethnic diversity, nowhere to be found more clearly than in food. Calling themselves "locals," Hawaiians call the food they eat "Local Food," a term that most food writers now capitalize. Identified in the 1920s as a distinct phenomenon, Local Food mixes dishes from each of Hawaii's ethnic groups into unique forms, most famously the plate lunch served at diners and lunch wagons. This includes two scoops of sticky rice, meat cooked Asian style, and macaroni or potato salad—all eaten with chopsticks. Local Food includes shaved ice, SPAM wonton, malasadas (Portuguese donuts), saimin (noodle soup), crack seed (Chinese preserved plum), and butter mochi (a rice confection).

Except for indigenous coconut and banana trees, most foods associated with Hawaii are imported. The first immigrants, the Canoe People, brought with them twenty-four different plants. Since about 1800, a large number of additional plants, including pineapples, papaya, avocado, guava, sugar cane, coffee, and macadamia nuts, were introduced. Even the Kiawe tree—a variety of the family that includes mesquite, and is now rampant throughout the islands—was introduced.

Hawaii's premier agricultural product in modern times, the pineapple, is a native of Paraguay. Although introduced in the early 1800s, it was not commercially successful until the early twentieth century, when it was canned and sold to U.S. markets. By the early 1950s, almost 75 percent of pineapple on the world market was Hawaiian, thanks to inspired advertising. Hawaii has no canneries left today. Its entire crop is distributed fresh, accounting for about one million tons of fruit, or one-third of the world's consumption.

The highly prized Kona coffee, imported by Don Francisco de Paulay Marin in 1828, thrived in Hawaii's volcanic soil, enhanced by local altitude and climate. Simultaneously mellow and robust, Kona beans became renowned worldwide after the market crash of 1899, when the large plantations began leasing their lands to families of workers, who greatly improved the methods and quality of production. Many of those families are now in their fifth generation, producing some two million pounds a year. In the 1990s, coffee began to supplant the sugar cane plantings on several other islands, including Kaua'i, Maui, Moloka'i, and O'ahu—which now surpass Kona in total production. Most Hawaiian beans are sold for blends. Coffee marketed as a Kona blend must be at least 10 percent Kona.

Theobroma cacao, a variety of criollo, was able to take advantage of the same volcanic soil and climate and thrive. Though originally equatorial, Hawaiian cross-breed cacao, which has a nutty flavor and low acidity, grows quickly in open sun. (Its equatorial competitors need shade.) Its pods are harvested early—in two years rather than five—and its trees are more productive than elsewhere, averaging a hundred pods each, or five times the world's average. The chocolate is premium grade.

While macadamia nuts were brought to Hawaii as ornamentals in the nineteenth century, they did not become a commercial crop until the 1920s. Because the nut is very hard to crack, it is normally sold shelled. And because its production is labor intensive—one hundred pounds of harvested nuts yield only ten to fifteen lbs of edible meats—macadamias garner a premium price. Hawaii has some twenty thousand acres planted with macadamia trees today. The trees have a fifty-year lifespan.

Sugar cane, now displaced as a commercial crop, was introduced by the Polynesians. In the nineteenth century it became the islands' most significant commercial crop; it was for sugar cane that the Western economic interests eventually overthrew the monarchy.

Bananas were both indigenous and imported. With seventy varieties now grown on the island—and prestige accorded to some—Jean-Marie Jossellin likens the Hawaiians' distinctions among bananas to the Eskimos' distinctions of the varieties of snow.

Making Sense of Tourism

Since Hawaii's resident population of 1 million serves some 6 million tourists annually, the influence of outsiders on Hawaiian food can hardly be overstated. Until the late twentieth century that influence was baleful, with Honolulu having perhaps the worst restaurants of any major Western city. Even once elegant hotels like the Royal Hawaiian serve wretchedly bad meals in the name of traditional luaus—originally religious feasts of genuine importance degraded to farce by commercial exploitation.

But it is also true that many foods thought to be Hawaiian are not. Much of the so-called Hawaiian food served at Polynesian restaurants on the American mainland was invented in California and promulgated by Trader Vic's and other restaurateurs. Fried rice, satays, curries with coconut milk, rum-based drinks garnished with flowers and paper parasols, and dishes named after the goddess Pele or King Kamehameha have no real connection with Hawaii.

Since the early 1990s, however, a genuine Pacific Rim cuisine emphasizing cross-cultural influences but using local ingredients has developed. This has benefited small farmers, giving them outlets for superb fruits and vegetables—Maui onions (comparable to Vidalias), Manoa lettuce, Kahuku watermelon, Waimanalo corn, Kona oranges (a Valencia competitor) and avocados, Puna papayas, and an amazing range of seaweeds and ferns.

Meanwhile, native Hawaiians have reversed their population decline—about one-fourth of Hawaii's resident population of one million at the start of the twenty-first century claims some Hawaiian ancestry. Who is a native? One definition is that a native Hawaiian is someone who eats palu, a condiment made of chopped bits of fish head and stomach mixed with tiny amounts of kukui (candlenut) relish, chili peppers, and garlic. Not many fraudulent Hawaiians are likely to come forward to win this credential.

Bibliography

Corum, Ann Kondo. Ethnic Foods of Hawai'i. Honolulu: Bess Press, 1983.

Costa-Pierce, Barry A. "Aquaculture in Ancient Hawaii." Bioscience 320 (1987): 320–331.

Daws, Gavan. Shoal of Time: A History of the Hawaiian Islands. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1974.

Eyre, David L. By Wind, by Wave: An Introduction to Hawai'i's Natural History. Honolulu: Bess Press, 2000.

Grimshaw, Patricia. Paths of Duty: American Missionary Wives in Nineteenth-Century Hawaii. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989.

Juvik, Sonia P., and James O. Juvik, eds. Atlas of Hawai'i. 3d ed. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1998.

Laudan, Rachel. The Food of Paradise: Exploring Hawaii's Culinary Heritage. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1996.

—Julia Vitullo-Martin

State located in the Pacific Ocean southwest of the mainland United States; consists mainly of a chain of eight islands, including Hawaii, the largest, and Oahu, location of Honolulu, the state's capital and largest city.

• Fiftieth state, admitted in 1959.
• Location of Pearl Harbor.

Local Time: Jul 25, 2:58 AM

flag of Hawaii

• Abbreviation: HI
• Capital City: Honolulu
• Date of Statehood: Aug. 21, 1959
• State #: 50
• Population: 1,211,537
• Area: 10932 sq.mi Land 6423 sq. mi. Water 4508 sq.mi.
• Economy:
  Agriculture: sugarcane, pineapples, nursery stock, livestock, macadamia nuts;
  Industry: tourism, food processing, apparel, fabricated metal products, stone, clay, and glass products
• Where the name comes from: Possibly based on native Hawaiian word for homeland, "Owhyhee"
• State Bird: Nene
• State Flower: Hibiscus --Pua Aloalo
• About the Flag: Hawaii's flag was designed at the request of King Kamehameha I, leader of the kingdom of Hawaii, before it became a state. It has eight stripes of white, red and blue that represent the eight main islands. The flag of Great Britain is emblazoned in the upper left corner to honor Hawaii's friendship with the British. The combination of the stripes of the United States flag and the Union Jack of Great Britain is said to have pleased the merchant shippers of both nations. The flag was adopted for official state use in 1959.
• State Motto: Ua mau ke ea o ka aina I ka pono -- The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness
• State Nickname: Aloha State
• State Song: Hawaii Ponoi - Hawaii's Own

• Vacation on Kohala Coast of Hawaii Big Island Hawaii Kohala Coast Vacation Blog

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