Gerald Horne, "The White Pacific -- U.S. Imperialism and Black Slavery in the South Seas after the Civil War" (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007).
Below is a published book review, comments by Ken Conklin, and excerpts from the portions of this book that focus on Hawaii together with the (very valuable) endnotes.
The book came to my attention because of the following very alarming book review.
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http://starbulletin.com/2007/08/26/features/story04.html
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, August 26, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
Book examines colonization of Pacific
Review by Michael Egan
Special to the Star-Bulletin
"White Pacific" is a well-researched new look at the Euro-American colonization of the Pacific in the late 19th century.
"White Pacific: U.S. Imperialism and Black Slavery in the South Seas After the Civil War"
By Gerald Horne
(University of Hawaii Press)
Paperback, 253 pages, $29
Available online at www.uhpress.hawaii.edu
Gerald Horne's account begins with the Civil War of 1861-65, the North's defeat of the Confederacy and the collapse of the Southern cotton and sugar plantocracy. Almost immediately afterward -- and indeed for some time before -- American slavers poured into the Pacific, seeking and finding rich tropical soils to grow cash crops for export. Fortunes were made at the expense of individual, social and political devastation, especially in Fiji, Samoa and, of course, Hawaii.
As in the old South, the new plantations demanded human labor. In response, a resuscitated breed of Confederate expatriates carried out so-called "blackbirding" raids, kidnapping men, women and children and transporting them to growers throughout Oceania. From 1863 to 1904 as many as 100,000 Pacific islanders were sold into servitude. When that supply was exhausted, Japanese and Chinese workers were recruited, often by trickery.
Complicating the picture was America's rise as a colonial power and the spread of its interests toward Asia. Hawaii was viewed as the cornerstone of Washington's westward ambitions, a crucial refueling station and military base leading to the world's biggest market: Asia.
But there were obstacles, especially the Hawaiian kingdom's political resistance, while the influx of thousands of Japanese laborers was perceived as a growing threat to white interests. As early as 1843, annexation was in the air, especially after President Tyler outlined his policy of extending the Monroe Doctrine across the Pacific.
Increasingly desperate to avoid being swallowed, independent Hawaii sought alliances with Samoa, Fiji and powerful Japan -- thus sealing its own fate. In the 1880s King Kalakaua even sought to build a defensive confederation of Pacific island kingdoms. The Bayonet Constitution of 1887 and the coup d'etat six years later were in direct response.
Horne's book is a first-rate account of this turbulent period and its geopolitical context. His sharp analysis is fleshed out with memorable portraits of the actual human beings involved, such as "Timber-Toes" Proctor (nicknamed for his wooden leg) and the sadistic blackbirder "Bully" Hayes, who killed, raped and plundered his way across the Pacific until his own murder in 1877.
"White Pacific" deserves to be read and pondered by everyone interested in modern Hawaiian history.
Michael Egan is scholar in residence at Brigham Young University-Hawaii and adjunct professor of English and political science at TransPacific Hawaii College. E-mail drmichaelegan@hawaii.rr.com
============
** Comments by Ken Conklin
Needless to say, that book review set off alarm bells in my mind. There are many historical falsehoods about Hawaii repeated so many times that people have come to believe them unquestioningly. Michael Egan's Star-Bulletin review made it seem as though this book was adding a whole new layer of historical falsehoods to the effect that American slaveholders and blackbirders were coming to Hawaii to kidnap natives and force them into slavery; or that slave labor was being used on the Hawaii sugar plantations.
Michael Egan's Star-Bulletin book review links together "American slavers poured into the Pacific" and "Fortunes were made at the expense of individual, social and political devastation, especially in Fiji, Samoa and, of course, Hawaii." Why did he say "of course Hawaii"? It is extremely unprofessional for any so-called "scholar" to insinuate that the slavery, violence and devastation in Australia, New Zealand, Samoa and Fiji were in any way similar to the gradual growth of American dominance of the economy of Hawaii and the very genteel revolution that took place in Honolulu in 1893. Star-Bulletin's publication of this book review fits the pattern of that newspaper's zealous and strident advocacy for the Akaka bill, and for Kamehameha School's race-based admissions policy, apparently to push for ethnic Hawaiian racial supremacy.
So I did a "kau inoa" -- I placed my name on the library's waiting list to borrow the book. After reading it I was reminded of the old saying: "Don't believe everything you read in the newspaper."
Unlike the book review, the actual book itself does not imply that there was kidnapping of Hawaiian natives to be sold into slavery, nor that there was slavery on the Hawaii sugar plantations.
However, the book has a very strong anti-Caucasian and anti-American bias which permeates every page.
Gerald Horne does for the history of the Pacific what Howard Zinn did for the history of the United States, providing a book filled with scholarly footnotes but even more filled with pervasive anti-Caucasian and anti-American rhetoric. See Howard Zinn, "A people's history of the United States" (New York: HarperPerennial, 1990).
Indeed, Gerald Horne is a Marxist, just like Howard Zinn, Malcolm X, Ward Churchill, and Haunani-Kay Trask. Evidence of Horne's Marxism, and brief discussion of his other writings, can be found in an interview done at a time when "White Pacific" was not yet published but expected soon. See
http://www.kintespace.com/rasx36.html
Two of many racially demeaning phrases used by Mr. Horne: describing white people as "melanin-deficient" on page 164; and referring to "hallowed halls of whiteness" on page 175. Horne's anti-Americanism is displayed throughout the book as he constantly portrays the United States as the villain in Hawaii. Britain and France were Caucasian nations too, so they also come in for their share of criticism from Mr. Horne. But Britain and France are portrayed as benevolent supporters of Hawaiian independence -- two nations used by clever natives as counterweights against the growing menace of America.
The anti-American bias is especially obvious when Horne describes the U.S. as the main threat to Hawaiian independence in 1843 -- the same year when a rogue British gunboat captain actually took over Hawai'i for several months early in the year forcing King Kauikeaouli Kamehameha III to formally cede sovereignty to Britain. Horne hails the joint agreement by Britain and France in late 1843 to respect Hawaiian independence as a great show of benevolence by those two countries, while portraying President Tyler's "Monroe Doctrine for the Pacific" as an ominous threat of a future U.S. takeover. But Horne neglects to mention the blatant threats to Hawaiian independence by France later in that decade (apparently the agreement dated November 30, 1843 was not worth the paper it was written on).
On page 94 Horne writes: "THE QUESTION of white supremacy was not new in Honolulu-Washington relations. In the mid-nineteenth century it served as a deterrent to the brewing talk about the United States annexing Hawaii.[n1O] "The specter of slavery ... weighed heavily on the minds of native Hawaiians," asserts the scholar Merze Tate. There was fear that if Hawaii entered the union it would be well on the way to becoming a slave state, not least since it was difficult for the undiscerning to distinguish the indigenes from the already enslaved Africans. Not reassuring was the widely spread notion that even British subjects who did "not happen to be quite white" were frequently placed "into jail at night" upon visiting less enlightened U.S. precincts.[n11] Would the same happen to visiting Hawaiians? Prince Alexander Liholiho of Hawaii had an answer. June 1850 found this scion of royalty in the fetid and humid swamp that Washington continued to resemble. This dark-skinned fifteen-year-old was struck, however, by the swamp of racism that he had encountered.[n12] So moved, the 1852 Hawaii Constitution proclaimed in a bold challenge to its slave-dominated neighbor and chief trading partner across the Pacific, "Slavery shall under no circumstances whatever be tolerated in the Hawaiian Islands; whenever a slave shall enter Hawaiian territory he shall be free."[n13]"
But how then does Horne account for the fact that less than two years later, King Kauikeaouli Kamehameha III drafted a written treaty of annexation to the United States? Note that the King wanted annexation to the United States, not to Britain or France; and that he wanted annexation even after Alexander Liholiho came back from the trip to America where he had experienced racism directed at his dark skin. The treaty was agreed to and signed by the King's Minister of Foreign Relations and the U.S. President's Commissioner [ambassador] to the Kingdom, on January 18, 1854, but the King died before it could be ratified. The full text of the treaty, including a secret article, can be seen on pages 402-405 of the Morgan Report at
Horne conveniently neglects to mention that it was Caucasian American missionaries who risked their lives to protect Hawaiian natives against rape and plunder threatened on numerous occasions by drunken sailors. He neglects to mention that Caucasian American missionaries gave reading and writing to Hawaiian natives even at a time when African slaves were forbidden to learn those things in America; and those same missionaries also helped the King create a written Constitution providing commoners with the same rights as chiefs.
Horne does mention that recruitment of native laborers for Hawaii from other Pacific islands was done in an honest and respectful way by contrast to the brutal kidnapping done for the British colonies in Australia, Fiji, and elsewhere. On page 93 he writes "When the Hawaiian authorities dispatched agents to recruit labor in surrounding islands, they were armed with restrictive protocols. No liquor, guns, or ammunition were allowed, and agents were instructed sternly to "be honest and above all reproach" and, of course, no deception of any kind was to be used. "Make all contracts for three years and no less," they were told and "pay for men $5 per month for the first year" with "good food, a house and bed."[n36] Similar laws were passed in Queensland but were not enforced as vigorously as in Hawaii. The president of the Board of Immigration in Hawaii was more meticulous and judicious about this labor force than his counterparts in Fiji." But Horne fails to give credit where it is due -- to the fact that the Hawaiian King exercised real power and did so under the guidance of Christian principles taught by Caucasian Americans.
These were only a few examples of the anti-white, anti-American bias of this book. There are many more examples easily found in the excerpts copied below.
Perhaps such a bias is to be expected in someone who is a professor of African-American studies. But the bias is so hostile, derogatory, and pervasive that it colors the entire book as a racist anti-white diatribe.
"About the Author" on page 225 of the book shows that Gerald Horne is making a career of cheering for people of color in their centuries-long worldwide struggle against oppression by white people:
"GERALD HORNE is Moores Professor of history and African-American studies at the University of Houston. His publications include Red Seas: Ferdinand Smith and Radical Black Sailors in the U.S. and Jamaica; Black and Brown: African-Americans and the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1920; and Race War! White Supremacy and the Japanese Attack on the British Empire."
This is a very well written and scholarly book, with extensive footnotes citing original sources. There are many well-documented historical details about Hawaii not easily available anywhere else. One of the book's greatest strengths is its documentation of some obscure details of the history of African-Americans in Hawaii during the 1800s, including the interaction between slavery in the U.S. and the immigration of Negroes to Hawaii both before and after the Civil War.
How can the book's scholarliness be reconciled with its anti-Caucasian racism and its anti-Americanism? The same way the beautiful design and brilliant engineering found in a gun can be reconciled with the bloody corpse murdered by it.
There are actually two books inside a single set of covers. Three chapters out of ten are focused on Hawaii, along with small portions of other chapters. The rest of the book has very little to do with Hawaii, focusing on Fiji, Australia, and New Zealand; and to a lesser extent Samoa, New Caledonia, Tasmania, and other places in the Pacific.
The common theme in all chapters of the book is that throughout the Pacific, European and American Caucasians used state-sponsored violence and diplomacy, along with individual piracy, fraud, and kidnapping, to establish Caucasian domination that included both brutal slavery and more genteel economic/political control. Hawaii was "conquered" by colonialist economic policies, diplomacy, and one small American military intervention of peacekeepers nowadays described by Hawaiian activists as being an armed invasion in support of local Caucasian businessmen.
The violence and slavery that Horne's book describes did not take place in Hawaii -- those evils victimized tens of thousands of natives in other parts of the Pacific under British, French, or German control.
By putting Hawaii's story between the same covers along with the history of the rest of the Pacific, Horne's book leaves readers with the totally incorrect impression that American slaveholders and blackbirders were coming to Hawaii to kidnap natives and force them into slavery; or that slave labor was being used on the Hawaii sugar plantations -- a false impression reinforced by a shallow and badly written book review by "scholar in residence" Michael Egan published in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.
Despite the book's pervasive anti-Caucasian, anti-American themes there are a great many valuable historical gems. For historians and scholars the hundreds of footnotes are a must-read.
The extensive quotes below are in the order of the book's pages; except that a special section at the end of these notes gathers all the information in the book that is specifically about the history in the 1800s of people of African ancestry in Hawai'i, since that is such an interesting and little-known topic.
======================
** General overview of the book
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page 2
"According to one study, blackbirding, as this practice of luring Melanesians and Polynesians to toil for next to nothing was called, occurred between 1863-1904 and involved 61,610 people, mostly men but also some women and children.[n4] Another study estimates that 62,000 Pacific Islanders went to Queensland and at least 22,000 to Fiji -- though others see these figures as rather low.[n5] For example, one analyst asserts, "From first to last over 100,000 blackbirds must have beene taken from the islands of the Western Pacific. Sixty thousand were carried to Queensland alone.[n6]"
** notes 4,5,6 are lengthy and not of interest regarding Hawaii
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page 15
...
As this book covers points within the broad expanse that is the Pacific, readers may want to examine the chapter summaries below to ascertain the route of this text:
Chapter 1, which focuses heavily on the colonies of Australia, also sets the stage for a major theme of this book-the rise of white supremacy in the region.
Chapter 2 concentrates on the rise of black birding as the U.S. Civil War unfolds and focuses particularly on the role of U.S. nationals in the process.
Chapter 3 provides an extended examination of perhaps the most notorious blackbirder, William "Bully" Hayes, who may have been related to Rutherford B. Hayes.
Chapter 4 concerns Fiji and how beginning in the mid-nineteenth century this nation's destiny became entangled with that of the United States, especially when U.S. nationals began flooding there after the Civil War and establishing plantations deploying various levels of unfree labor.
Chapter 5 extends the discussion of Fiji as it examines the rise of the Ku Klux Klan (and KKK tactics) there, a development which, in a sense, led to the archipelago embracing British colonialism as a way to avoid what was thought to be the harsher fate of embracing the United States.
Chapter 6 concerns the attempt by the Hawaiian Kingdom to blunt the thrust of the major powers in the region by providing assistance to nations like Fiji. This trend was seen as inflaming by these same powers.
Chapter 7 provides context for the run-up to the so-called Bayonet Constitution of 1887, which effectively clipped the wings of the Hawaiian monarchy and followed quickly in the wake of Honolulu's closer ties to Tokyo; this was exemplified by the influx of thousands of laborers of Japanese origin beginning in 1885, a development that was facilitated by the king's rapturous reception in Japan a few years earlier.
Chapter 8 looks at the role of African-Americans and West Indians in the region and the often influential roles they played, which served as a counterpoint to the efforts of their Euro-American counterparts.
Chapter 9 examines how elites in the Australian colonies began souring on the growing role in the economy of bonded labor from the region. They see the multiracial experiment of the United States as a negative example. Strikingly, a
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page 16
notably vicious example of blackbirding involving a Euro-American accused leads to maximum publicity and a general revulsion toward this practice.
Chapter 10 looks at parallel developments in Hawaii as local elites scramble --unsuccessfully -- to find an alternative to Japanese and Asian labor. They overreach when they finally dislodge the monarchy in 1893, as this leaves them exposed to increased pressure from Tokyo -- a development foiled (or so it is thought) when annexation by the U.S. occurs in 1898 as Washington verges on war with Spain, which announces more formally the rise of U.S. imperialism. The story is brought up to date as the current bane of slavery and forced labor is discussed, along with the efflorescence of the independence movement in Hawaii.
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page 91, end of Chapter 5 about Fiji:
... No doubt some indigenes may have considered themselves lucky that it was London -- and not the United States -- that in 1874 chose to become a colonial master.
Of course, there were alternatives to colonialism. In 1871, for example, Cakobau contacted his fellow monarch, Kamehameha of Hawaii, in an effort "to further cement our amicable relations by availing myself of [your] invitation to visit Hawaii."[n86: King Cakobau to King Kamehameha, September 4, 1871, Provisional Government, Chief Secretary's Office, Outwards Correspondence, Volume: Chief Secretary's Office (Ministry of Foreign Relations), National Archives of Fiji.] His constitution was based on that of Honolulu and the Fijians would be grateful for any information the king could offer "relative to the general working and policy of [his] government, the appointment and pay of officials, methods of raising revenue and total yearly expenditure." [n87: Letter to Minister of Foreign Relations, Hawaii, circa 1871, Provisional Government, Chief Secretary's Office, Outwards Correspondence, Volume: Chief Secretary's Office (Ministry of Foreign Relations), National Archives of Fiji.] Perhaps it was the influence of Honolulu -- which was adamantly opposed to blackbirding -- that caused the Cakobau government to express interest in cracking down on the illicit labor traffic, a development bound to infuriate the local Klan. Honolulu then had ambitious plans to knock together a confederation to include far-flung Pacific islands, then ally with a rising Japan to ward off the avatars of white supremacy. Yet the accession of Fiji to British domination was a step forward, ironically, for the long-standing desire of some U.S. nationals in the Hawaiian Kingdom to subject this earthly paradise to a similar fate -- a development that in the 1890s would mark the formal unveiling of full-blown U.S. imperialism.
==================
** From here on, everything is a verbatim quote unless flagged by "**". Page numbers are designated by "pg". Endnotes are designated by [n#] and the notes themselves are gathered at the bottom of this webpage. The endnotes are extremely valuable. Scholars wanting to see the endnotes in the context of the material where they occur are advised to copy the endnotes into a separate document and keep both documents open side by side.
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pg 92
CHAPTER 6
Hawaiian Supremacy?
Very early in the nineteenth century, the Hawaiian Kingdom toyed with the idea of assuming a role as the leading Pacific power and of annexing or establishing protectorates or spheres of influence over various other groups in this vast ocean region. Kamehameha I, the "Napoleon of the Pacific," after uniting the larger islands in the Hawaiian chain, dreamed of new worlds to conquer and allegedly contemplated using a fleet built for the subjugation of Kauai to obtain ascendancy in Tahiti.[n1] As Fiji was spinning toward British annexation, this notion of the hegemony of Honolulu had not disappeared. The controversial Hawaiian diplomat Charles St. Julian raised explicitly the question of "Hawaiian Supremacy." In a lengthy report in March 1870 to his superiors, he observed that "in several quarters -- in part of Fiji for example -- there [are] rapidly growing needs for the establishment of some Supreme Authority under the shadow of which (self supporting) government institutions might be organized, and failing (as they probably will) to obtain the use of any great maritime flag, there would be a ready acceptance of Hawaiian Supremacy. By some, the latter would be preferred to the protectorate of any of the great powers."[n2]
As the "great powers" -- especially the United States -- began to flex their muscles in the late nineteenth century, they took sharp umbrage to the ambitions of tiny Hawaii, whose population even in 2006 barely amounted to a mere million. Indeed, in 1823 as the influx of Euro-Americans and Europeans began to accelerate, the population of indigenes was an estimated 172,000 -- a figure that had fallen precipitously to less than 50,000 by 1872.[n3] The decline was so sharp that one newspaper in 1850 published a tabulation showing "the probable future decrease of the Hawaiian Race" to the point where there would be fewer than a hundred Hawaiians by the year 1930.[n4]
Though relatively small, this indigenous population still dwarfed the European minority. Referring to Euro-Americans, one Hawaiian magazine in
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pg 93
1893 reported that "1928 actual Americans constitute the 'ruling race.' Of British there are 1344, of German 1034. The Portuguese" -- whose "whiteness" credentials were suspect -- amounted to 8602 but they were "of the poorer class," that is, their class bona fides were equally questionable.[n5] "Of the capital invested in the islands," it was announced in 1897, "two-thirds is owned by Americans."[n6] The point was that some in Washington considered the very idea of "Hawaiian Supremacy" laughable -- when not deemed a threat to U.S. national security -- not least because of its relatively tiny population. By the same token, the editor of The Polynesian, writing in 1841 about the attitude of the indigenes, stated, "They profess to see, and perhaps justly, the decline of their own power with the increase of whites."[n7]
Still, Hawaii was a modern nation, the envy of its Pacific neighbors, with a skilled diplomatic corps with representatives in major capitals and a modern infrastructure. In 1893 as settler rule was being imposed, a Hawaiian journal boasted that "the country enjoys all the advantages of modern civilization in a higher degree than most European countries: Postal services, telegraphs, telephones, railroads and lighting by electricity .... In the government schools two-thirds of the children are educated in the English language and one-third in Hawaiian."[n8]
Nevertheless, for those who cherished white supremacy, the idea of Honolulu challenging this ideology was viewed as outrageous. This outrage metastasized into morbid concern when Hawaii not only sought a diplomatic alliance with Japan -- a non-European nation whose rise challenged the very essence of white supremacy -- but began to import droves of Japanese workers, permanently altering the demography of the region while compromising the white supremacists who objected to suffrage rights for these migrants and exposing the easy canard that only blackbirding could address the question of labor. That Honolulu was long on record as being opposed to this odious traffic was one more reason for white supremacists to conclude that strangling and suffocating this nation should be a top priority.
Thus, though the Hawaiian Kingdom was contemplating ambitiously extending its influence throughout the Pacific, the United States in particular was casting a covetous eye upon this strategically sited chain of islands. As one naval commander put it in the late nineteenth century, Hawaii was "second in importance to no other single point on the earth's surface." The "distinctive feature of Hawaii," Lucien Young continued portentously, "is that it lies at the center of an area so great the commercial and military operations across it are practically impossible, except by using Hawaii as a coal and supply station. Eliminate Hawaii from the map, and there are scarcely any battleships in
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pg 94
existence which can operate across the Pacific, by reason of the fact that they cannot carry coal enough." As the United States expanded across the North American continent, this presumed asset brought a detriment in that it expanded the territory that needed to be defended, a potential danger as the nation faced European powers in the East and a rising Japan in the West. "There can be no surer defense to the Pacific Coast of the United States," said Young, "than to prevent any other foreign country from getting possession or control of Hawaii."[n9]
THE QUESTION of white supremacy was not new in Honolulu-Washington relations. In the mid-nineteenth century it served as a deterrent to the brewing talk about the United States annexing Hawaii.[n1O] "The specter of slavery ... weighed heavily on the minds of native Hawaiians," asserts the scholar Merze Tate. There was fear that if Hawaii entered the union it would be well on the way to becoming a slave state, not least since it was difficult for the undiscerning to distinguish the indigenes from the already enslaved Africans. Not reassuring was the widely spread notion that even British subjects who did "not happen to be quite white" were frequently placed "into jail at night" upon visiting less enlightened U.S. precincts.[n11] Would the same happen to visiting Hawaiians?
Prince Alexander Liholiho of Hawaii had an answer. June 1850 found this scion of royalty in the fetid and humid swamp that Washington continued to resemble. This dark-skinned fifteen-year-old was struck, however, by the swamp of racism that he had encountered.[n12] So moved, the 1852 Hawaii Constitution proclaimed in a bold challenge to its slave-dominated neighbor and chief trading partner across the Pacific, "Slavery shall under no circumstances whatever be tolerated in the Hawaiian Islands; whenever a slave shall enter Hawaiian territory he shall be free."[n13]
The prince's comparison of the United States with London and Paris was telling, as the two European powers also had Pacific pretensions, which were seen in Washington as a threat to U.S. national security. Not for the last time fealty to white supremacy was serving as an impediment to the realization of national security. Ironically, acquisition of the Hawaiian Islands was popular only in Southern slave-holding states, while simultaneously there was an effective Anglo-French campaign against annexation; the latter was made that much more effective because of the existence of the unique folkways of the U.S, South. [n14] Honolulu recognized early on that a strengthened United States could prove to be a mortal danger to Hawaiian independence, just as it recognized that amiable relations with London and Paris -- then Tokyo -- served as a
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counterweight to a burgeoning U.S. imperialism. Thus, in late 1843 when Great Britain and France jointly declared their complete recognition of Hawaiian independence, it was widely perceived as a message targeting the United States especially,[n15] particularly since just before then U.S. President John Tyler speaking before a joint session of Congress sought to extend the Monroe Doctrine to the Hawaiian Islands.[n16]
The discovery of gold in California further linked this state to the Pacific,[n17] as traffic increased-in both directions. "Everything faces toward California," said one Hawaii resident. "Hundreds of our best men have gone there to dig gold and die." The lust for the yellow mineral was causing all manner of ructions. "In the scramble to grow rich," it was said, "all is confusion, and change follows change as rapidly as cloud chases cloud."[n18] Hawaiians too were scurrying eastward but some found, to their dismay, that the color of their skin and their national origin placed them in a disadvantageous posture. Even before the lust for gold arose, indigenous Hawaiians were enduring harsh conditions on the mainland. In the 1830s it was said that "the Kanakas" working in the Oregon territory were "little better than slaves and were frequently flogged or imprisoned." They were employed by the Hudson Bay Company because of their excellent seamanship and, as well, as lumbermen.[n19] And in 1863 when hostile white ranchers in California forced the government to round up the Indians and place them on a reservation, Hawaiians "had to go along with the ... Indians."[n20]
Still, that thousands were moving westward in search of gold increased the possibility that yet another ravenous eye would be cast upon California's neighbor, Hawaii. Indeed, the fear of filibusterers from California helped to spur discussion about U.S. annexation of Hawaii, just as apprehension about the intentions of U.S. nationals helped to drive Fiji into the arms of Britain.[n21] Thus, in 1852, one Hawaiian official was being informed about "the return of the Filibusters" and those who sought to "extend the area of freedom to [the] Sunny islands." Annexationists argued that Hawaiian sugar could be imported duty free to the United States. But the sectional dilemma -- along with opposition from other great powers -- for the time being nixed the possibility. The South would "insist on your being a slave state -- the North on your being ... free" and "your admission as either would in all probability result in the dissolution of the [United States] Union." Thus, the Honolulu official was advised that Honolulu "look to Sydney or some other market for the sale of their present stock."[n22]
It did not take a wizard of geostrategy to prod Hawaii to look westward to bolster the regime. In 1856, Charles St. Julian, Honolulu's man in the region,
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pg 96
was waxing eloquently about the importance of the Samoan archipelago. "The geographical situation," he said, "the general fertility and the many latent resources of these Islands render it certain that sooner or later they must attain a high position as to commercial if not as to political influence in Central Polynesia." Even then, however, it was acknowledged that "this very importance renders it utterly impossible that things can remain as they are. Either there must be some independent government established in the Archipelago ... or it must become a dependence of some other power. I need not point out," he added sagely, "how much more desirable it would be to secure, if possible, the former result." Inferentially, St. Julian indicated why Honolulu and London often found themselves in agreement. "My own predilections [for Samoa]," he confided, "are strongly in favor of constitutional monarchy." Even then he counseled that Honolulu consider the "expediency" of "carefully, deliberately and earnestly" establishing Malieatoa as a "constitutional sovereign" -- the kind of maneuver that some in Washington thought was beyond the ken of the Hawaii Kingdom.[n23]
Despite Honolulu's bold ideas, the indigenously based kingdom was heavily dependent upon Euro-Arnerican and European planters and their complement, foreign labor. "Unless we get more population, we are a doomed nation," said Honolulu official R. C. Wyllie in 1863. This suggested the wide net that was cast for workers.[n24] Unlike Fiji, however, where fractiousness reigned among the indigenes, the far-sighted consolidation of Hawaii at the turn of the nineteenth century allowed for staunch opposition to blackbirding.
Nevertheless, Hawaii did not escape the labor dilemma that compelled this detestable praxis. From 1877-1881, Hawaii recruited South Sea Islanders, albeit in a manner not as illicit as in Fiji and Queensland; still, during this period and beyond about 2,500 Pacific Islanders, including a rather large percentage of women and children, were shipped to Hawaii; approximately 400 of these were from the New Hebrides and other Melanesian islands; most of the others were Gilbert Islanders. About 1884, this particular immigration movement came to an end,[n25] as the next year the flood of Japanese migrants commenced, which was at once a labor and diplomatic demarche. In fact, there was a close linkage between this hostility to the so-called Kanaka labor trade in Hawaii[n26] and the decision in Honolulu to ally with Japan as a way to counter such brigandage.
Thus, allegations in 1886 about blackbirding in Honolulu received Cabinet level attention. A government agent found on December 7 -- a date that should live in infamy -- that a Hawaiian labor vessel, the Allie Rowe, arrived off Buka Buka in the Torres Group. "[The] natives of Buka Buka informed me," he said,
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pg 97
"that seven natives had been kidnapped .... Kidnapping was effected by the boat's crew ... by their jumping out of the recruiting boats and catching them by the hair whilst in the water swimming ... [and] running them down in the bush." He concluded that it was impossible to determine the exact number of how many boys had been kidnapped[n27] Further investigation found that this vessel, which was sailing under the Hawaiian flag,[n28] was also stocked full of various firearms, ammunition, and dynamite for its ignominious purposes. "People had been stolen by the Allie Rowe," it was added with sobriety, "and they were fired at for objecting to it."[n29] The captain was dragged into the dock and, typically, he denied all, asserting that that he obtained the labor "through the influence of the chief." The dynamite, he said, was for "shooting fish."[n30]
Yet such vigorous responses still did not resolve the basic quandary: who was to work the fields? In 1872, for example, indigenous Hawaiians constituted 82.8 percent of the plantation workforce; ten years later, their proportion dropped to 25.1 percent, as the Chinese surpassed them as the largest group, totaling 49.2 percent. By 1890 Japanese workers exceeded Chinese,[n31] an outgrowth of the kingdom's diplomatic scramble designed to confront the major powers, particularly the United States.
This transition to imported Asian labor was occurring as Fiji and Queensland, seeking to take advantage of the dislocation engendered by the U.S. Civil War, were moving aggressively toward the deployment of bonded plantation labor. Thus, in 1869, the U.S. representative in Honolulu told U.S. Secretary of State William Seward, "One of the most interesting questions in connection with these islands is that of Labor. It is well understood both at home and elsewhere, that the native population is gradually but surely passing away and that without the introduction of life and vitality from abroad, the present race will soon become extinct." The powerful Board of Immigration was authorized to take measures for the introduction of Polynesians of both sexes from other islands of the Pacific Ocean but unless coercion and/or deception was used, it would be difficult to entice the indigenes to toil as plantation laborers.[n32]
Now the kind of bonded labor that was blighting its distant neighbors was not altogether unknown in Hawaii. The difference was that there were powerful elites within the kingdom who were willing to object to the proliferation of such practices. Thus, in 1871, the Hawaii-based Pacific Commercial Advertiser deplored the fact that the "mitigated form of slavery which, under the pleasant title of 'foreign immigration' has for some years been in full force in Fiji and Queensland." This, the publication reported, was little more than kidnapping in the South Seas. The journal prayed that a Vigilance Committee akin to
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contemporaneous developments in San Francisco would arise that would make Lekuva "too hot for the seedy villains" that were perpetrating this ugly commerce. The Advertiser cheered on those islanders who had organized themselves for "mutual protection against 'recruiting and trading' vessels."[n33] Blazing with fury, it berated "the manner in which laborers have been procured for the plantations of Queensland and Fiji from among the inhabitants of the New Hebrides and Hervey Islands"; it was "shameless," revealing "crime and barbarity" and "man's inhumanity to man." This trade "stirs a deeper indignation than even the details of the wretched coolie trade" that was then afflicting Chinese and Indian nationals particularly. For these Pacific indigenes were "pursued and shot like wild beasts and dragged from their peaceful homes to toil and die in strange lands to satisfy the greed of the 'civilized' white man." Don't these men know that "there is an inevitable Nemesis for all these terrible wrongs? It is a fearful thing to incur the sure vengeance of Heaven."[n34]
These words were bolstered by action. When some enraged residents of Hawaii discovered that some of their compatriots were recruiting labor in surrounding islands, they began sending letters to indigenes and mission teachers informing them that the people who left their homes for Hawaii were all either sick or dying from hard labor and starvation. They were "advising the natives not to ship ... as immigrants to Hawaii. The consequence is," it was said in 1881, "that for a time immigration is stopped among these islands."[n35]
When the Hawaiian authorities dispatched agents to recruit labor in surrounding islands, they were armed with restrictive protocols. No liquor, guns, or ammunition were allowed, and agents were instructed sternly to "be honest and above all reproach" and, of course, no deception of any kind was to be used. "Make all contracts for three years and no less," they were told and "pay for men $5 per month for the first year" with "good food, a house and bed."[n36] Similar laws were passed in Queensland but were not enforced as vigorously as in Hawaii. The president of the Board of Immigration in Hawaii was more meticulous and judicious about this labor force than his counterparts in Fiji. There was a "high cost of the South Sea Islanders" in that there was "great expense in fitting out, storing and maintaining the vessels" in transporting them. Moreover, these workers had "not, generally, given satisfaction. They quickly yield to disease and the rate of mortality is great." He warned:
[The New Hebrides people] made excellent laborers but the conditions under which they are obtained make it impossible for the Board to make fur-
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ther efforts in this direction. These people are still savages and their islands cannot be approached with safety. There is much reason to believe that kidnapping is constantly practiced in securing them. If only legitimate means are resorted to few could be obtained .... [The] demand from Fiji and Queensland ... [made for a] sharp competition for them and any serious attempt on our part to enter that labor field would probably be thwarted by those who are now supplying those countries.[n37]
This kind of forbearance was even more striking given the perception by Hawaiian planters that they were facing desperate straits. The situation was such that London's representative in the island chain felt Honolulu would have to bend to this competitive pressure. "So long as emigration from the South Sea Islands to Queensland" persisted, Honolulu "would not be in a position to object to a similar emigration to the Sandwich Islands." As it turned out, he was largely wrong, though the Hawaiian economy was under great pressure.[n38]
"The question of labor," it was said in Hawaii, "was the most serious, the most imminent of all. ... [There was a] want of labor. In some parts of the Kingdom it was already perceived." For strategic and political reasons the mostly European and Euro-American planters felt it was not safe and not desirable either that the plantations should depend wholly upon the indigenes for labor, or that the indigenes should all be compelled to resort to the plantations for support. China was being targeted for labor but even there care should be taken, it was advised. It was desirable to "procure" immigrants from Germany but it had yet to be shown that this was feasible.[n39] Thus, it was resolved by the planters to be "in communication with other similar societies existing in the West and East Indies, in Louisiana, in Brazil and Peru, in Java, Manila, Bourbon and the Mauritius with the view of obtaining information of all discoveries" concerning the cost of laborers.[n40]
The Hawaiian diplomatic corps, which was highly professional, was actively monitoring how labor was being deployed. The leading official of the kingdom, R. C. Wyllie, forwarded to Hawaiian diplomat Charles St. Julian his own translations from a Spanish document about Peruvian vessels kidnapping indigenes from several Polynesian islands.[n41] "I hope to furnish you," Honolulu's man in Sydney told his Foreign Minister, "with the information you desire regarding available labor from the Eastern Archipelago or other quarter and also the action of the Queensland sugar planters in this respect and the laws regulating the importation of 'Coolie labor."[n42] This diplomat, A. S. Webster, acknowledged his Foreign Ministry's objection to Chinese labor --
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this was in 1876, a few years before the influx of Japanese labor. As a result, he was now exploring Java as a source of plantation labor, though this was to prove to be unavailing.[n43] Webster was keeping a close eye on developments in the Australian colonies for pointers on what was to unfold in Hawaii. "The Squatters and Sugar Planters have availed themselves of the South Sea Island labor to a considerable extent," he reported in 1876, "with but moderate success and satisfaction to themselves. No labor has yet been imported from India." Confirming Hawaii's own predilection, he asserted that in these colonies too "there is a general belief that China is the only sure field for labor."[n44]
Nonetheless, planters did seek out laborers in Rotumah in 1877 and the New Hebrides in 1881, including nearly 2,000 indigenes from the Gilbert Islands "with a sprinkling of black Melanesian cannibals." Unfortunately for them, the costly experiment did not pan out.[45] Such importations were not a major trend, however, not least since there were potent forces in Honolulu who -- for various reasons -- were opposed to the influx of Melanesian and Polynesian laborers. The kingdom was concerned about the misuse of their flag by masters of the illicit labor trade. In 1881 Honolulu's diplomat in Sydney remarked that in light of the "present state of troubled questions of Native Labor and Polynesian Massacres in the Pacific, the colorable possession by an unscrupulous trader of the Hawaiian Flag would prove fatal to Hawaiian independence."[n46]
Nonplussed, planters in Hawaii dispatched agents as far as Calcutta in a frantic search for labor. The kind of reserve that was advised for the Pacific islands was also counseled for what turned out to be the major site for labor: China. Recruiters of labor were of the most disreputable character, it was said, as many of them were connected with piracy: "all kinds of disreputable practices are resorted to in order to entice coolies. Some atrocity or other arising from it is published almost monthly in Hong Kong papers" -- kidnapping was common to.[n47] Yet that such practices were highlighted negatively by officialdom -- including planters -- again distinguished Hawaii from Fiji and Queensland.
On the other hand, the mostly European and Euro-American planters in Hawaii strived energetically to bolster white supremacy by seeking to import labor from Europe.[n48] Northern Europe, particularly Germany, was regarded by the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society early on as "affording the class of laborers best adapted to secure the results aimed at."[n49] Much later U.S. Diplomat William Haywood applauded the arrival of Polish workers in Hawaii. "Their coming," he said, "was hailed by those favoring annexation as an important step towards supplanting the Asiatics with good white labor."[n50] In 1897 a
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group of U.S. patriots acknowledged that "an active movement has been on foot here [in Hawaii] for some time to abolish the system of contract labor, and to seek white workers from the United States under a system of profit-sharing which is already in operation on some of our plantations and has been successfully tried in Queensland."[n51] Yet it was not coincidence that South Seas planters sought out Asian, Polynesian, and Melanesian workers since the dictates of white supremacy meant that even the most financially strapped European migrant workers had certain liberties that these "other" workers did not enjoy. Thus it was not long before complaints arose against these Polish workers for repeatedly refusing work and griping about "alleged ill-treatrnent."[n52]
In 1878, before the onset of a massive influx of Japanese labor, an employment agency in San Francisco told the president of Hawaii's Board of Immigration of the supposedly superior advantages of white immigration, compared to the "less intelligent & more unreliable Chinese & other black coolie system." Recognizing that he was straining credulity, he conceded bluntly, "I do not pretend to say that there are [no] drawbacks to white immigration or that they are not often troublesome and unsuitable ... but the quantity and quality of their labor is higher in rank than the class now used and less expensive to import."[n53] Of course, this labor recruiter had managed to expose why white labor was not favored despite their bolstering the minority position of European and Euro-American planters: their racial status conferred de facto class advantages that were incompatible with the gross exploitation of labor -- advantages that Chinese and Pacific Islanders (and, at that juncture, Japanese) did not possess.
These Hawaiian planters were no saints, in other words, and the consolidation of ethnic Hawaiians earlier in the century hampered their ability to do what their peers were doing at that precise moment in Fiji. Thus, like their counterparts in Fiji, they were skeptical of utilizing indigenous labor with one among them expressing the viewpoint as early as the 1830s that there was a "complete worthlessness [of the indigenes] as laborers on a farm. The habits and customs which have been handed down to them from their forefathers and which they so tenaciously adhere to, will ever remain the great obstacle to their employment in cultivating the soil. Centuries at least will intervene ere they will understand that it is a part of their duty to serve their masters faithfully." It was clear, it was said with confidence, that 400 indigenes were seen as equivalent to "10 white men (poor) or 2 1/2 smart Yankees."[n54]
Since planters had difficulty in attracting European and Euro-American labor and since some had reservations about employing indigenes, this did not leave many options. "[The] difficulty of getting men for the plantations is
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continually becoming greater," said a morose agent of the soon-to-be agricultural giant Castle & Cook in 1866.[n55]
THE HAWAIIAN Kingdom was not as enmeshed in the illicit labor traffic as Fiji. To the contrary, it was offering its good offices to the archipelago, a maneuver seen as officious meddling by some in Washington. In 1859 with rising concern, Charles St. Julian of Hawaii's diplomatic mission kept an eye on important events that set the stage for blackbirding (i.e., the "idea is to make Fiji a great cotton producing country for which it is admirably suited)."[n56] In 1871 St. Julian was in confidential communication with representatives of the regime with the intent to establish a "protectorate under the Hawaiian Crown." Honolulu's man was in contact directly with Cakobau."[He is a] powerfully built man, over six feet high and although showing age not feeble," St. Julian reported. "I saw him several times ... [and] paid him two especial visits. I was upon the whole favorably impressed by him .... [He is an] extraordinary man." The monarch was "intensely pleased with my mission," said St. Julian "and with the invitation to visit the Hawaiian Majesty, for whom and whose government he expresses the greatest respect and admiration, and he proposes going to Honolulu" -- and soon. He was also in touch with another indigenous leader, Maafu. "I carefully cultivated his acquaintance," he said. "He was several times my guest and we had repeated conversations on passing and coming events." They had a long and confidential communication and he too was invited to Honolulu for further consultations. He was reported as asserting that he would "not hesitate to apply to His Hawaiian Majesty's Government [for] advice [and would] continually and especially correspond with myself."[n57]
Through such contacts, St. Julian was able to conclude that he had established Hawaiian influence, including the "means for using and increasing it." His idea was a union of Fiji with Hawaii, or Fiji under Hawaiian protection. He took a particular interest in a bill then being bruited in Fiji calling for the suppression of kidnapping and other illegal practices in connection with the "labor trade" of the Pacific. St. Julian also was pleased with a movement designed "to remove from Fiji the present stigma which rests upon it of being a place to which any rascal may abscond with an assurance of being safe from all who have lawful claim upon him."[n58]
Seeking a protectorate over Fiji, lobbying for antiblackbirding legislation, and crusading against the idea of Fiji as a refuge for cutthroats, Honolulu was staking out bold positions and that was bound to enhance ire against the kingdom. Thus, the scholar Merze Tate concluded, "None of Fiji's white leaders wanted a Hawaiian protectorate; they preferred either a native government
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under their guidance or intervention by one of the major powers."[n59] Their patrons in Washington and Western Europe were even more opposed to Honolulu's maneuvers.
Honolulu was not unaware of this. In 1870 St. Julian reported from Fiji that "some American gentlemen of my acquaintance anticipate success" in annexing that archipelago but were already thinking ahead. "[They] speak of alleged information from authentic sources of the annexation," he said, "not only of Fiji but of the Hawaiian Islands as events seriously contemplated and fully intended to be brought about by the United States government. A statement to this effect has even been put forward here, in the leading columns of a leading journal on the avowed authority of the present United States Consul." St. Julian, Honolulu's Charges d'Affaires for Southern Polynesia and consul general for Sydney and Tasmania, was alarmed.[n60]
He was not the only Hawaiian diplomat expressing unease. In 1873, George Oakley, the kingdom's consul general in Melbourne, referred to the notion that the U.S. government was increasing its naval strength in the Pacific with the intent of annexing Hawaii. Oakley may have thought this rumor to be foolish,[n61] but others were not so sure.[n62]
What to do?
Though Honolulu had long looked to London as a counterweight to Washington, the kingdom had a sneaking suspicion that Great Britain would be unwilling to expend blood and capital -- if need be -- to save Hawaii. Other alliances were deemed necessary.
When King Kalakaua visited Japan in 1881, according to the scholar James H. Okahata, he "did much to further friendly relations between Japan and Hawaii. His was the first nation to recognize Japan as an 'equal' by offering to abrogate the extraterritorial rights clause in the treaty. Some contend that this gesture proved to be [a] wedge that made the western powers eventually concede to abrogate the clause."[n63] During this journey, King Kalakaua asked Japan to join with Hawaii in a "Union and Federation of Asiatic Nations and Sovereigns."[n64]
The king, perhaps wary of further alienating powerful Euro-Americans back home or in Washington, offered to visit Japan "incognito .... The Japanese government, however, concluded to take no notice of the private character of the King's visit, and determined upon a public reception" -- a reception that proved to be highly enthusiastic. When the king's delegation entered the emperor's carriage and was driven to his summer residence, the streets were filled with people and Hawaiian and Japanese flags were flying together. Suggestive of the importance Japan lent to this journey, the rooms occupied by the
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** Photo takes half the page
Hawaiian prince were those occupied by General Ulysses Grant and family while in Japan. The Japanese were appreciative that in 1853 when their nation was being pried open by the United States, the churches of the Hawaiian Islands contributed the sum of one thousand dollars toward building a church in Japan.[n65]
William N. Armstrong, a member of Kalakaua's Cabinet and part of his delegation, recalled later that His Majesty "contrived a scheme of matrimonial
alliance between the thrones of Japan and Hawaii" based on his vague fear that the United States might soon absorb his kingdom. He was desperately seeking an alliance with Japan as an antidote.[n66]
The growing reliance of Hawaii on Japan was reflected in the growing influx of Japanese laborers. Powerful forces in Honolulu had objected to the emulation of Fiji and its undue reliance on blackbirding, which did not leave many options. Honolulu saw a benefit in the importation of Japanese workers in that it would further cement a nascent alliance and perhaps foil the designs
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of those in Washington who were contemplating annexation of Hawaii. Thus, just as 1820 marks the landmark incursion into Hawaii of a substantial Euro-American population,[n67] 1885 marks the beginning of "the great Japanese migration," and a lessening reliance on the Chinese.[n68]
The official 1878 census in Hawaii revealed a Chinese population of 5,916, which had jumped in 1884 to 17,939.[n69] But this was occurring as anti-Chinese sentiment was surging on the mainland and the ripples inevitably reached the Hawaiian Islands. In 1883, U.S. Diplomat David McKinley reported that "[planters had] petitioned the government to permit a sufficient number of Chinese laborers to land in the Kingdom to relieve the stringency in the labor market .... [They] began to bring them in at the rate of one thousand per month." But alarmed at this prodigious influx of Chinese, the government, the people, and even the planters themselves demanded an immediate suspension of immigration and the government of Hawaii, after pressure from the Great Powers, and especially from the United States, suspended it. At that juncture, the kingdom moved to bring in more Japanese and persistently refused again to throw open the doors to the Chinese. Perhaps unaware of the sensitive diplomatic minuet that was taking place -- or of Japan's desire to become a "Great Power" and ally with Honolulu -- McKinley cheered the suspension of Chinese migration. It "cannot be too highly commended," he asserted, since alleged Chinese "clannishness, their perfect system of guild" and their uncanny ability -- "however many there may be" -- to "dictate the price of labor" and "to be in every case the masters of the situation" were distasteful. With "unrestricted Chinese immigration," he thought, "not only will they crowd out the native, but in a short time the European [too, and the kingdom] will become virtually a Chinese colony."[70] Agitation against the importation of Chinese was strong in Hawaii in the early eighties. In 1883, the first legislative restriction on the importation of Chinese was imposed.[n71] William Armstrong, an influential Euro-American in Hawaii, distilled the sentiments of many of his compatriots when he confessed in 1880, "The Chinese Question troubles me. Here there are over 10,000 of them .... They can rise and kill us all. We must have some force to handle them."[72] He was to accompany the king on his fateful journey to Japan a few years later.
Thus, though by 1898 the number of Chinese residents in Hawaii reached 25,000, by 1907 they did not exceed 15,000 because they were gradually replaced by the Japanese.[n73] But in moving from reliance on the Chinese to Japanese, those who worshipped white supremacy were increasing their peril as Tokyo was emerging as a major power and was hostile to the idea that their nationals should be deemed second-class citizens -- a contradiction that would
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explode at Pearl Harbor in 1941 -- and unlike China they were able to do something about this bigotry. Thus, worried that the Nipponese were becoming "too numerous," planters scrambled for new sources of labor as early as 1900 looking to Puerto Rico and even the despised African-Americans from the South.[n74]
For mainstream Euro-American sentiment, Hawaii was the land of no good options as far as labor was concerned. Indigenous Hawaiians were viewed with dread. "The planters fear the Legislature," conceded William Armstrong. "They say the native majority mayor will tax them out of existence." There was, he said, a "clearly defined ... native Hawaiian party, a foreign missionary party and a cosmopolitan foreign party" -- but it was the first of these that ignited trepidation.[n75] How could the labor of these indigenes be exploited ruthlessly given their perceived political strength?
One prominent citizen and old island resident was convinced that indigenous Hawaiians were "unquestionably the most efficient laborers on plantations, especially when they have had several years experience. But" -- and this was a big "but" -- "the number of able-bodied Hawaiians suitable for this service is quite limited -- probably not over three or four thousand at the most -- and all of them are more or less independent, i.e., want to be off from plantation work when they choose. They are not steady and reliable help." The Chinese were arriving in significant numbers but there were issues here too. As these comments were being made in 1879, U.S. Consul William Hunter reminded his interlocutors that the "Chinese Question" was already beginning to excite earnest discussion. Private parties were dispatching vessels to the South Sea Islands, but there was considerable sentiment in Hawaii against the idea of becoming a Fiji or Queensland. As for British East India, there was the major issue of London maintaining judicial jurisdiction over the migrants, which would make Washington very unhappy. This left Japan.[n76]
Of course, though 1885 signals the organized government-to-government influx of Japanese laborers, individuals from these islands had been making their way eastward for some time. As early as 1840, Hawaiian pioneer Dr. G. P. Judd was recording the entry of the Japanese into the island. "[I] saw Japanese," he wrote, "they are fishermen from an island they call Tosa and were found 5 days sail off at an island they call Semiana .... They say their island is 10 days sail from Kiusiu."[n77] As early as 1868, 148 Japanese arrived in Hawaii as sugar workers and even before then it was likely that for centuries shipwrecked sailors and fishermen had drifted from Japanese waters on the powerful Koroshio current to the Hawaiian shores.[n78]
The Kingdom of Hawaii had posted diplomats in Japan for some time. In
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1870-two years after the Meiji Restoration, which set Japan on the path to modernization and great power status -- Honolulu's consul general acknowledged that "many Japanese have begged passages to go abroad if such could be arranged" and it seemed Hawaii was more than willing to accommodate them. Seemingly, Honolulu was willing to go further than welcoming laborers. "Should Japanese Princes desire to establish a colony," asked the Kingdom's consul general, "and request a grant of land from [the] Government could such be obtained, and if not at what rent might a good location be obtained for?"[n79] Certainly Japan was more than pleased with the king's visit, which signaled Tokyo's growing strength. The king's advisor was not alone in recognizing the importance of Hawaii's diplomatic recognition of Japan: it was "the first treaty which recognized Japan as an independent nation," he enthused.[n80]
Years before King Kalakaua's arrival in Japan, his representative in this nation was hailing the potential arrival of Japanese workers to the kingdom. "Japanese will never be employed in America!" he exclaimed in 1871. "The times are against the introduction of their labor as well as the Chinese; so much the better for the Hawaiian Islands!" As he saw it, "no other field is open but Hawaii," which was a plus since "these are a people with ability to grasp any undertaking."[n81]
Later in 1882 the consul general in Tokyo conceded that "the Japanese people are not an Emigrating Race" but he had been "working for nearly four years to render Emigration possible from a political point of view. " The recent trip of King Kalakaua also had helped to change the atmosphere. "The personal friendship of His Imperial Majesty the Emperor and the Imperial Princes for His Majesty the King," he reported, "will undoubtedly materially assist in perpetuating the friendly relations between the two countries." Furthermore, based on his fifteen years of experience in Japan and his extensive travels around the world, he was confident that "planters [would] consider the Japanese male and female laborer (agricultural) superior to Portuguese, Chinese or any other."[n82] Beyond the recruitment of thousands of laborers, further solidifying relations between Honolulu and Tokyo was the kingdom sending its best and brightest students to Japan for study. In 1883, the consul general reported that the Hawaiian youths now attending the Nobles School in Japan were "becoming very proficient in their knowledge of the Japanese language and customs . . . . They speak Japanese with great fluency. I recommend that they should remain here at least three years longer .... They are very contented and happy."[n83]
There was nervous apprehension in Washington about some of the maneuvers of the kingdom -- the close ties to Japan and the attempt to establish
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Hawaiian supremacy in the region in particular. As if that were not enough, by 1886 a Hawaiian diplomat in Melbourne was seeking swift, heavily armed excellent sea boats capable of going anywhere" for his military.[n84] Later Kalakaua expressed interest in weaponry (e.g., a machine gun capable of firing 600 rounds per minute).[n85] Washington had to wonder in what directions this newly purchased armament would be turned -- and to what end.
** end of chapter
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** From here on, everything is a verbatim quote unless flagged by "**". Page numbers are designated by "pg". Endnotes are designated by [n#] and the notes themselves are gathered at the bottom of this webpage. The endnotes are extremely valuable. Scholars wanting to see the endnotes in the context of the material where they occur are advised to copy the endnotes into a separate document and keep both documents open side by side.
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CHAPTER 7
Hawaii Conquered
The tiny Kingdom of Hawaii was more sophisticated than its Pacific counterparts -- for example, Fiji -- and sought to avoid their fate: blackbirding, annexation, and all the rest. To that end, it played a desperate diplomatic game, seeking to ally with Great Britain, then Japan in order to avoid the power that was bearing down on it -- the United States. However, after London annexed Fiji, powerful momentum was generated in Washington behind the idea of the United States countering this maneuver by annexing Hawaii, as the great powers played a kind of diplomatic chess in the Pacific. When Honolulu sought to play the role in Samoa that it had attempted in Fiji, even London seemed to be more concerned with Hawaii's reach and influence than that of its former colony, the United States.
FROM THE time of Vancouver's last visit to Hawaii in 1794 until about 1825, Great Britain was viewed with admiration in Honolulu. London was viewed as a benign protector of Hawaii.[nI] During the time of the California Gold Rush, when rumors were being spread relentlessly about U.S. filibusterers invading Hawaii or, perhaps, their nation simply annexing the island chain, Britain's representative in Honolulu warned the kingdom that the United States was very hard on the natives of the countries they obtained. Later this diplomat, William Miller, attacked the proposed annexation in the 1850s by repeatedly raising the twin specters of slavery and racism as well as the treatment meted out to Indian tribes in the United States in order to deter the ailing king. Miller had been through the U.S. South and was well acquainted with the racism there. He bluntly informed Honolulu that given their location, being annexed to the United States would amount to the enslavement of native Hawaiians.[n2]
Though Washington thought London had the upper hand in Honolulu, the United Kingdom begged to differ. In 1843, it was announced that U.S.
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citizens were already the "virtual rulers" of Hawaii and the directors of their government. The islands were "scarcely more than nominally governed by a Native Sovereign & Native Chiefs." The jousting between the two countries meant, said Lord Aberdeen, that a "great jealousy has existed between the English and Americans. It is difficult [to judge where] the most embittered feelings have been exhibited," either by Washington or London, though "it must be confessed" that "on the side of the Americans" existed a "tendency to domineer."[n3]
This was effective propaganda. Continually, U.S. representatives in Honolulu complained about what they perceived to be the lack of respect they received from the government. During the middle of the Civil War when Washington was worried justifiably that the conflict left the nation exposed diplomatically, it had to worry further that London was making continued diplomatic inroads in Hawaii. "The King is strongly predisposed in favor of the British in preference to the Americans or those of any other nationality," Secretary of State Seward was informed in 1863. "English policy, English etiquette and English grandeur seem to captivate and control him, [while] American diplomacy has been a complete failure." London had sent over representatives to evaluate the cotton-growing capacity of the islands, and the report was said to be "remarkably favorable." "There is some cotton," it was, "now growing in the suburbs of this city as rich and luxuriant a growth as I ever saw in the South States." But hope still reigned as even then this U.S. diplomat was contemplating seizing this sovereign state. "This group of islands under the control of our Government, in my judgment," he said, "would be far more valuable than the ownership of both Cuba and the Bahama Islands."[n4]
After the Civil War ended, concern about Washington's position in the kingdom did not. Economic distress contributed to this, as the decline of whaling -- which was mostly a U.S. enterprise -- was seen as circumscribing the role of Washington, a development also reflected in the draining Civil War. Yet this conflict had illustrated the difficulties encountered by a U.S. fleet that was "homeless everywhere but in its own mainland harbors, and the more [Secretary of State] Seward looked into a future barren of sails the more he coveted the scattered possessions once scorned as a source of weakness to their European possessors. The hopes for the immediate future lay in the transcontinental railroad then under construction. It was believed that this road, when completed, would draw a much larger share of the commerce of Asia toward California ports," thereby highlighting Hawaii's role as a way-station. Still, even with the railway, Hawaii loomed as a key to U.S. national security and a gateway to the wealth and markets of the planet's most populous continent -- Asia.
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But the Civil War had not only exposed U.S. weakness, illuminating a debilitating lack of national unity, but also correspondingly strengthened the hand of those in Hawaii who thought an orientation away from Washington was the wisest course, a lengthening list that included Confederate sympathizers. So prodded, the United States responded with vigor. Still, the anti-U.S. cause was bolstered when the Civil War coincided with the decline of the U.S.-dominated whaling industry, again to the detriment of Washington's influence in Honolulu. Thus, by the late 1860s cynics were claiming that Kalakaua would rather give away his islands to Great Britain than sell it to the United States. But undermining this apparent anti-Washington sentiment was the point that a plantation system was developing that was dominated by settlers -- disproportionately from the very same reviled United States.[n5] The Civil War also ruined a number of Louisiana sugar plantations, thereby opening the door for their erstwhile Hawaiian competitors. Not surprisingly, at the conclusion of this titanic conflict, the U.S. Navy doubled its presence in Pacific waters and rotated as many as five warships into Hawaiian waters.[n6]
In 1868 Secretary of State William Seward was fielding a familiar gripe with his representative grousing about the "slight offered to my Government through my own humble person," which was "but another evidence of the [disrespect] certain Hawaiian officials ... show their entire alienation from their native country." The king, he felt, was friendly toward them only when not influenced by his ministers, which was, perhaps, overly sanguine, if not delusional. Still, he continued to insist, "The Hawaiian people and many of the foreign residents look upon the United States as the great hope of the islands, but the Ministry, not one of whom is a true American, will continue to direct the affairs of state ... [and] will ever prove treacherous to our interests on the islands." Londoners in the Pacific could only shake their heads at such thinking since Seward was informed that foreigners felt "Americans ought to be content with their present influence in the Hawaiian Islands because Americans [held] the majority of the official positions." But Seward was told, "We would be better off if not a single American held office under the Hawaiian government. In most cases the said officials are better off, both pecuniary and socially, than they would be in any other country, and hence have no desire for desiring a change of Government. Furthermore, they seem to regard disrespect towards the United States the test of Hawaiian loyalty."[n7] As Washington saw it, just as some dispatched from the United Kingdom to North America before 1776 developed an unnatural attachment to their adopted homeland, a replay of this trend was playing itself out in the Pacific -- except that now the United States was to be victimized by this process.
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Fierce protestations notwithstanding, London was probably correct in wondering why Washington was complaining about its position in Honolulu. According to Ralph S. Kuykendall, "In 1842 American interests and American influence in Hawaii were superior to those of any other foreign power -- probably superior to those of all other foreign powers combined." Whaling was a critical industry for Hawaii and during the 1842-1843 period, 1,700 ships arrived, of which 1,400 were from the United States and 300 from Great Britain.[n8] In 1855 London acknowledged, "The amount of trade between Great Britain and the Sandwich Islands at the present time is so small, that the question, so far as this country is concerned, is one more of principle than of practical value."[n9] As the United States began to focus wesrward after the Civil War, this trend had hardly collapsed.
Still, it remained true that bitter antagonism prevailed between King Kalakaua and the Americans,[n10] and when the Dowager Queen Emma visited England after the Civil War, Washington saw it "as another link in the chain that was being forged to bind Hawaii closely to Great Britain."[n11] James Wodehouse, the well-informed British consul in Honolulu, noticed in 1874 that the indigenes exhibited an "excessive dislike" of the United States.[n12]
This was a reflection of the fact that -- particularly after the annexation of Fiji -- the kingdom had good reason to fear being swallowed by the United States and felt that cozying up to London might forestall this. A leading architect of post-Civil War U.S. foreign policy, presidential contender, and Secretary of State James Blaine asserted that Hawaii was "the key to the maritime domination of the Pacific states." It was little more than an outlying district of California. As he saw it, the critical nodes of the developing U.S. empire were Cuba, Panama, and Hawaii, with the latter island chain being, perhaps, most critical of all.[n13]
Correspondingly, Wodehouse's instructions after the Civil War were to prevent annexation of Hawaii and failing this to establish a joint protectorate of Great Britain, France, and the United States[n14] Thus in the fall of 1874, Wodehouse was able to garner two interviews with King Kalakaua, one held privately at the royal palace and the other at the home of the French commissioner. At the first meeting, the king opened the conversation by saying that he wished to extend his visit to England and France in order to show the U.S. government that he did not intend to throw himself into their hands -- that his real wish was to go to England! The startled Wodehouse replied, "Your Majesty then fears a coup d'etat on the part of the Americans during your absence -- would that not be a reason for staying at home!"[n15] No reply was recorded but no doubt the king felt that the possible diplomatic bolstering abroad was worth the risk of being deposed.
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The king may have been paranoid but he had real enemies. An anonymous correspondent writing from Honolulu informed Secretary of State Blaine in 1881 bluntly that the indigenes were "incapable of self-government." But the indigenous were not without weapons to wield since they could seek to manipulate tensions between London and Washington. As ever, the labor question was intertwined with diplomacy in the region as the English were laboring earnestly for the importation of large numbers of "East Indian Coolies -- British subjects," as was occurring in Fiji, and Euro-Americans were wary about the augmentation in the ranks of those with supposed fealty to the queen. Yet this correspondent reflected the tensions of the era, acknowledging, "These Islands can be made the key to the naval control of the Pacific [by the United States, while the King was] now an avowed believer in English supremacy."[n16]
Blaine, a highly influential member of the U.S. elite, was the right man for this anonymous person to contact. This Maine republican "believed in a racial hierarchy with Anglo-Saxons at the top," which did not bode well for Pacific indigenes, precisely because it was a creed clung to fiercely by so many Euro-Americans. Blaine also came to believe that overseas markets were absolutely essential to the preservation of the American system and that the largest potential markets were in Asia, for which Hawaii served as a stepping stone. During his first tenure as secretary of state, Hawaii served as a diplomatic battleground between the United States and Great Britain, a conflict which initially grew out of the 1875 reciprocity treaty between the United States and Hawaii. British officials balked at the preferential treatment accorded to the United States by the terms of the pact, which they claimed violated the most-favored-nation clause of Britain's own treaty with Honolulu. Tensions had not ceased when King Kalakaua traveled to Europe. President James Garfield confided to a close friend that conditions in Hawaii gave him "a good deal of anxiety." He feared that the monarch was considering either selling the islands or establishing a commercial treaty with Great Britain, which would be a huge embarrassment for the United States. Secretary Blaine had come to distrust King Kalakaua as a "false and intriguing man." The idea of Indian nationals arriving in droves in Honolulu also frightened Washington, which saw it as further British leverage that -- according to Blaine -- "would subvert the independence of Hawaii by joining it to an Asiatic system."[n17] In this respect, Honolulu's decision to rely upon Japanese labor can be seen retrospectively by Washington as something of a relief.
Washington was getting increasingly irked by the activities of the kingdom, particularly in the diplomatic realm (i.e., its ties to London and Tokyo and its attempt to construct regional hegemony). As Washington saw it, it was bad
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enough that Honolulu sought to make Fiji into some sort of protectorate, but when it sought to do something similar in Samoa -- which already the United States was seeing as essential to its Pacific interests -- well, that was simply going too far. Symptomatic was Robert Wilcox, who was of indigenous Hawaiian descent and had been sent to study in Italy by King Kalakaua, who himself "had his fill of the overbearing, Bible-thumping Yankee advisors to earlier Hawaiian monarchs and looked to the Old World and to the East for models"; Wilcox and the monarch "dreamed of a Hawaii in charge of its own affairs, led by Hawaiians equipped with the best education the world had to offer."[n18] This ambitious thinking was not viewed benignly by the U.S. State Department.
This was particularly the case in the l880s when -- after the king's visit to Japan -- Hawaii became more aggressive in speaking up for its fellow Pacific Islanders. This was occurring as the king suggested that the Japanese emperor take over leadership of a "Union and Federation of the Asiatic Nations and Sovereigns." In 1883, he sent commissioners to the Gilbert Islands and the New Hebrides to set up Hawaiian protectorates. His overall plan included bringing Samoa and other island countries such as Tonga under Hawaiian rule.[n19] Honolulu, in short, devised an ambitious plan of attempting to create a Polynesian federation headed by Hawaii's King and directed in its international relations by Hawaii's Foreign Office. This was not greeted with equanimity among the contending European powers -- nor in Washington -- including Honolulu's erstwhile ally in London. "When news of the Samoan-Hawaiian confederation agreement reached the governments of the United States, Great Britain and Germany," wrote leading scholar Ralph S. Kuykendall, "it encountered strong opposition from all of them."[n20]
Tiny Hawaii was in a bind. In 1872 the British diplomat James Wodehouse offered the opinion "founded on his confidential relations with two Hawaiian Kings in succession and on ... personal intercourse with President (Johnson) and Secretary (Seward) that were England to take possession of Fiji, [then] the Stars and Stripes must soon wave on the fort of Honolulu." In response the king was said to have informed him that "if any pressure were put upon him in that direction," (i.e., annexation to the United States), "he should offer his Islands to the British Government."[n21] This was a high-stakes gamble on the king's part that was complicated further by his own effort to extend Honolulu's influence in the region -- a maneuver that apparently foiled his simultaneous attempt to use London as a counterweight against Washington. King Kalakaua was proceeding on two tracks that may not have been consistent. He was, as ever, snuggling closely to London to fend off Washington, but he was also striking out boldly in seeking to forge a Pacific confederation. The problem --
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and the king may not have recognized this -- was that the latter approach undermined the former since London was quite unhappy with the idea of a Pacific alliance to the point that it was willing to at least not stringently object to Washington's own ambitious plans in the region, which included swallowing Hawaii whole.
Moreover, the major powers felt that it was quite enough to compete between and among themselves-the United States, Germany, Britain, France, Russia at times-without including Hawaii, which some were beginning to see as a pawn of Japan in any case. Competition in Samoa -- the major point of contention -- was sufficiently fierce without including another player.
Certainly Great Britain was not pleased by Hawaii's initiatives in the Pacific.
In a confidential missive from the Foreign Office, skeptical comment was made about "copies of a convention between King Malietoa [of Samoa] and King Kalakaua binding each other mutually to enter into a political confederation."
"Her Majesty's Government," it was said with disdain, "cannot regard this intervention of Hawaii in Samoa as likely to lead to any advantageous result." King Malietoa, it was thought, was "ill-advised to make the Hawaiian alliance without consulting the Treaty Powers and cannot look for their sympathy or support." London was so incensed that it instructed its representative to ally with its persistent antagonists in Berlin and Washington. "Her Majesty's Government view with dissatisfaction the action of Hawaii in Samoa," it was said coldly, "the more so as they have reason to believe that it is calculated to create anarchy and disorder."[n22] There was constant and repetitive hand-wringing in London about what was termed "Hawaiian interference in the affairs of Samoa."[n23]
London's hysteria about Hawaii reached the point that it took on an air of unreality. "It would appear that the United States' government approve such action and will probably look favorably on the claims of King Kalakaua to interfere in Samoan affairs," said the Marquis of Salisbury in a confidential message; therefore, London's delegate was instructed to "unite with his German colleague in opposing the pretensions of Hawaii."[n24] From Berlin, London's representative denounced the "mischievous" Hawaiian intervention in Samoa, which had inspired such serious alarm at the German Consulate at Apia that the Commander of the German ship-of-war, which was preparing to leave those waters to attend to more important duties elsewhere had thought it necessary to postpone this departure. Yet he too alleged that Hawaii relied on support from the United States and elsewhere; note was taken of the telling point that even in Honolulu, the mission in Samoa was being called the "Samoa farce" by the press, which did not bode well for King Kalakaua.[n25]
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Actually Berlin, London, and Washington were jousting furiously in Samoa, though one analyst alleged in late 1886 that Berlin was prevailing. In fact, "every third foreigner with whom he meets either [is] an employee of the [German] company or as one who was formerly employed by it and it is indebted to it for his present position." Thus, "of the 210 foreign residents of Apia (not including members of families) ninety belong to Germany alone ... considerably more than the English (33) and American (24) population together." It was telling that the business done by English firms in the year 1885 amounted to $90,000; that done by U.S. firms amounted to $123,000; while the business of the colonies of New Zealand and New South Wales [Australia] amounted to $48,000; making a total of $261,000. The trade carried on by the German firms with the Samoan group alone amounted to $576,413. The same disproportion held true in land ownership. This report, which was addressed to "His Highness Prince von Bismarck," did not even deign to mention any Hawaiian interests.[n26]
Washington's representative in Samoa, George Bates, also knew that Germany was the rising power in Samoa -- not Hawaii. "The German line of steamers that are about to run between here and Sydney," he was told in 1886, "will entirely do away with most of the American trade for the simple reason that merchants will be able to carry on their business with less than one quarter of their present capital and have their goods fresh every month from Sydney." Recall Fiji, where U.S. goods were in demand before they had steamer lines to New Zealand and Australia; afterwards, it was quite the contrary. This was critical in light of the trying climate that challenged the freshness of meat and fish. Thus, not only Germany but the British Empire had an advantage over the United States since New Zealand and Australia were both able to get fresh goods to the Samoan market in a quicker fashion.[n27]
This was no trivial matter, as the United States saw it. As far as U.S. security was concerned, said Washington's emissary George Bates, Samoa was of even more important than Hawaii. The Monroe Doctrine should be applied to this region, he thought. "Remember," he said, "that Mr. Monroe in his day could not possibly have conceived that the time would come when Hawaii and Samoa would be more closely connected with our national interests than any of the South American republics can ever become." The United States, he continued, "require[s] a naval and coaling station in that part of the Pacific" and, in any case, "construction of an Isthmian canal" was "now a mere matter of time and when the world's commerce floats through such a channel it needs no prophet to assure us that Hawaii will resign to Samoa the key of the maritime domination of the Pacific."[n28]
Like an oil spot or a hyperactive amoeba, the concept of U.S. security was
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spreading to encompass ever greater parts of the Pacific, to Hawaii, then Samoa. The problem for Washington was that others had Samoa in their sights as well. "There exists much confliction of claim to land [in Samoa]," said the British Colonial Office, "as between American, British, and German subjects." This was accompanied by rivalry between German and British traders; the commerce of the former was said to be "far greater than" that of the latter, a recipe for sharp contestation.[n29]
Then London had to worry about Washington. Thus, in 1877, a controversial murder took place in Apia. A U.S. citizen stabbed another man, in cold blood and was tried and found guilty before the U.S. consul. Dissatisfied foreign residents held a meeting to consider the question of the sentence and the advisability of hanging the perpetrator since previously when an Englishman had been murdered by a U.S. national, the murderer -- on being sent to the United States for punishment -- was released. So it was voted 43-3 to hang the accused. Yet when Sir Arthur Gordon, High Commissioner for the region, arrived he allowed the U.S. consul to prosecute both the British consul and W. J. Hunt, a merchant, for "conspiring to murder the murderer."[n30] New Zealanders and Australian colonists were outraged in particular, not just at Washington but at London, which only complicated the cascading ire. Samoa was becoming a Pacific version of Alsace-Lorraine or Kashmir, fiercely contested by armed behemoths. There was a possibility of war over Samoa, it was reported, with Germany and United States squaring off, and Britain, perhaps, making it a three-way bout.[n31]
Carl Schurz, the most famous of German-Americans, warned Bismarck that war could easily result if his Samoan policy was not abandoned; later rumors abounded that Berlin was secretly helping the Filipino rebels in their battle with the United States. This was all a reflection of a basic fact of imperialism: by the end of the nineteenth century, as the Kaiser was wont to remark with rising anger, the most valuable colonial territory had been occupied. What remained therefore assumed an outsized value, particularly in view of the national rivalries, Social Darwinism, economically-based worries about the future, intemperate newspaper commentaries, and a "manipulated social imperialism."[n32]
As the nineteenth century was closing, Samoa was undergoing the same kind of process that the islands of Hawaii had endured decades earlier -- that is, struggling toward consolidation, a situation that elicited an internal tension that was exacerbated by the meddling of the major powers.[n33] Understandably, Honolulu thought it had something to offer so it sent John Bush to Apia. He was the minister plenipotentiary to Samoa and Tonga, commissioner to the independent chiefs and people of Polynesia, and also of Hawaiian ancestry.
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One Honolulu official regarded Bush as an intelligent man, a "Noble of the Kingdom and formerly Governor of Kauai ... [who] had seen many foreign lands."[n34]
Thus, early 1887 found this representative of Honolulu in Apia, visiting the Government House where he met with a high-level official "who greeted me cordially extending a piece of kava as a Samoan token of friendship," then "in full uniform we repaired" to a meeting with the "members of the King's Cabinet." Within a few minutes afterward His Majesty himself entered. On January 15, 1887, John Bush had dinner with the king, his Cabinet, and several prominent chiefs.
"After I had [toasted] the health of King Malietoa, the King [toasted] in the most flattering language the health of King Kalakaua, which was dr[u]nk with vociferous cheers by all present. After dinner the chiefs approached me and expressed the great interest in my mission and the hope that it might help Samoa. Some even spoke in the strongest terms of their desire for an alliance or confederation with Hawaii. Subsequent to this a great number of powerful and influential chiefs have called on me and voluntarily expressed their earnest support of an alliance recognizing our superiority as a state, and advanced condition. [I met with the king] accompanied by several of his intimate chiefs [and told him of King Kalakaua's] great interest in and sympathy with the Samoans and his earnest intent to assist them [in] forming and maintaining [an] independent government and even his willingness to favorably consider a plan of confederation."
King Malietoa, it was reported, was ecstatic. "We have had treaties of friendship with America, England and Germany," he said, "but from what you have said tonight, I now know that my best friend is my brother Kalakaua." Of course, the Samoan monarch had a rival, Tamasese, who was aided and abetted by Berlin. Germans supplied Tamasese with arms and ammunition and that kept his revolt alive. Previously, Berlin had inveigled the king and Tamasese to sign a document backing a German-Samoan government, then Malietoa repudiated it, which led to a rebellion spearheaded by Tamasese and Germany, with the intention, however, of eventually displacing Malietoa with a powerful Catholic chief named Mataafa. This, said Bush with understatement, "complicated [the] situation of affairs in Samoa."[n35]
And, as things turned out, it complicated the situation for Hawaii, too. But as the major powers saw it, Honolulu was complicating matters for itself, such as when King Malietoa told "my dearest and good brother," King Kalakaua,
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that he looked forward to when "for the first time a Hawaiian Gun Boat [will be] seen in the Samoan waters." Yes, he chortled, "her arrival will be welcomed."[n36] He did not have to wait long, as it was in the fateful summer of 1887 that in a confidential message London was informed that King Kalakaua's gunboat Kaimiloa returned to Apia from a cruise.[n37] Samoa had been enduring what London termed a civil war, at least since the early 1870s, and London was among those extremely irritated by Honolulu's intervention.[n38]
But Hawaii was not alone: it was simply that its idea of Polynesian unity seemed to roil unduly. Thus, London knew that throughout the rebellious actions taken by Mataafa of Samoa his chief adviser was Mr. Harry Moors, a U.S.-based trader in Apia. "I have consulted the U.S. Consul," said London's representative in Samoa, perhaps a tad naively, "and he tells me that he has repeatedly urged the U.S. government to take steps against Mr. Moors"[n39] -- but to no avail. Moors, according to a former U.S. consul in Apia, "has played in many respects an important part in the political history of Samoa during the last twenty years .... [He was] ever found in the thick of the fray supporting
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the claims of the candidates for kinship, who he believed [were] the most eligible and thereby drawing upon himself the wrath of cliques professing an opposite opinion."[n40]
Moors was preceded by A. B. Steinberger, who had been a clerk but arrived in Samoa in 1873 calling himself a colonel, asserting that Washington had sent him down to organize a new government, bringing heavy weaponry for indigenes as his calling card. He was among a glut of deceitful white traders who had descended like locusts in Samoa after the U.S. Civil War; threemasted center-board schooners that hailed from California were doing a brisk business in the region. The doings of these California adventurers did not show off the Golden State to advantage.[n41] It was well known, said one commentator, that "attempts have been made to bring the Samoan Islands under the power of American adventurers who represented a 'Ring' in California and elsewhere."[n42] Steinberger, described by a former U.S. consul in Apia as an Ameriean political adventurer, somehow became prime minister of the then de facto government. The consul thought it worth noting that he was of Jewish descent. Still, in the beginning of 1876 a Captain Stevens of HMS Barracouta made him prisoner on the representations of the U.S. consul and he was deported to the United States.
This was a continuation of a long-term trend of involvement of U.S. nationals in thc internal affairs of Samoa. In the 1860s, the leading retail business in one major town there was Devoe from St. Louis. U.S. nationals were complicit in the "native civil war of 1869."[n43] The notorious Captain "Bully" Hayes was said to be involved in a "filibustering expedition to Samoa."[n44] It was thought widely that a replay of what had occurred in Fiji -- where a predominantly Euro-American crew sought to seize great swathes of land -- was repeating itself in Samoa.
Washington's consul in Apia -- who thought the "aboriginal Samoan possesses a very large share of crude intelligence" with "great quickness of perception" -- was worried about the Central Polynesia Land & Commercial Company of California, which was seeking annexation of the islands to the United States. Like their counterparts in Fiji, they were enjoying an extensive and profitable speculation in the lands of the Samoan people -- this was unquestionably the primary and sole object of this company, he thought. Taking advantage of the civil conflict in Samoa, they basically provided arms in exchange for land: "the great eagerness with which the Samoans seized upon any means of obtaining a supply of arms and ammunition enabled the company at that time to effect these extensive land transactions with them upon any terms," he said. But as a result, the consul was "anticipating ... disputes and I
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fear serious complications between the whites and Samoans when the latter come to be practically dispossessed of their property."[n45] Washington itself was complicit. The state department was reprimanded, as it was considered remarkable that a "person of dissipated habits of such a peculiar temperament as well as utterly unfit in every manner [filled] the important position of Commercial Agent as these Islands." That this person was allied with the very same despised San Francisco land company illustrated the depth of the problem.[n46]
In response, a number of Samoans welcomed Hawaii's intervention.
"The act of confederation with Samoa is certainly an accomplished fact," said Walter Gibson, a member of the Church of Latter Day Saints who had become a key minister in Hawaii's government, though he demurred on the idea of annexation or the attempt to assist King Malietoa with any force -- no, he said, this "has never been thought of."[n47] Presumably, Gibson thought that the magnetic appeal of Hawaii was such that Samoa would willingly confederate with it, without the idea of forcible annexation being contemplated.[n48] When Hawaii's delegate in Washington was appointed as Samoa's representative as well, further confirmation was provided about the tightening relations between the two strategically located Pacific nations.[n49]
Hawaii knew that the major powers were not supportive of this. In a confidential message, Honolulu's representative in Washington acknowledged that "it is plain" that Washington "consider(s] the question of confederation as ill timed, to say the least."[n50] Forcible or passive, the major powers were displeased with Hawaii's apparent ascendancy. One U.S. official later reported on Hawaii's de facto proclamation of a Monroe Doctrine for the Pacific, which was seen as terribly cheeky[n51] In 1883, for example, there was a signed protest on the part of the Hawaiian government against the annexation of archipelagoes and islands of Polynesia by foreign powers, and especially by Great Britain. London, which had risked bad relations with Washington in order to extend its protective umbrella to Honolulu, was not gleeful about this protest. There was contention about the immediate protection and eventual annexation of the New Hebrides, the Solomon Islands and the immediately adjacent groups and whether Washington saw these as "geographically allied to Australasia rather than Polynesia" -- with Hawaii being seen as part of the latter.[n52] Undeterred, Honolulu dispatched a mission to England, Germany, and other European states to "urge consideration for the Polynesian communities which still remain independent."[n53]
In the early 1880s, delegates from the Gilbert Islands chain were requesting King Kalakaua to assume a sort of protectorate over that island and to send teachers there, something that Honolulu seriously pondered.[n54]
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This was seen as terribly uppity by the major powers. The German foreign minister contacted Lord Salisbury in London, expressing the hope that the latter would not consent that Hawaii take part in the proposed conference at Washington on Samoan affairs.[n55] Washington, London, and Berlin saw it slighrly -- but tellingly -- differently, averring that it was not desirable that Hawaii should seem to take the whole question of Samoa out of the hands of the three powers[n56] particularly via confederation.
According to Germany, Hawaii's behavior was not only "not desirable" but a potential casus belli. H. A. Carter, Hawaii's representative in Washington, said, "Germany, never, so far as I know, intimated in any way to Hawaii that Mr. Bush's [mission] was offensive and it seems very strange that they should have contemplated a declaration of war against us without having presented any remonstrance or ultimatum." Perhaps Berlin thought it was unnecessary to negotiate or even engage with small Pacific nations that were only worthy - in the best case -- of being annexed forcibly.[n57] Or maybe Berlin was simply disoriented by Samoa, which seemed to be disconcerting the major powers generally. U.S. policy toward Samoa was, according to the scholar Paul IvI. Kennedy, confused. There were groupings in the United States (e.g., publicists, businessmen in the western states, naval officers, and politicians like William Seward) that favored expansion, but a majority of U.S. nationals opposed seizing Samoa.[n58]
Afterwards, King Kalakaua was rather defensive about the Bush mission and his Samoa initiative. He was irked that Washington blamed him for the "trouble [which] commenced with Germany ... for having sent Mr. Bush" to Apia. "Of course," he said, "I did send Mr. Bush, but it was from a repeated call from Samoa as well as all the other South Sea islands [for a] Confederation or solidarity of the Polynesian Race." After all, they were all being overrun by blackbirders and freebooters, not to mention imperialist brigandage. Should not they band together, if only for purposes of survival and defense?[n59] The great powers thought not, as one annexed Fiji, another annexed Hawaii, and they carved up Samoa between and among themselves.[n60] President Benjamin Harrison and presidential contender James Blaine were among those who accepted the basic argument favoring equal three-power control to guarantee Samoa's autonomy -- and Honolulu was definitely not amongst the favored three.[n61]
From worrying about Hawaii collaborating with Washington, London veered to the concern that would animate its foreign policy in the twentieth century -- the machinations of Berlin. Speaking from Washington, L. Sackville West informed "My Lord" of the "aggressive action of Germany in the [South] Pacific & the endeavors which that power is said to be making to obtain a footing
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in Hawaii."[n62] The problem for Honolulu was that such speculation could make London more willing to acquiesce to the very real and present danger of the United States annexing Hawaii.
Yet another problem for Hawaii was its own internal conflicts, fueled by the decline of the indigenes and influx of Euro-Americans with little respect for monarchy, which could only propel the intrigues of the major powers. In the spring of 1874, James Wodehouse, the British delegate in Honolulu, analyzed closely the riot that was intended to kill the representatives who had voted for Kalakaua, the present king, and also to burn the courthouse where the election for the sovereign had taken place. The landing of the British and U.S. naval forces alone perhaps prevented the destruction of Honolulu and the loss of many lives. There were sixty persons arraigned and forty-one were convicted, but such unrest did not bode well for the kingdom -- or so thought Wodehouse. "The King is not popular in this island," he said shortly thereafter. If the warships were withdrawn, "there would be a Revolution in which he would lose His Throne and possibly his life. It is the fear of foreign intervention alone that keeps the Hawaiians quiet."[n63] He added, "Within the short space of a little more than a year and a half, the independence of this Kingdom has been in imminent peril four times."[n64] Of course, the apparent shakiness of the Honolulu regime made London particularly all the more upset about the kingdom's supposed interference in the internal affairs of Fiji and Samoa.
As Hawaiian indigenes surged in confidence, their assertiveness was perceived by some others as runaway chauvinism. Elections in 1882 featured the slogan "Hawaii for the Hawaiians," which left some Euro-Americans unsettled. Lorrin H. Thurston, a pioneer Euro-American in Hawaii, blamed King Kalakaua's minister, Walter Gibson, for this so-called "anti-haole" campaign,[n66] referring to the striving by indigenes for self-determination and a higher level of representation in their government.
By the fall of 1884, Washington's consul in Honolulu, David McKinley, detected a "somewhat uneasy and disturbed feeling that exists ... with most of the European community against the present government." Plus there was a very low price of sugar and the consequent bleak outlook for the future. His recommendation? "I would suggest that a man-of-war be ordered here, as often as convenient," he said.[n67] In turn, Washington in late 1886 took careful note of the attempt to organize the military forces of the kingdom.[n68]
Finally, in the summer of 1887, a so-called Bayonet Constitution was imposed on the Kingdom, primarily by a restive haole clique (primarily Euro-Americans). They clipped the wings of the monarchy and, not coincidentally, defenestrated politically the indigenes. This was a prelude to the final liquida-
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tion of the kingdom in the 1890s, a major advance for white supremacy in the region and a decided setback to self-determination for the indigenes.
On]uly 26, 1887, U.S. Secretary of State James D. Porter was briefed about these developments in a report by Honolulu Consul General John H. Portman that captured the tensions of the region and era. "The peculiar composition of the population in the Islands is at the base of the widespread discontent," Portman said. "The American and European immigration, excluding the Portuguese has not kept pace with immigration. Especially is this true of Americans, as the exodus has been much greater than the influx ... [and thus,] nearly one-third of the entire population is composed of Asiatics." The Portuguese, an increasing segment of the European influx were, it was thought, "in natural qualities ... are not the superior of Japanese or Chinese." Shockingly, "many of them" were as "dark" as the darkest indigenes. Fractiousness was exacerbated by the "almost equal division of the Republican American with the monarchial Englishman and German, the one believing in the absolute supremacy of the people and the other in a division of authority between royalty and subject, produces divergence of opinion and little jealousies of race which prevent the homogeneity of the elements which must combine." The "forms of government were heretofore modeled after the English system" (i.e., a strong constitutional monarchy), but the Bayonet Constitution meant a weakening of this system.
So, "the little breezes of discontent grew stronger and stronger as Royalty gave evidence of intention to enlarge the importance at home by increasing the National Guard and abroad by sending expensive embassies to nations with which the government has no political or commercial connections, by fitting up an armed vessel and sending it with an embassy to islands of the southern Pacific to tender them the fostering care of Hawaii."
More than this, it was thought, "race jealousy" was at the heart of the political neutering of the kingdom. "Finding the white man really the ruling power" in Honolulu -- after all, King Kalakaua was surrounded by the likes of Walter Gibson, H.A. Carter, and a host of other haole -- "the sentiment [was] generated that 'Hawaiians should rule Hawaii' and a jealousy of the white political predominance [grew] and a fear that the Islands would eventually be a government of white men spurred them to action." The "result was that although the Cabinet and principal officers of the Kingdom were, two years ago, almost entirely white, there being only one native in the Cabinet, at the date of the dissolution of the late Cabinet the figures were found to be reversed, only one white man in the Cabinet and nearly all the other principal positions in the possession of the natives. These facts excited the apprehension of the whites," who "foresaw increased and burdensome taxation." Thus, a semirevolution
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took place as an independent, white military organization was established not unlike what had developed in Fiji -- "under the supremacy of an organized and armed league of white men, banded for revolution, peaceable or forcible." At this juncture, the whites were split in two: one favored abolition of the monarchy (mostly Euro-Americans of the "racist Republicanism" variety) and the other, a limited monarchy (mostly Germans and British).
At this point, the former did not have enough muscle to establish their absolute diktat and the latter tended to prevail. "The American capitalists," the Secretary of State was told, "were afraid of the results of too radical changes and were willing to make such compromises as would retain the old forms, [so] they inserted a qualification which excludes the great mass of the Portuguese and native population from participating in their election. The clause requires the voter to own three thousand dollars worth of property or have an income of
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six hundred dollars per year." The system was rigged to allow Euro-Americans and Europeans to reside in Hawaii and participate politically without renouncing ties to their homelands.
All told, 1887 was a major victory for imperialism and white supremacy (the bounty of which excluded the Portuguese, ironically, who had pioneered in developing notions of racial chauvinism) and a profound setback for Pacific indigenes, especially those of Hawaiian origin.[n69] As it turned out, 1887 marked the beginning of the end for the kingdom, a rendezvous with an ill-fated destiny that finally arrived in 1893 with its overthrow and 1898 with the annexation of Hawaii in an early expression of U.S. imperialism.
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** From here on, everything is a verbatim quote unless flagged by "**". Page numbers are designated by "pg". Endnotes are designated by [n#] and the notes themselves are gathered at the bottom of this webpage. The endnotes are extremely valuable. Scholars wanting to see the endnotes in the context of the material where they occur are advised to copy the endnotes into a separate document and keep both documents open side by side.
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** pg 129
CHAPTER 8
A Black Pacific?
As the local opponents of the Kingdom of Hawaii surged to power at the end of the nineteenth century, they quickly unsheathed a powerful weapon against their opponents. They whispered that King Kalakaua and his sister were not true Hawaiians but rather the children of a Negro coachman, John Poppin, who had been their mother's secret lover; these Euro-Americans became even bolder and followed King Kalakaua to his speaking engagements, where they held up an effigy of the coachman and jeered "nigger" as he spoke.[n1] This crusade reached a zenith three days before the 1873 election -- as black voting rights on the mainland were under siege -- when a black effigy labeled 'David Kalakaua Blossom' was paraded through the streets of Honolulu, alluding to the allegation that David's mother had taken Jamaican John W. Blossom as her paramour in the 1840s and had borne him a son.[n2] Thus, there was a certain "Negro-ification" of Hawaiians with a concomitant degradation. One of his white contemporaries referred to King Kalakaua as "a man apparently of Negro type rather than Hawaiian with thick lips, flat nose and hair more wavy than that of the pure-blooded Hawaiians,"[n3] Speaking of the last monarch, Queen Liliuokalani, U.S. naval officer Lucien Young asserted that "she was darker than the ordinary native, showing evident traces of Negro blood."[n4] The visiting writer Mark Twain was struck similarly, observing, "the majority of the people almost are as dark as Negroes."[n5]
THE OVERTHROW of the monarchy was occurring as white supremacy on the mainland was asphyxiating Negro suffrage rights, as African-Americans generally were being demonized. Perhaps, inevitably, Hawaiians -- who, after all, were generally dark skinned -- were tarred with a similar brush. They were thought of as being part of a hardly differentiated mass of "non-whites" who were not worthy of self-determination, nor of being deemed peers of their presumed Euro-American "betters." Thus, when Hawaiian royalty visited
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Washington, D.C. before the Civil War, Julia Gardiner (future wife of President John Tyler) noted that one member of this delegation had a complexion "about as dark as a Negro but with Indian hair," while John Quincy Adams described the prince as "nearly black as an Ethiopian, but with a European face and wool for hair." Adams even suspected that the difficulty the United States had with the "tangled question of extending formal diplomatic recognition to the Hawaiians" was that they were black.[n6] Scholar Noenoe K. Silva observed accurately that the rationales used to subjugate Negroes were eerily similar to those deployed against Hawaiian indigenes.[n7]
Yet this dual denigration coexisted uneasily beside another undeniable fact: African-Americans and their black counterparts in the Caribbean often fled to Hawaii and the South Seas generally during the nineteenth century precisely because they perceived -- correctly -- that their opportunities would be less circumscribed there than in their homelands. W.E.B. Du Bois was rhapsodic in discussing Hawaii, with its beauty and mixture of peoples. "If one could but die and find this paradise forever, endless with youth," he suggested, nirvana itself would be attained.[n8] Writer Susan Bell confirms that "blacks early found in Hawaii a freedom from racial bias seldom experienced in the settled and more 'civilized' societies of the mainland."[n9] As Hawaii became a familiar port of call during the heyday of whaling, the number of blacks flooding into the island chain -- in search of a kind of paradise all their own -- escalated. Honolulu was such an enchanting port, in any case, that many strong-minded captains refused to touch there, for desertions of nearly half a ship's complement were not uncommon. A disproportionate percentage of these would have been U.S. Negroes.[n10]
The sociologist Lloyd L. Lee once remarked that "a Negro might well be mistaken for an ethnic Hawaiian," which facilitated the assimilation of the former. This group of migrants -- mostly male -- often mated with Hawaiian women with their progeny being classified as part Hawaiians, which complicates the attempt to trace their lineage because it signifies a kind of racial integration that was starkly distinct from that of the mainland.[11] When post-Civil War exhortations accelerated, calling on African-Americans to migrate to work in Hawaii, the presumed absence of racial distinctions there became a favorite theme of those who encouraged blacks to sign contracts with the islands' sugar plantations, just as Negroes routinely expressed sympathy for the "Hawaii for Hawaiians" movement that upset so many Euro-Americans. Frederick Douglass was not alone in condemning what he termed the "unwarrantable intermeddling of Americans in Hawaiian affairs," while a black editor in Washington suspected that cartoons in white newspapers depicting the queen
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as a "thick lip and unrefined Negro" were indicative of the status which Hawaiians would be assigned if they came under the protection of the U.S. flag. African-Americans generally objected to making the island chain an American plantation of Claus Spreckels, the sugar baron. Their "prevailing view appeared to oppose any annexation scheme which would exploit darker races or deny the fulfillment of their national aspirations." These African-Americans feared that increasing Euro-American encroachment in Hawaii would endanger its unique environment. "Whether they favored selective emigration or mass deportation," one writer reported, "Negro and white advocates of black colonization maintained that Negro Americans would find the climate, society and economy of the Pacific islands congenial to their welfare and prosperity."[n12]
Exhibit A in contemplating the Negro in Hawaii was Anthony Allen, formerly the slave of a man residing in New York state. He is said to have escaped from slavery and arrived in Oahu in 1810 settling at Waikiki; during the 182Os he was described as possessing a dozen houses, the premises clean and orderly; a native wife and three children; and a farm well stocked with cows and goats. He was a "dog-fancier" and a blacksmith and both well connected and respected in the island chain, enjoying a life that was generally beyond the imagination of his compatriots on the mainland. However, he was not alone since the peripatetic of the Cape Verde islands were also to be found in the Hawaiian Islands.[n13] But Allen towered over these and others, having "taken to himself a Hawaiian wife and became a prosperous farmer through patent industry."[n14] He had come a long way since the day in 1774 when he was born into bondage in New York,[n15] to the point where he was widely regarded as one of the wealthiest residents on Oahu.[16]
In June 1820, Sylvia Moseley Bingham of a pioneering Euro-American family in Hawaii observed; "I believe [Allen] lives the most comfortably of any on the island-has a wife and two pretty children, the eldest of whom he has taught its letters. He has been very kind to us, sending us potatoes, squashes, etc., as often as once in two weeks, a goat or a kid neatly dressed every morning, two bottles of goat's milk and many things I cannot mention. He lives too far from us to benefit his family as we wish." She added with equal curiosity that his beneficence was an example of "how the Lord provides for us," eliding -- as was all too typical -- how African-Americans "provided" for all too many Euro-Americans.[n17]
Again, Allen was not singular.[n18] When the budding writer Herman Melville arrived in Honolulu a few years after Allen's death, he encountered a "jolly little black called Billy Loon, the royal drummer and pounder of the tambourine,"[n19] who was emblematic of the substantial role that Negro musicians played there.
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Generally, U.S. Negroes -- like the nation from which they had sprung -- were steadily moving westward during the nineteenth century, though they had an added incentive since it was thought that racism would be less intense the further one moved away from the Deep South.[n20] One visitor to Hawaii during Allen's heyday observed, "Commerce brings to the Sandwich Islands the most colorful examples of all the world's peoples. Among the servants of fashionable women, I detected a young Negro and a flathead from the northwest coast of America. Here for the first time I saw Chinese."[n21] In such a diverse atmosphere, far beyond the polarized European-African dynamic that dominated the South and the racial discourse there, a site where the former were simply a minority amongst minorities, it was possible for an AfricanAmerican to better flash his colors and excel.
Traditional attitudes remained obstinate, however. Titus Coan, for example, was born in Connecticut and in 1835 came to Hawaii as a missionary; writing from the Pacific, he instructed his coworkers in South Africa, who were also engaged in a spiritual quest. Thus, he had a unique perspective on Hawaiians and their opposite numbers in Africa. He spoke of the "common bond of brotherhood" that he believed already existed, as he sought to unite Africa and Hawaii "by a cord whose vibrations will be constantly felt at each extremity." Yet he also told his peers about the "rude [and] strange" indigenes with their "barbarous language," a mind-set that was then prevalent among all too many Euro-Americans in both the Pacific and Cape Town.[n22]
Coan was not unique in this regard. Samuel Chapman Armstrong was a founder of the historically black Hampton University in Virginia (where he left a lasting impression on Booker T. Washington, the preeminent African-American leader), though he was born in Maui in 1839. "Sometimes when I stand outside a Negro church," he said tellingly, "I get precisely the effect of a Hawaiian congregation, the same fullness and heartiness and occasional exquisite voices and am instantly transplanted 10,000 miles away, to the great Kawaiahao Church where father used to preach to 2500 people." Like others, he often spoke of the similarity of the problems of the U.S. South and of Hawaiian life, each encompassed by a large population of dark-skinned people.[n23]
The royal family may have noticed that U.S. Negroes were sited strategically throughout the region and this may have recommended them. Armstrong's brother, William N. Armstrong, served as attorney general in King Kalakaua's Cabinet and thus went to Japan then China with the monarch. When they arrived in China, he took note of the presence of the manager of the China Merchants Steamship Company, which owned a fleet of thirty-six large steamers and several vessels of the Hawaiian group. "[The] manager,"
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he said, "was a fine American Negro who had shown much ability when employed by the American legation in Pekin [sic]; he was not only well educated but spoke several languages, including Chinese; his father was a Negro preacher in Washington, D.C. He had married a handsome English girl in Shanghai, who was an artist; but his marriage to a white person had much incensed the Americans living in Shanghai, though it was cordially approved by the English, German and French residents."[n24]
The resemblance that existed between many Pacific Islanders and Africans facilitated such comparisons. One scholar has described the Melanesians as Oceanic Negroes, while the Polynesians were believed to be derived from "Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid" strains. Quite often it was the latter strain that was highlighted.[n25] Thomas Trood, former U.S. consul in Apia, Samoa, observed about a century ago that "the Fijians also intermixed with the Tongans, in consequence of which the latter are much more of the Negro or Papuan type than their straight-haired Samoan ancestors."[n26] Visiting the South Seas in the 1830s, writer Milo Calkin referred to the indigenes as being "tall, strong and well formed" with "light copper complexion and straight black hair. They are very indolent and their propensity to steal" --something that was also thought to be a characteristic of Negroes -- "made it necessary for us to conceal everything about the ship on our own persons that they could get hold & notwithstanding all our precaution they succeeded in carrying off several articles which we were never able to regain."[n27] Another writer in 1880 noted that an acquaintance "always connected the Papuan race with the Negroes of Africa" since they were "all children of Ham."[n28] Even those who dissented from these parallels left the inference that these comparisons were hegemonic. Thus, one Euro-American missionary went to some lengths to point out that the "eastern or brown Polynesian race [were] in no way, however distantly, related to the Negro."[n29]
Of course, there were also comparisons between indigenous Americans and their counterparts in the South Seas. In 1880, as both groupings were under deadly siege, one writer observed,
"I was informed by a "beachcomber" that in some islands of the Low Archipelago (which includes the Marquesas) there is a tradition of some of the ancestry of their people having gone or returned from the big land to the East -- or more properly speaking -- West -- i.e., America. It is a fact that the skeletons found in the caverns of Kentucky and Tennessee are wrapped in feather cloaks which was a custom of the Sandwich Islands; while it is the opinion of most American antiquaries that the best-defined specimens of art among the antiquities of Ohio and Kentucky are of a decided Polynesian character.[n30]
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Negro in the condition of slavery; and even this latter exception holds good only for a few countries." Chinese were not like "a Negro nor a Polynesian in character," however, in that they were said to possess "strong tenacity of rights, quick ebullition of temper and readiness for fight."[n55] The informant William Hillebrand was not extraordinary in his perception. Writing a few years later from Honolulu, another representative of the planters, Z. Y. Squires, spoke of the Chinese as "the very lowest order of humanity ... belonging to a species of the African chattering bushman or the direct descendant of the ourang outang [sic]." Their presence had caused much of the white population to leave the islands."[n56] Actually, this equation of Chinese laborers with Africans was appropriate in the sense that few could differentiate between the Hawaiian penal contract and other forms of unfree labor, all of which were akin to "brutal slavery."[n57]
At times when considering the stew of color in the Pacific, some Euro-Americans went a step further in conflation, imagining that what was developing was a united challenge to white supremacy. "In the Negroes [of] the South, the Indian in the West, the Chinese in the Pacific, have we not enough problems to tax our philanthropy?" queried Julius A. Palmer rhetorically, speaking disparagingly of Hawaii. "Do we covet another set of national wards? Must we add to these another of the dark-skinned races, to say nothing of the Asiatics, the Portuguese and the difficult questions of contract labor and the employment problem?"[n58]
But in Hawaii the dominant comparative racial theme, particularly by visiting Euro-Americans, focused on African-Americans. Visiting Honolulu in April 1866, Mark Twain focused on General George Washington, an "aged, limping Negro man" who was "seventy years old and he looked it. He was as crazy as a loon" and "very violent" with "arms corded with muscle." It was "thought that he was one of a party of Negroes who fitted out a ship and sailed from a New England port some twenty years ago. He is fond of talking in his dreamy, incoherent way, about the Blue Ridge in Virginia and seems familiar with Richmond and Lynchburg." Twain also employed the Negro as a point of reference in assessing the labor situation, which in that year was in flux in light of the jolt to the sugar and cotton industries provided by the U.S. Civil War. "The hire of each laborer," he said, "[is] $100 a year -- just about what it used to cost to board and clothe and doctor a Negro -- but there is no original outlay of $500 to $1000 for the purchase of the laborer."[n59] Twain also took the time to scribble a "little ditty" in his notebook that reflected the unease of finding African-Americans in the island chain. It concerned white men who "smell berry strong but black men stronger." He added that to stand beside a "swelter-
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ing Negro was a 'rough' experience."[n60] Actually Twain, who referred to indigenous Hawaiians as "niggers" in his journals, and Melville, who had a "selective embrace of British imperialism in the Pacific" are suggestive of the fact that even the supposed best and brightest of the United States left much to be desired on the battleground of racism, indicating simultaneously why Negroes were fleeing to Hawaii and why they might face difficulties upon arrival.[n61]
The degradation of Negro labor had not disappeared on the mainland, in other words, and Negro sailors arriving in the paradise that Hawaii was thought to be nonetheless encountered obstacles, even after the U.S. Civil War. Thus, in 1868 Secretary of State William Seward was informed about the death of William Roberson of Baltimore at the hands of a Negro seaman named Outerbridge. His ship had sailed from Maryland in March 1867 and stopped in Bermuda for repairs when Outerbridge came aboard and was threatened with death by Roberson. The tables were turned, however, and the deceased was found "upon the deck with marks of violence upon the head and face, as if struck with an axe or sharp weapon." Outerbridge, who was thought to be "inoffensive and truthful," then confessed to the murder.[n62] He was not lynched, at least, which may have been his fate if he had been snared on the mainland.
This was suggestive of the point that Hawaii could only be described as a paradise for the Negro in comparison with developments on the mainland. In fact, context is critical in assessing how the Negro was treated -- good and bad. For Hawaii was torn by an unpleasant dilemma. As the sugar market expanded on the mainland, more laborers (mostly Asian) were needed but this was precisely what menaced white dominion and, in the case of workers of Japanese origin, placed the planters on a collision course with a rising power. Thus, the planters were reduced to trying to induce U.S. Negroes to come to the islands. But the Euro-American elite also realized that this too contained "many dangerous possibilities involving the color line," in terms of alienating white supremacists for whom the Negro was the ne plus ultra of odiousness.[n63]
Their concerns were beaten back. The question of importing U.S. Negroes was considered in Honolulu at a meeting on January 7, 1879, with the number of 1,000 being tossed around. Later Secretary of Interior Hoke Smith, a Georgian, originally opposed for racial reasons to the annexation of Hawaii, modified his attitude when he considered the possibility that it might help the South to rid itself of some of its Negro population.[n64] After annexation, John Hind and J.B. Collins, agents of the Koloa Plantation, established themselves in New Orleans in order to recruit 300 Negro laborers. During the next nine months, other agents appeared in Tennessee, Alabama, and Texas. Those
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black laborers who went to Hawaii from the South signed contracts to remain there for two or three years.[n65] However, the arrangement proved mutually unsatisfactory.
Thus, Lihue Plantation attracted a group of these Negroes, but was displeased with their performance, deeming them to be unreliable and indolent. From the Koloa Sugar Company came a similar evaluation. The Hawaiian Sugar Company stated emphatically that Negroes were "no good whatever on Hawaiian plantations." And according to the Pioneer Mill Company, they were worthless.[n66]
This dilemma reached the U.S. Congress after annexation. "There remains the all-important consideration that even if a white man could labor in the cane fields," the Hawaii Sugar Planters Association told the solons, "and were willing to undertake such work, there is no possibility of obtaining from any quarter, and least of all from the U.S. mainland, a sufficient number [to] fill our needs." Japan, it was stated with a decided lack of enthusiasm was their only source. Unconvinced, a number of senators began to pepper the planters' representative with questions that pointed to African-Americans as the way out and obtaining more Negro labor from the South. This was in response to the arrival in Hawaii of a few hundred southern Negro workers.
One legislator inquired whether they made good laborers on the plantation. "No," was the blunt response, "most of them were sent to the Spreckelsville plantation. They gave a great deal of trouble. When they could not quarrel with anybody else they quarreled with themselves. A number of them have landed in jail. There are several in jail yet. Most of them have gone." Still seized with the notion of Hawaii as a racial paradise, these Negroes arrived with the idea of making their fortunes and were unprepared for sweating in the fields; thus, it was said, "they liked to fight and everything else more than work."
Yet despite this apparent less-than-exemplary record, sentiment lingered for bringing more Negroes westward. Why? As one witness told Congress, "The Asiatics are our carpenters, our drivers, our salesmen, our cooks, our servants, our gardeners, our grocers, our tailors, our farmers. God knows what they will be next. They may be our masters yet [for] as long as the Asiatics are running the country, this can not be a white man's land."[n67] As long as such an attitude persisted, Negroes would be in demand.
WALTER COOTE was stunned. Here he was in relatively remote Levuka, Fiji, in 1882 when a Negro entered. "[He was] born in Virginia an indefinite number of decades ago," Coote recalled, "and had been in Fiji for many, many years. He told me that his name was Black Bill, adding with some pride that he was
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** From here on, everything is a verbatim quote unless flagged by "**". Page numbers are designated by "pg". Endnotes are designated by [n#] and the notes themselves are gathered at the bottom of this webpage. The endnotes are extremely valuable. Scholars wanting to see the endnotes in the context of the material where they occur are advised to copy the endnotes into a separate document and keep both documents open side by side.
pg 161
CHAPTER 10
Toward Pearl Harbor -- And Beyond
The prominent official of New South Wales Edward Dowling had not only advice on how the colonies might avoid the fate of the United States, but also pointed opinions about the issue that was ever linked to that of global diplomacy: labor -- or from whence on the planet workers would emerge to produce the wealth necessary to propel the economy. Thus, he favored South Asians, principally Indians, over the Japanese as migrant laborers for neighboring Fiji since they were not as "dangerous as the intelligent Japanese to the permanent occupation of Fiji by the white races. The proximity of China, Japan, and India to Australia renders it easily accessible to many millions of the Asiatic races, and in this nearness to the hives of the colored races is one of the great dangers to preserving the present homogeneity of the Anglo-Australian race."[n1]
Writing from Victoria, E. W. Cole argued against the development of a White Australia policy of racial exclusion avowing that it was simply not feasible given the neighborhood, pointing particularly to Japan as their "first danger" but also worriedly declaiming about Java, China, and India.[n2]
In their apprehension about Asians generally -- and Japanese specifically -- Dowling and Cole echoed concerns then emerging in Hawaii and among their backers in the United States, who recognized that when the king had arranged to transport thousands of Japanese workers to the island chain, he had not only altered the face of the labor force, but also affected global diplomacy. The rising power that was Japan did not take kindly to the type of measures (e.g., barring those of Japanese origin from voting) that the Euro-American elite saw fit to impose as they began to clip the wings of the monarchy and take power. But these elites, for reasons of white supremacy and what it saw as self-preservation found it hard to accept the idea of these Asians having access to the ballot box. It was in such racial slights that a train of events was set in motion that ultimately led to the Japanese military dropping bombs on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in December 1941.
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** Half of page is a photo
Things began to go downhill with the imposition of the so-called Bayonet Constitution in 1887, whereby Euro-American elites effectively undermined the royal family through a show of force. This body of law that King Kalakaua was compelled to sign under pressure from an assortment of European and Euro-American businessmen denied suffrage rights that in 1886 had been guaranteed to those of Japanese origin.[n3] Hawaiian diplomats in Japan were quick to forward home a disapproving editorial from a Yokohama newspaper that asserted brusquely that the motivating force behind the political crisis in Hawaii was "not party politics but race prejudice .... The King during the past few years has apparently acted on the intention of introducing the native Hawaiian element as largely as possible into the Government," whereas "the white subjects and residents of Hawaii ... would sooner or later have contrived to be governed by men of their own color." As in the Australian colonies, "the general feeling among the white residents of Hawaii is understood to be opposed to all Asiatic immigration."[n4]
It was not as if unwarranted paranoia was reigning in Japan. In the run-up to the tumultuous events of 1887, a prominent organ in Hawaii had attacked
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Walter Gibson, a key kingdom official, for allegedly "Asiaticizing" Hawaii, while a Hawaiian Anti-Asiatic Union was taking form.[n5] Just as some had difficulty distinguishing between African-Americans and Pacific indigenes, others had difficulty distinguishing between the latter and the Japanese -- which meant they all would receive the undistinguished treatment accorded to Negroes.[n6] But try as they might, the white elite could not escape a distasteful dilemma. As the market for sugar expanded in the United States, backbreaking labor was needed; and however vast, this labor was difficult to obtain from the Pan-European world. By the 1890s blackbirding was expiring, African-American workers were generally unavailable and, thus, the only option left was Asia. Yet as the planters imported more and more labor from Asia, their racial rule was threatened to a degree, particularly as Japan was rising as a power, a development that might not have been noticed since it was relatively new for a non-European power to be deemed powerful. Thus, as the decade of the 1890s unwound, virtually the only choice remaining if this rule was to persist was annexation by the rising heavyweight champion of white supremacy -- the United States.[n7]
The planters faced the worst of all worlds in the 1890s as a labor shortfall developed with a concomitant hike in wages at a time when tariff legislation on the mainland posed a clear and present danger to the crucial sugar industry.[n8]
Samuel Gompers, the chief of mainland labor unions, acknowledged that the white population of the Hawaiian Islands ... only comprise 8 6/10 percent. This does not include Portuguese. The Japanese population comprises 59 percent of the entire population and "the unions have fought them tooth and nail." "The Chinese," he said, " [are] not near as aggressive as the Japs [so] in admitting the Chinese we are choosing the lesser of two evils."[n9] The writer Katharine Coman concurred, adding that the Nipponese were "remarkably clannish, clubbing together for their common interests in a way that was distinctly embarrassing"; plus, they "cherished allegiance to their native land with peculiar tenacity." The threat of Hawaii becoming "Orientalized" because of their influence was greater than in the days of unstinted Chinese immigration, it was said with no fake amazement. Besides, these Japanese were prone to militancy: of the twenty-two strikes recorded by the United States Labor Commissioner for 1900, twenty were undertaken by plantation laborers, all of them Japanese.[n10]
The Chinese were viewed as acceptable only when the Japanese were deemed to be the only alternative. After all, the all-important rice industry was financed and controlled mainly by Chinese merchants of Honolulu, not to mention that the rice farmers and laborers were for the most part
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Chinese,[n11] which too was seen as frontal challenge to the prerogatives of white supremacy.
Moreover, as was noted about the Kipahulu Sugar Company, "Europeans will object to work in gang[s] with Orientals. They will not mix at joint labor," in any case. Plus, as was reported about the Koloa Sugar Company, the Japanese were "capable and industrious but given to strikes," a trait that vitiated any virtues they might possess. Despite this knowledge, the Kilauea Sugar Plantation at the turn of the century hired 267 field laborers of Japanese origin out of a force of 372. The query was posed bluntly: "will white or European labor work in the fields stripping cane? And if not, why?" The reply was a forthright no, since the labor was "monotonous, disagreeable and unhealthy." Thus, somehow planters had to muddle along with Japanese workers, though as was said of those employed by the Ewa Plantation Company, they were "industrious to a fair degree," but "frequently unruly and hard to manage" and increasingly "have become more so." Workers of Portuguese origin did "rank first" in terms of capability, industry, and reliability, but there were simply not enough of them to go around, even if they were to be regarded as wholly white.[n12] As a congressional committee put it, "There remains the all-important consideration that even if white men could labor in the cane fields, and were willing to undertake such work, there is no possibility of obtaining from any quarter, and least of all from the United States mainland, a sufficient number to fill our needs." Thus, it was said with reluctant finality, "Japan is the only source of our labor supply."[n13]
Yet continually Hawaiian employers sought to recruit Euro-American or European adult male laborers,[n14] while their employment rolls continued to be replete with workers of Asian origin.[n15] Though there was much bluster otherwise -- "the Australian adoption of White Labor for its sugar plantations has been the greatest contribution yet made to practical solution of the problem whether the white man can do agricultural work in the tropics," said one overly optimistic writer[n16] -- the holy grail of melanin-deficient labor was quite elusive.
And for the longest, so were workers of Japanese origin. "As late as 1883," said the Hawaiian foreign minister, "our statistics show but 116 Japanese in the country" but the king's historic journey to Japan unleashed a tsunami of labor that also turned out to be of enormous diplomatic significance.[n17] Well before this radical departure, the U.S. minister in Honolulu sensed the global significance, instructing a colleague that "an envoy of the Hawaiian government sails for Japan today for the purpose of endeavoring to negotiate a treaty with Japan .... I think it would be your policy to oppose the consummation of such a treaty by every means in your power."[n18]
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Still, in 1880, before the presence of workers of Japanese origin became formidable, Honolulu's consul in Hobart, Tasmania -- where indigenes had only recently been decimated -- spoke brightly of the "class of emigrants obtainable from Madras" and how they "would suit [the islands'] climate exceedingly well, [as] they are well known for their quiet plodding ways." He told his bosses, "I think they would compare most favorably with the Chinese now coming to your shores and should I be able to assist you in any way arranging for them, I shall be only too pleased to do so."[n19] Honolulu was informed curtly that none of the colonial governments wanted East Indians or Eurasians sent to the Australian colonies and wondered if Hawaii might be interested.[n20] But the consul apparently did not recognize that the elites on the U.S. mainland were wary of bringing more British subjects to this strategically positioned chain of islands. In any case, the Australian colonies themselves were concerned about what they saw as Hawaii expansionism and were hardly enthusiastic about aiding the construction of a regime that was styling itself as pro-indigene. In 1883, a Honolulu official in Sydney advised his counterpart in Melbourne, "[It would] not be desirable at the present juncture to specially draw attention by means of the press to the course lately pursued by the Hawaiian Government in protesting against the Pacific annexations, because I think that such a course might be construed as being hostile to what will doubtless prove to be the unanimous action of the Australian governments, with all of whom His Majesty's Government is on the most friendly footing; as evidenced by the King's contemplated visit to and promise of cordial reception by them."[n21]
Actually this advice might have emboldened those who lusted after Hawaii itself. Still, when an aggressive assortment of planters deposed the kingdom in 1893, sober-minded analysts could well have charged them with blatant overreaching in that this was bound not to go down very well with the rising power that was Japan, whose population dwarfed that of Hawaii. The overthrow, nonetheless, was a surprise only to those not paying sufficient attention. As early as the spring of 1891, Hawaii's representative in New South Wales reported that a "cable appeared in the Sydney newspapers stating that it was expected that the American cruiser Charleston would be ordered to Honolulu where a revolution was likely to occur."[n22]
Yet as this fateful moment approached, there were clear signs of trouble looming for the planter class. Late in 1890, Honolulu's representative in Japan warned Tokyo that the "unexpected passage of the new U.S. tariff law making sugar free of duty in the United States on imports from Brazil, Cuba, Java, the Philippine Islands [and] other countries, as well as beet sugar from France and
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Germany, has completely done away with the advantages heretofore enjoyed by Hawaii in its reciprocity treaty with America." Thus, planters in Hawaii were "threatened with serious losses and industrial panic," which inevitably would impact the flow of Japanese laborers to the islands -- and, it could have been added, exacerbate the continuing issue of deprivation of the suffrage rights of the Nipponese already resident.[n23]
Certainly that was the tack adopted by Viscount Sinzo Aoki of the Foreign Ministry, who expressed what seemed to be sincere regret for the difficulties encountered by the planters -- then added pointedly that "[he] should ... remind" the Hawaiian authorities about the ticklish matter of voting rights.[n24]
Sensing that this devilish matter was not disappearing anytime soon, Robert Walker Irwin, Honolulu's representative in Japan, told his premier in 1892 that Portugal no longer enjoyed extraterritoriality and he recommended that Hawaii move unilaterally to institute the same policy with regard to Nippon. "This act," he reasoned, "would make us very popular with the government and people of Japan and conserve greatly our vital interest in emigration." As early as 1881 during the king's visit, Honolulu offered to abandon this policy but Tokyo was "not then ready to accept"; but "now they are more than ready, [even] eager," not least since that would place the increasingly sensitive Japanese on par with a European power -- though the fact that the nation in question (Portugal) was not deemed as being altogether white gave this concession limited utility.[n25]
'When the coup occurred, the Japanese newspapers were full of Hawaiian affairs.[n26] "The Japanese public feeling is rather nervous over Hawaiian events," Irwin repeated.[n27] He took his worrisome concern directly to the doorstep of Sanford B. Dole, president of the so-called provisional government that had deposed the kingdom. Irwin had met with the Japanese foreign minister who informed him that a "strong current of public opinion in the press and among politicians and the people was showing itself in reference to the extension of Japanese residents in Hawaii of the privilege of the electoral franchise." The Japanese press, he emphasized, was "unanimous on the question." Honolulu must accede on this matter, he stressed, otherwise "some action will be taken in the next session of the Japanese Parliament which may endanger our great industrial Emigration Convention."[28]
Repeatedly, Irwin informed his superiors of the growing anger in Japan about the deprivation of Nipponese voting rights. Thus, in July 1893 there was a very large public meeting in Tokyo "at which speeches were made by Mr. Hoshi, President of the House of Representatives and others urging the Japanese Government to press forward the question of granting the Japanese the
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electoral franchise in Hawaii." Temperatures were rising and pulses were racing in Tokyo, he underscored in his briefing of Dole. "Every day," he said, "articles on the subject appear in the newspapers and the matter will be strongly brought before the Japanese Parliament when it meets next November."[n29]
The Japanese elite ignored such pressures at their peril as the nation, which was expanding at breakneck speed in its climb to full-scale imperialist status, was undergoing the resultant severe strains. It was in that context that an attempt to assassinate Japanese leader Count Okuma was made. A dynamite bomb was thrown into his open carriage, which, exploding, shattered the bones of his leg below the knee, resulting in amputation of the leg above the knee. Capping off this orgy of bloodletting, the assassin immediately killed himself by cutting his throat. The wounded Okuma was not a man of great physical strength, which was just one more reason he was guarded by a detective and twelve policemen[n30] -- but to no avail, as the fury of some Japanese bubbled over.
So moved, on the "12th day, the 4th month, the 27th year of Meiji," the chief foreign affairs spokesman of the increasingly nationalistic Japanese denounced Honolulu's "unfair discrimination" and insisted on "actual equality of treatment with the subjects and citizens of other Treaty Powers"; these were Tokyo's "just and reasonable expectations," he added.[n31] Tokyo was becoming more and more insistent about the contours of Hawaiian policy, raising the specter of a de facto annexation -- a prospect that was chilling for a planter class who found this possible eventuality difficult to reconcile with white supremacy. Irwin, who proudly acknowledged that his ancestor was Benjamin Franklin, was facing the grim possibility of being a founding father of not only a failed state but one to be swallowed by a rising Asian power.[n32]
A demarche noted that the so-called Bayonet Constitution of 1887, which continued in force under King Kalakaua and Queen Liliuokalani until 1893, excluded not just Japanese but all Asiatics from citizenship. Then in 1894 "during the sitting of the Constitutional Convention [a] strong diplomatic demand was made by the Japanese authorities that Japan should no longer be excluded from the right to vote. To avoid granting the franchise to Japanese the Republic of Hawaii was forced to frame its Constitution in such a manner as to stop all naturalization."[n33] Japan was neither placated nor amused.
"The Imperial Government have no wish to question the right of the Government of Hawaii to limit or suspend immigration," insisted the Japanese consul in Honolulu, Hisashi 5himamura, "provided such limitation or suspension is general and equally applicable to all foreigners." He urged that Honolulu give this matter "careful reconsideration," but in an era when Jim Crow on the mainland was assuming ironclad status, it was not easy for the new government
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in Hawaii to extend the privileges of whiteness to Asians -- even well-armed ones in Japan.[n34]
In reality, Japan had a strong case. With precision Tokyo forwarded to Honolulu a detailed list of Hawaii's treaties with various European powers that suggested powerfully through implication how Nipponese were being treated discriminatorily.[35]
There were other complications. Though Japan was presumably protesting against restrictions targeting all Asiatics, their war with China in 1895 made Tokyo object when a reliable source informed them that Honolulu "has decided through a Cabinet meeting ... to make the proportion of laborers for the future to be one-third Japanese and two-thirds Chinese and all planters have been notified."[36] Tokyo was not pleased either when apprised of "hostile legislation on the part of Hawaii" that was "directed especially if not exclusively against Japanese sake."[37] Was it possible that the plurality of Japanese laborers in Hawaii had sparked such laws? When the Japanese consulate general in Honolulu was "raised to the rank of a Legation," the Hawaiian authorities did not know whether to celebrate the upgrade[38] or worry that it was a further signal that Tokyo was targeting the former Sandwich Islands. It was becoming ever clearer that it was going to be exceedingly difficult to maintain a small outpost of white supremacy in the middle of the Pacific -- unless it had the protective umbrella of a major power like the United States. Irwin forwarded a lengthy analysis to Honolulu in August 1894 providing prescient predictions about future Japanese aggression, especially in China. "I do not anticipate any trouble in Hawaii between Japanese and Chinese," he added, "but it might be well to take precautions quietly."[n39]
Irwin may have had reasons to worry. In an interview in March 1893 with a Mr. Fugii of Tokyo's consulate in Honolulu, this Japanese official was pressed about the presence of armed and trained Japanese military in Hawaii itself. He refused to deny this; there were, it was reported, between 1,000 and 1,500 soldiers among the Japanese living on the island. Irwin admitted that there were probably some, which may explain why he chose to retain the article containing this assertion.[n40]
Already Washington's representative in Honolulu was filing away reams of articles pointing in the direction of annexation by the United States. "This country," said one typical piece, "seems to have arrived at the parting of the ways, which will decide its fate, either as an Asiatic or Caucasian colony." Since the local European and Euro-American elite could not stand up to Tokyo, annexation by the United States was the way out. This was not just a favor to this elite group, it was thought. As one journalist put it, "All that
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Malta and Cyprus could be to England in battle with Russia, these islands [i.e., Hawaii] would be to America in struggle with Great Britain. On the other hand, if they should be defaulted to England, the United States would feel the menace of another Bermuda."[n41]
According to his sympathetic biographer, Sanford Ballard Dole, who led the nascent Hawaiian republic, affirmed that King Kalakaua's visits to China and Japan were disturbing because they did not favor either group, especially after their problems with contract labor.[n42] The question of white supremacy was rarely far from the calculations of those on both sides of the barricades. When a prominent U.S. senator and four other congressmen arrived in Honolulu during this turbulent decade, the leading solon assured indigenes that under the United States they would be able to vote "just as blacks did in the American South," unaware that those listening knew enough not to believe that blacks were enjoying freedom and equality. As the scholar Noenoe K. Silva put it, they "knew that race hatred was the root of what had been said about Kalakaua -- that his father was not Kapa'akea but an ex-slave named Blossom and they remembered Thurston's 1894 speech to the American League justifying the disfranchisement of American blacks. On October 23 Ke Aloha Aina [a journal for indigenes] ran an editorial entitled ... "Are Hawaiians Going to Be Like Blacks?" ... in response to Morgan. It said that the haole [white] hatred for and fear of the blacks and the Indians ... was well understood .... At the end, the editorial said that yes, Hawaiians will be like American blacks if the islands are annexed because their freedom will be taken away."[n43] The dislodged Queen Liliuokalani asked plaintively why the United States would move aggressively against her kingdom "in order that another race problem shall be injected into the social and political perplexities" with which this huge nation was already struggling.[n44]
On the other hand, London had a churlish view of the self-styled republic, with its representative in Honolulu complaining in May 1893 that the "Provisional Government continues to enroll men of the lowest character who constitute a danger to the country, and who are insubordinate. In fact, the Government at the present time is a sort of 'military despotism'" -- he might have added that it was a "despotism" that targeted the indigenes.[n45] London's representative, James Wodehouse, was a veteran and experienced diplomat and had been in Hawaii for thirty years by the time of the coup. There was more than one obstacle he had to hurdle[n46] in that his nation was routinely vilified, notably underlined was the "fanatical Anglophobe" atmosphere that supposedly prevailed at the Washington Post.[n47] But his major project --countering U.S. influence -- had been monumentally unsuccessful, partly due to a failure of imagination on
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London's part in that it had difficulty coming to grips with an independent kingdom with wide influence in the subregion.[n48] However, by 1894 he had a confidential interview with the queen and learned that "she would not yield to the Republican government" and that "she had determined to fight. Her plans were all made .... The rising would take place in a few days but ample warning would be given to the British Consul-General."[n49]
Subsequently, a group of indigenes called the Hui Aloha Aine, also known as the Hawaii Patriotic League, requested London's intervention on their behalf.[n50] Perhaps such seditious contacts shed light on why in 1894 authorities granted permission to the USS Philadelphia and even the Japanese cruiser Kongo to land their men in drilling exercises, but forbade the HMS Champion. "The government [was] much dissatisfied with the 'attitude of reserve' which I had maintained," sniffed Wodehouse. "[I was told that] the Government [was] angry with [me] for 'doing [my] duty.' They wanted me to take sides, their side, and [I] very properly refused to do so."[n51] U.S. naval officer Lucien Young expressed the sentiments of many of his comrades when he said of the British in Hawaii that the "majority of them are imbued with a sense of superiority" and, moreover, were "sympathizers with the corrupt royalty and constantly intriguing against American influences."[n52]
But in the run-up to the U.S. annexation, a good deal of emphasis was placed on the supposed threat from Tokyo, more so than London. Elite leader Lorrin Thurston was wringing his hands about Japan in early 1897, observing, "The present extraordinary movement from Japan to Hawaii is part of a systematic plan with the full approval of the Japanese government, to gain control of the islands."[n53] The minister in Honolulu told Washington "that the United States must decide whether Hawaii was to be an American or an Asiatic country." In April 1897, the Honolulu Star declared, "It is the white race against the yellow."[n54] The influential Washington Evening Star seemed to suggest that the impending war against Spain was a proxy conflict to preempt Japan as worry was expressed about Tokyo seizing the Philippines, adding, that Japan did not fear Spain.[n55] Honolulu, increasingly concerned about Japan itself, was hedging, with some urging, this republic to be neutral in case of a Spanish-American war, as the "superiority of the Spanish fleet near the Philippines over the American Asiatic squadron is acknowledged by all naval authorities in the States and Europe."[n56] U.S. Secretary of State John Sewall was informed similarly in May 1898, suggesting that annexation of Hawaii was also driven by defensive concerns.[n57] Thus, the congruence of the annexation of Hawaii as the war with Spain was being launched may not have been coincidence. Annexation seemed to arrive in June 1898 in response to a flutter of neutrality in Honolulu, nervous about irking
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Japan -- which was an overall concern given Tokyo's militant response to the deprivation of suffrage rights to those of Nipponese origin.[n58] As the then-republic's foreign minister, F. M. Hatch, observed in 1897, Tokyo "had entered a strong protest against annexation on the ground that it would change existing conditions in the Pacific and might therefore cause international difficulties and also might interfere with the rights of Japanese citizens in Hawaii."[n59]
Like many indigenes, numerous African-Americans viewed the annexation with a distinct unease, which was an extension of how they viewed the dislodging of the kingdom itself. One Negro newspaper termed the Euro-American aggressors as "not a particle less piratical than the infamous manstealers of antebellum days." Outrage was expressed concerning the "dishonorable role which this [U.S.] government was made to play in the diabolical proceeding. There is not the least ground for doubt but for aid rendered the adventurous buccaneers by the demonstrations made in their favor by our navy --particularly by our man-of-war Philadelphia." When the so-called Republic of Hawaii began inching toward annexation, there was no less indignation. "And now the same gang of robbers," it was said in a thinly veiled reference to the coterie surrounding Sanford B. Dole, "are moving heaven and earth to induce this [U.S.] government to shoulder the whole burden of their villainy by becoming the receiver of their stolen property."[n60] Another newspaper with reason to know declared, "The 'Negro Press' has no sympathy for the Hawaiian annexation hippodrome."[n61] No, it was reported, African-American hostility to annexation was wide and deep." Dole himself was termed the "prince of hypocrites" with Hawaii seen as analogous to the dankest Jim Crow precincts as "it is run upon the American plan, Japanese and Negroes not being consulted, while the natives are not thought of."[n63]
Yet the smashing victory over Spain, accompanied by seizure of the Philippines and annexation of Hawaii, did not end a gnawing concern about the rise of Japan. A few years after the flames of war had died down, the U.S. Department of Commerce was informed that in Hawaii on most of the plantations the labor force "is so overwhelmingly Japanese that this nationality now completely controls the labor situation." "The Japanese laborers realize this," it was reported, "and are becoming aggressive and self-assertive in their dealings with the employers. Within the past two months strikes of considerable importance have occurred on the plantations. One of the strikes, involving about 1400 Japanese, necessitated the calling out of the entire police force and the National Guard of the territory and resulted in the killing of one Japanese striker and the wounding of two others." More and more, the desire was felt in many quarters to "teach the Japs a lesson." Indicative of their increased assertiveness was the
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fact that the Japanese in Hawaii had "begun a movement to demand the recall of their Consul for not properly protecting their interests and should they effect a change the next Consul might prove over-zealous in protecting their rights as subjects of the Japanese government."[n64]
Theodore Roosevelt, the highly race-conscious U.S. leader, remained in the vortex of these debates. As president, he told the acting governor of the territory, "I will help you in every way in your purpose to try to secure a white population of actual land tillers who are small land owners," but this proved to be a task beyond his ken.[n65] He informed a later governor about the intense feelings of bitterness welling up in those of Japanese origin in Hawaii due to racism inflicted by the haole.[n66]
Then Roosevelt was told that Japanese in Hawaii were requesting that one of their battleships be stationed there. " [The] Japanese here have all along been steadily gaining in strength, numbers, influence and financial matters," said a worried correspondent, "until now they practically control all of the labor and mechanical occupations in the plantations and are the traders, merchants and mechanics and builders of our city driving out American citizens .... [The] Japs," it was said crudely, "have our planters cooned up in a tree." This recent demand was actually "the first time that they have ventured into print, ostensibly to invite the aid of their nation." The correspondent was explicit: "The Japanese are asking for a battleship, but we are the ones that ought to be asking for a battleship and a first class one at that stationed here all the time."[n67] Fears were not allayed when shortly thereafter a Japanese ship arrived in Hawaii with more than 560 aboard, supposedly looking for jobs; the "discovery of the customs officials that many of the men who have arrived by the vessel are ex-Japanese soldiers and they brought their uniforms with them" was unsettling. The "standard of the men appeared to be much higher than what would ordinarily be expected with a common laborer," according to one journalist on the scene. Among other things, "the men were better educated.[n68]
There was more bad news for the defenders of white supremacy. A high level commission reconfirmed in 1905 -- the year Japan affirmed its own mettle by subduing Russia in war -- that "with the exception of the Portuguese the supply of whom is no longer available, white laborers are found to be unfitted for tropical work." Indeed, it was avowed, "white men cannot and will not stand the work in the cane fields." Thus, it seemed Hawaii was doomed to rely on Asian labor. "There are those who feel that it would be unwise," said Gorham D. Gilman of the influential Lake Mohonk Conference, "to increase further this already large number of Japanese elated and self-confident over the success of the late war. Who can foresee the relations which may govern
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the future trade of the Pacific?" He reverted back to China. "Why is he so much desired? For very good reasons. He is a more quiet person naturally [while] the Japanese have more frequently the opposite qualifications." So more Chinese should be admitted. Unfortunately, that collided frontally with the raging anti-Chinese sentiment then reigning on the West Coast of the United States and was a nonstarter.[n69]
Soon the Mohonk Conference had moved to a higher level of hysteria.
The "Chinese and the Japanese whose touch and intermingling with our race today constitutes the race problem not only of Hawaii, but ... the American republic and largely of the whole world," was the theme. And this race problem in Hawaii was tied up with the labor question. What was the remedy then? There should be a kind of "racial protectionism," it was thought, just as one seeks to "protect our infant industries." "Competition [was] good [but] up to a certain degree," it was thought, just as "bad money will drive out good money ... every practical business man recognizes the soundness of Gresham's law." As they examined the world, these U.S. elites thought there was, to "repeat, a competition that kills."[n70]
This perception was growing steadily among mainland elites and had penetrated the consciousness of the top U.S. military strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan. "I myself early in life was in Japan for more than a year at the time of the revolution which immediately preceded the era of the Meiji," he recalled later in the London Times. Thus, he felt he had good reason to conclude, " [It is] reasonable that a great number of my fellow citizens, knowing the problem we have in the colored race among us, should dread the introduction of what they believe will constitute another race problem; and one much more difficult; because the virile qualities of the Japanese will still more successfully withstand assimilation.[n71]
Mahan, who casually referred to "niggers," drew analogies between the "menacing appearance of the Japanese questions" and that of the Negro.[n72] "I feel strongly," he insisted, "that with the black race question on our hand we must withstand a further yellow one," lest these two questions merge with disastrous consequences all around for white supremacy. This served to "point to a time when Great Britain may have to consider her relations to Japan in the light of those to the United States and Australia, where the 'white' feeling also prevails."[n73] This time arrived in December 1941 when these three powers were aligned against Tokyo but well before then, as he informed the New York Times, he was quite worried about a "new race problem" as the United States contained a "population predominantly Asiatic on the Pacific slope west of the Rocky Mountains."[n74]
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What Mahan was observing was manifested curiously when the African-American boxer Jack Johnson traveled to Australia for a match where he encountered an "orgy of Anglo-Saxonism" generated by the visit of a U.S. fleet, a visit that reinforced Australia's sense of itself as what poet Roderic Quinn had termed the "World's White Outpost."[n75] By then Australia was well on its way in developing its infamous "White Australia" policy, a policy that not only was assisted enormously by trans-Pacific trends but was materially aided by the deportation of unfree labor from the South Seas. Like neighboring Fiji, the "lucky country" also contained a robust chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, who also happened to be a staunch and robust advocate of a "White Australia."[n76]
As the Portuguese in Hawaii learned to their utter dismay, the hallowed halls of whiteness did not necessarily encompass all from Europe. Thus, more than a century after "White Australia" had been proclaimed, the Sydney Morning Herald in seeking to provide a legal rationale for contemporary Asian migrants noted how in 1903 an English-speaking German immigrant ran afoul of Canberra's strict racial policies and how "Australia's first boat person, the Czech writer Egon Kisch ... jumped ship in Melbourne in 1934 [and] was tested in Scottish Gaelic. He also failed, despite speaking 10 European languages. The then Menzies government's smug amusement, however, was short-lived. Kisch proved in court that his Gaelic test had been mistranslated
and won the right to stay."[n77]
Thus, by the time of Pearl Harbor the stage had been set for a "race war"
of tragic proportions.[n78] This conflict unfolded, inter alia, in the South Seas, which not so long ago had been ravaged by the depredations of blackbirding, a good deal of it at the hands of U.S. nationals like "Bully" Hayes. The indigenes of the Solomon Islands, Guadalcanal, the New Hebrides, and elsewhere may have had a hard time accepting the democratic pronouncements of the allies as a result.[n79]
It is unclear when this practice of body-snatching ceased, in any case.
Thus, in 1892 a California journalist named W. H. Brommage reported on a blackbirding enterprise under the joint management of San Francisco and Central American capital, as South Sea Islanders were brought illicitly to Guatemala to labor, suggesting that like its hated predecessor the African Slave Trade, blackbirding was eminently malleable and adaptable. The mostly U.S. crew visited eleven islands of the Gilbert group and delivered 388 imprisoned laborers to wealthy Spanish plantation owners in San Jose de Guatemala. Not mincing words, he called the vessel of delivery a slave ship that ultimately anchored in San Francisco Bay at the end of its six-montb
voyage.
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Born in Britain, Brommage had arrived in Brooklyn in 1868 and came to the city by the bay in 1887. The reporter had engaged in masquerade to get on board and acknowledged that their mission was "generally known" before they left San Francisco, dismissing the typical plea that the crew had been duped. They passed through Honolulu looking for "niggers" and some of this despised Pacific indigene group were also taken to Mexico. How did they do it? "The best way to proceed," he detailed, "was to get all the young people, [and] then their parents and relatives would accompany them rather than part with them." So, they grabbed a little boy and "the mother and father rather than stand on the shore and watch the ship go down behind the horizon to a far-off port and unknown world with their boy aboard, signed the articles and laid down their fate with his .... These stories were enacted over and over again." Aboard the slave ship was "Black Tom," a "nigger sailor who had been to sea in English vessels and had spent some time on a Mexican plantation as a laborer"; he "was in sympathy with the natives and traveling from island to island ... used every endeavor to prevent the natives leaving their homes." He "was the means of keeping many hundreds at home who would otherwise have signed a contract." Brommage also raised the specter of South Sea Islanders decamping in the United States itself in his discussion of Melanesians in league with slavers who arrived in San Francisco,[n80] which brings the story of the United States and the Pacific full circle and also raises the intriguing possibility that some in the Americas (including the United States) who have heretofore been thought to be African-American may not be, at least not in the sense they imagine.
This is a perversely appropriate point to consider, given that contrary to popular belief, slavery in the United States did not end altogether in 1865. It thrives today in a new form, as an estimated 10,000 captive laborers are toiling at any given moment in the United States. Cases occur in at least ninety cities nationally with the greatest concentration in California, Texas, Florida, and New York: 46 percent of these victims toil in sex services such as prostitution and strip clubs, 27 percent in domestic work, 10 percent in agriculture, 5 percent in sweatshop factory jobs, and 4 percent in restaurants and hotels.[n81] During the late 1990s, there were several notorious farm labor servitude cases in Florida and forced prostitution cases involving hundreds of Mexican and Thai women; U.S. authorities estimate that 800,000 people are trafficked against their will between nations each year, and that many hundreds more are enslaved within their own nations. The government also estimates that about 15,000 people are trafficked to the United States each year.[n82] Though the International Labor Organization long had been concerned with this pestilence of slavery, it continues to persist.[n83]
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MEANWHILE, HAWAII in 1959 had become the fiftieth state. However, as 2005 dawned a serious and far-reaching movement had developed -- as the New York Times put it -- "to take the 50th star off the flag and to create a government that does its negotiating with the State Department, not Interior." In short, the idea had taken root, particularly among indigenes, of revisiting annexation and statehood and pushing for independence. In response, Congress was contemplating a bill that undercut this dream by adjusting the status of Hawaiian indigenes.[n84] According to the Los Angeles Times, "The majority of Hawaii residents" support "sovereignty," with the exception of "political conservatives, mostly Caucasian." Indigenes, on the other hand, see this movement "as the only way to right the wrong of 1893 when the U.S. helped overthrow the Hawaiian monarchy, leading to annexation and statehood." As in the nineteenth century, leaders of French Tahiti are now in close contact with indigenous Hawaiians as they seek to coordinate their mutual drive for independence.[n85] The Hawaiian sovereignty movement gathered steam in 1993, a century after the Hawaiian revolution when in a joint resolution signed into law by President Clinton, the so-called Apology Bill was passed, which skirted the issue of responsibility but commemorated the 100th anniversary of the coup that toppled Queen Liliuokalani, though it did apologize.[n86]
South Sea connections with African-Americans also survived the new century. In Hawaii, Haunani-Kay Trask, a leader of the indigenous movement, titled her critically acclaimed manifesto about the plight of her people From a Native Daughter, in conscious imitation of works by both Richard Wright and James Baldwin.[n87] This was an ironic confirmation of the point that the conclusion of the U.S. Civil War, which abolished African slavery, unleashed enormous changes in the Pacific.
Meanwhile in Fiji, the scene of stormy events that had roiled the waters of the region, the advent of British colonialism had brought an influx of South Asian laborers, descendants of whom spoke of the "unspeakable hardship, humiliation" they suffered "under an evil and cruel system akin to slavery." "As part of their religious upbringing, Hindus are averse to taking their own life," yet "statistics show a high rate of suicide among indentured laborers in Fiji," that is, "20 times higher than that prevalent in their homeland in India and worse than in any other British colony which used Indian indentured laborer."[n88] In nearby Australia, the close connection with the United States continues, as figures as diverse as Russell Crowe, Rupert Murdoch, and Heath Ledger seem so seamlessly integrated into U.S. culture that one could easily suspect they were born here -- as opposed to the South Seas. In this they trod the path blazed by Errol Flynn, born in
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Tasmania, site of one of the most devastating assaults on indigenes in the region.
Thus, as a new century dawns, trends that were set in motion over two hundred years ago, when Captain Cook arrived in the Hawaiian Isles and dissolute Irish and British were dumped in Australia, continue to create ripples and waves. The "White Pacific" with all that continues to suggest about a racially skewed distribution of wealth and resources remains a reality -- so far.
===============
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** Content from the book that is specifically devoted to the history of people of African ancestry in Hawaii, but not necessarily relevant to the issue of Hawaiian sovereignty.
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In 1820 Sylvia Mosely Bingham, the prominent U.S. settler in Hawaii, was surprised that Anthony Allen, a black man from Schenectady, New York seemed to live more confortably than anyone else on the island. [n59: Journal of Sylvia Mosely Bingham, June 20, 1820, Box 2, Bingham Family Papers, Yale University)] By 1833, 'blacks were so numerous in Honolulu that they had begun to feel the need for community organizations, as nearly half of all whalers who docked there and the core of a royal Hawaiian band for King Kamehameha III were all of African-American descent. King Kalakaua, it was reported, was 'unusually dark for a Polynesian and several of his features suggested a Negro inheritance,' a presumption that caused the Tokyo press to term him a 'dark almost Black King.' He solidified his ties with Negroes by visiting Hampton Institute in Virginia -- Booker T. Washington's alma mater -- which was modeled after a Hawaii school. [n60: Kathryn Waddell Takara, 'The African Diaspora in Nineteenth Century Hawaii' in 'They followed the Tradewinds: African-Americans in Hawaii, ed. Miles M. Jackson, 1-23, 10,11,16,17 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004).] (In turn, the otherwise moderate Washington 'spoke forcefully against the hostile seizure of the Kingdom and against annexation' in 1898.) [n61: Marc Scruggs, 'Prelude to a New Century" in Miles Jackson, op. cit., 53-69, 55] As sailors jumped ship and slave runaways made their way westward, Hawaii's small Negro population increased accordingly.[n62: Census Data on Blacks in Oregon, 1850, Box 2, Folder 9, Oregon Black History Project papers, Oregon Historical Society -- Portland. See also Ernest Dodge, New England and the South Seas (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965), 43: "The dominance of American whaling is shown by the fact that in 1843 out of 140 whaling vessels arriving at the Hawaiian islands, 132 were American. In 1844, 160 whaling vessels visited Honolulu and 326 whalers arrived at the port of Lahaina." Many of the sailors aboard were Negroes and exemplifying the objective tie that existed between this group, Hawaii and Tokyo was the point that "the islands received a further increase in visiting whale ships upon the discovery of the rich whaling grounds off the coast of Japan."]
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** pg 129
CHAPTER 8
A Black Pacific?
As the local opponents of the Kingdom of Hawaii surged to power at the end of the nineteenth century, they quickly unsheathed a powerful weapon against their opponents. They whispered that King Kalakaua and his sister were not true Hawaiians but rather the children of a Negro coachman, John Poppin, who had been their mother's secret lover; these Euro-Americans became even bolder and followed King Kalakaua to his speaking engagements, where they held up an effigy of the coachman and jeered "nigger" as he spoke.[n1] This crusade reached a zenith three days before the 1873 election -- as black voting rights on the mainland were under siege -- when a black effigy labeled 'David Kalakaua Blossom' was paraded through the streets of Honolulu, alluding to the allegation that David's mother had taken Jamaican John W. Blossom as her paramour in the 1840s and had borne him a son.[n2] Thus, there was a certain "Negro-ification" of Hawaiians with a concomitant degradation. One of his white contemporaries referred to King Kalakaua as "a man apparently of Negro type rather than Hawaiian with thick lips, flat nose and hair more wavy than that of the pure-blooded Hawaiians,"[n3] Speaking of the last monarch, Queen Liliuokalani, U.S. naval officer Lucien Young asserted that "she was darker than the ordinary native, showing evident traces of Negro blood."[n4] The visiting writer Mark Twain was struck similarly, observing, "the majority of the people almost are as dark as Negroes."[n5]
THE OVERTHROW of the monarchy was occurring as white supremacy on the mainland was asphyxiating Negro suffrage rights, as African-Americans generally were being demonized. Perhaps, inevitably, Hawaiians -- who, after all, were generally dark skinned -- were tarred with a similar brush. They were thought of as being part of a hardly differentiated mass of "non-whites" who were not worthy of self-determination, nor of being deemed peers of their presumed Euro-American "betters." Thus, when Hawaiian royalty visited
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Washington, D.C. before the Civil War, Julia Gardiner (future wife of President John Tyler) noted that one member of this delegation had a complexion "about as dark as a Negro but with Indian hair," while John Quincy Adams described the prince as "nearly black as an Ethiopian, but with a European face and wool for hair." Adams even suspected that the difficulty the United States had with the "tangled question of extending formal diplomatic recognition to the Hawaiians" was that they were black.[n6] Scholar Noenoe K. Silva observed accurately that the rationales used to subjugate Negroes were eerily similar to those deployed against Hawaiian indigenes.[n7]
Yet this dual denigration coexisted uneasily beside another undeniable fact: African-Americans and their black counterparts in the Caribbean often fled to Hawaii and the South Seas generally during the nineteenth century precisely because they perceived -- correctly -- that their opportunities would be less circumscribed there than in their homelands. W.E.B. Du Bois was rhapsodic in discussing Hawaii, with its beauty and mixture of peoples. "If one could but die and find this paradise forever, endless with youth," he suggested, nirvana itself would be attained.[n8] Writer Susan Bell confirms that "blacks early found in Hawaii a freedom from racial bias seldom experienced in the settled and more 'civilized' societies of the mainland."[n9] As Hawaii became a familiar port of call during the heyday of whaling, the number of blacks flooding into the island chain -- in search of a kind of paradise all their own -- escalated. Honolulu was such an enchanting port, in any case, that many strong-minded captains refused to touch there, for desertions of nearly half a ship's complement were not uncommon. A disproportionate percentage of these would have been U.S. Negroes.[n10]
The sociologist Lloyd L. Lee once remarked that "a Negro might well be mistaken for an ethnic Hawaiian," which facilitated the assimilation of the former. This group of migrants -- mostly male -- often mated with Hawaiian women with their progeny being classified as part Hawaiians, which complicates the attempt to trace their lineage because it signifies a kind of racial integration that was starkly distinct from that of the mainland.[11] When post-Civil War exhortations accelerated, calling on African-Americans to migrate to work in Hawaii, the presumed absence of racial distinctions there became a favorite theme of those who encouraged blacks to sign contracts with the islands' sugar plantations, just as Negroes routinely expressed sympathy for the "Hawaii for Hawaiians" movement that upset so many Euro-Americans. Frederick Douglass was not alone in condemning what he termed the "unwarrantable intermeddling of Americans in Hawaiian affairs," while a black editor in Washington suspected that cartoons in white newspapers depicting the queen
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as a "thick lip and unrefined Negro" were indicative of the status which Hawaiians would be assigned if they came under the protection of the U.S. flag. African-Americans generally objected to making the island chain an American plantation of Claus Spreckels, the sugar baron. Their "prevailing view appeared to oppose any annexation scheme which would exploit darker races or deny the fulfillment of their national aspirations." These African-Americans feared that increasing Euro-American encroachment in Hawaii would endanger its unique environment. "Whether they favored selective emigration or mass deportation," one writer reported, "Negro and white advocates of black colonization maintained that Negro Americans would find the climate, society and economy of the Pacific islands congenial to their welfare and prosperity."[n12]
Exhibit A in contemplating the Negro in Hawaii was Anthony Allen, formerly the slave of a man residing in New York state. He is said to have escaped from slavery and arrived in Oahu in 1810 settling at Waikiki; during the 182Os he was described as possessing a dozen houses, the premises clean and orderly; a native wife and three children; and a farm well stocked with cows and goats. He was a "dog-fancier" and a blacksmith and both well connected and respected in the island chain, enjoying a life that was generally beyond the imagination of his compatriots on the mainland. However, he was not alone since the peripatetic of the Cape Verde islands were also to be found in the Hawaiian Islands.[n13] But Allen towered over these and others, having "taken to himself a Hawaiian wife and became a prosperous farmer through patent industry."[n14] He had come a long way since the day in 1774 when he was born into bondage in New York,[n15] to the point where he was widely regarded as one of the wealthiest residents on Oahu.[16]
In June 1820, Sylvia Moseley Bingham of a pioneering Euro-American family in Hawaii observed; "I believe [Allen] lives the most comfortably of any on the island-has a wife and two pretty children, the eldest of whom he has taught its letters. He has been very kind to us, sending us potatoes, squashes, etc., as often as once in two weeks, a goat or a kid neatly dressed every morning, two bottles of goat's milk and many things I cannot mention. He lives too far from us to benefit his family as we wish." She added with equal curiosity that his beneficence was an example of "how the Lord provides for us," eliding -- as was all too typical -- how African-Americans "provided" for all too many Euro-Americans.[n17]
Again, Allen was not singular.[n18] When the budding writer Herman Melville arrived in Honolulu a few years after Allen's death, he encountered a "jolly little black called Billy Loon, the royal drummer and pounder of the tambourine,"[n19] who was emblematic of the substantial role that Negro musicians played there.
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Generally, U.S. Negroes -- like the nation from which they had sprung -- were steadily moving westward during the nineteenth century, though they had an added incentive since it was thought that racism would be less intense the further one moved away from the Deep South.[n20] One visitor to Hawaii during Allen's heyday observed, "Commerce brings to the Sandwich Islands the most colorful examples of all the world's peoples. Among the servants of fashionable women, I detected a young Negro and a flathead from the northwest coast of America. Here for the first time I saw Chinese."[n21] In such a diverse atmosphere, far beyond the polarized European-African dynamic that dominated the South and the racial discourse there, a site where the former were simply a minority amongst minorities, it was possible for an AfricanAmerican to better flash his colors and excel.
Traditional attitudes remained obstinate, however. Titus Coan, for example, was born in Connecticut and in 1835 came to Hawaii as a missionary; writing from the Pacific, he instructed his coworkers in South Africa, who were also engaged in a spiritual quest. Thus, he had a unique perspective on Hawaiians and their opposite numbers in Africa. He spoke of the "common bond of brotherhood" that he believed already existed, as he sought to unite Africa and Hawaii "by a cord whose vibrations will be constantly felt at each extremity." Yet he also told his peers about the "rude [and] strange" indigenes with their "barbarous language," a mind-set that was then prevalent among all too many Euro-Americans in both the Pacific and Cape Town.[n22]
Coan was not unique in this regard. Samuel Chapman Armstrong was a founder of the historically black Hampton University in Virginia (where he left a lasting impression on Booker T. Washington, the preeminent African-American leader), though he was born in Maui in 1839. "Sometimes when I stand outside a Negro church," he said tellingly, "I get precisely the effect of a Hawaiian congregation, the same fullness and heartiness and occasional exquisite voices and am instantly transplanted 10,000 miles away, to the great Kawaiahao Church where father used to preach to 2500 people." Like others, he often spoke of the similarity of the problems of the U.S. South and of Hawaiian life, each encompassed by a large population of dark-skinned people.[n23]
The royal family may have noticed that U.S. Negroes were sited strategically throughout the region and this may have recommended them. Armstrong's brother, William N. Armstrong, served as attorney general in King Kalakaua's Cabinet and thus went to Japan then China with the monarch. When they arrived in China, he took note of the presence of the manager of the China Merchants Steamship Company, which owned a fleet of thirty-six large steamers and several vessels of the Hawaiian group. "[The] manager,"
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he said, "was a fine American Negro who had shown much ability when employed by the American legation in Pekin [sic]; he was not only well educated but spoke several languages, including Chinese; his father was a Negro preacher in Washington, D.C. He had married a handsome English girl in Shanghai, who was an artist; but his marriage to a white person had much incensed the Americans living in Shanghai, though it was cordially approved by the English, German and French residents."[n24]
The resemblance that existed between many Pacific Islanders and Africans facilitated such comparisons. One scholar has described the Melanesians as Oceanic Negroes, while the Polynesians were believed to be derived from "Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid" strains. Quite often it was the latter strain that was highlighted.[n25] Thomas Trood, former U.S. consul in Apia, Samoa, observed about a century ago that "the Fijians also intermixed with the Tongans, in consequence of which the latter are much more of the Negro or Papuan type than their straight-haired Samoan ancestors."[n26] Visiting the South Seas in the 1830s, writer Milo Calkin referred to the indigenes as being "tall, strong and well formed" with "light copper complexion and straight black hair. They are very indolent and their propensity to steal" --something that was also thought to be a characteristic of Negroes -- "made it necessary for us to conceal everything about the ship on our own persons that they could get hold & notwithstanding all our precaution they succeeded in carrying off several articles which we were never able to regain."[n27] Another writer in 1880 noted that an acquaintance "always connected the Papuan race with the Negroes of Africa" since they were "all children of Ham."[n28] Even those who dissented from these parallels left the inference that these comparisons were hegemonic. Thus, one Euro-American missionary went to some lengths to point out that the "eastern or brown Polynesian race [were] in no way, however distantly, related to the Negro."[n29]
Of course, there were also comparisons between indigenous Americans and their counterparts in the South Seas. In 1880, as both groupings were under deadly siege, one writer observed,
"I was informed by a "beachcomber" that in some islands of the Low Archipelago (which includes the Marquesas) there is a tradition of some of the ancestry of their people having gone or returned from the big land to the East -- or more properly speaking -- West -- i.e., America. It is a fact that the skeletons found in the caverns of Kentucky and Tennessee are wrapped in feather cloaks which was a custom of the Sandwich Islands; while it is the opinion of most American antiquaries that the best-defined specimens of art among the antiquities of Ohio and Kentucky are of a decided Polynesian character.[n30]
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** Skipping to page 138
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Negro in the condition of slavery; and even this latter exception holds good only for a few countries." Chinese were not like "a Negro nor a Polynesian in character," however, in that they were said to possess "strong tenacity of rights, quick ebullition of temper and readiness for fight."[n55] The informant William Hillebrand was not extraordinary in his perception. Writing a few years later from Honolulu, another representative of the planters, Z. Y. Squires, spoke of the Chinese as "the very lowest order of humanity ... belonging to a species of the African chattering bushman or the direct descendant of the ourang outang [sic]." Their presence had caused much of the white population to leave the islands."[n56] Actually, this equation of Chinese laborers with Africans was appropriate in the sense that few could differentiate between the Hawaiian penal contract and other forms of unfree labor, all of which were akin to "brutal slavery."[n57]
At times when considering the stew of color in the Pacific, some Euro-Americans went a step further in conflation, imagining that what was developing was a united challenge to white supremacy. "In the Negroes [of] the South, the Indian in the West, the Chinese in the Pacific, have we not enough problems to tax our philanthropy?" queried Julius A. Palmer rhetorically, speaking disparagingly of Hawaii. "Do we covet another set of national wards? Must we add to these another of the dark-skinned races, to say nothing of the Asiatics, the Portuguese and the difficult questions of contract labor and the employment problem?"[n58]
But in Hawaii the dominant comparative racial theme, particularly by visiting Euro-Americans, focused on African-Americans. Visiting Honolulu in April 1866, Mark Twain focused on General George Washington, an "aged, limping Negro man" who was "seventy years old and he looked it. He was as crazy as a loon" and "very violent" with "arms corded with muscle." It was "thought that he was one of a party of Negroes who fitted out a ship and sailed from a New England port some twenty years ago. He is fond of talking in his dreamy, incoherent way, about the Blue Ridge in Virginia and seems familiar with Richmond and Lynchburg." Twain also employed the Negro as a point of reference in assessing the labor situation, which in that year was in flux in light of the jolt to the sugar and cotton industries provided by the U.S. Civil War. "The hire of each laborer," he said, "[is] $100 a year -- just about what it used to cost to board and clothe and doctor a Negro -- but there is no original outlay of $500 to $1000 for the purchase of the laborer."[n59] Twain also took the time to scribble a "little ditty" in his notebook that reflected the unease of finding African-Americans in the island chain. It concerned white men who "smell berry strong but black men stronger." He added that to stand beside a "swelter-
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ing Negro was a 'rough' experience."[n60] Actually Twain, who referred to indigenous Hawaiians as "niggers" in his journals, and Melville, who had a "selective embrace of British imperialism in the Pacific" are suggestive of the fact that even the supposed best and brightest of the United States left much to be desired on the battleground of racism, indicating simultaneously why Negroes were fleeing to Hawaii and why they might face difficulties upon arrival.[n61]
The degradation of Negro labor had not disappeared on the mainland, in other words, and Negro sailors arriving in the paradise that Hawaii was thought to be nonetheless encountered obstacles, even after the U.S. Civil War. Thus, in 1868 Secretary of State William Seward was informed about the death of William Roberson of Baltimore at the hands of a Negro seaman named Outerbridge. His ship had sailed from Maryland in March 1867 and stopped in Bermuda for repairs when Outerbridge came aboard and was threatened with death by Roberson. The tables were turned, however, and the deceased was found "upon the deck with marks of violence upon the head and face, as if struck with an axe or sharp weapon." Outerbridge, who was thought to be "inoffensive and truthful," then confessed to the murder.[n62] He was not lynched, at least, which may have been his fate if he had been snared on the mainland.
This was suggestive of the point that Hawaii could only be described as a paradise for the Negro in comparison with developments on the mainland. In fact, context is critical in assessing how the Negro was treated -- good and bad. For Hawaii was torn by an unpleasant dilemma. As the sugar market expanded on the mainland, more laborers (mostly Asian) were needed but this was precisely what menaced white dominion and, in the case of workers of Japanese origin, placed the planters on a collision course with a rising power. Thus, the planters were reduced to trying to induce U.S. Negroes to come to the islands. But the Euro-American elite also realized that this too contained "many dangerous possibilities involving the color line," in terms of alienating white supremacists for whom the Negro was the ne plus ultra of odiousness.[n63]
Their concerns were beaten back. The question of importing U.S. Negroes was considered in Honolulu at a meeting on January 7, 1879, with the number of 1,000 being tossed around. Later Secretary of Interior Hoke Smith, a Georgian, originally opposed for racial reasons to the annexation of Hawaii, modified his attitude when he considered the possibility that it might help the South to rid itself of some of its Negro population.[n64] After annexation, John Hind and J.B. Collins, agents of the Koloa Plantation, established themselves in New Orleans in order to recruit 300 Negro laborers. During the next nine months, other agents appeared in Tennessee, Alabama, and Texas. Those
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black laborers who went to Hawaii from the South signed contracts to remain there for two or three years.[n65] However, the arrangement proved mutually unsatisfactory.
Thus, Lihue Plantation attracted a group of these Negroes, but was displeased with their performance, deeming them to be unreliable and indolent. From the Koloa Sugar Company came a similar evaluation. The Hawaiian Sugar Company stated emphatically that Negroes were "no good whatever on Hawaiian plantations." And according to the Pioneer Mill Company, they were worthless.[n66]
This dilemma reached the U.S. Congress after annexation. "There remains the all-important consideration that even if a white man could labor in the cane fields," the Hawaii Sugar Planters Association told the solons, "and were willing to undertake such work, there is no possibility of obtaining from any quarter, and least of all from the U.S. mainland, a sufficient number [to] fill our needs." Japan, it was stated with a decided lack of enthusiasm was their only source. Unconvinced, a number of senators began to pepper the planters' representative with questions that pointed to African-Americans as the way out and obtaining more Negro labor from the South. This was in response to the arrival in Hawaii of a few hundred southern Negro workers.
One legislator inquired whether they made good laborers on the plantation. "No," was the blunt response, "most of them were sent to the Spreckelsville plantation. They gave a great deal of trouble. When they could not quarrel with anybody else they quarreled with themselves. A number of them have landed in jail. There are several in jail yet. Most of them have gone." Still seized with the notion of Hawaii as a racial paradise, these Negroes arrived with the idea of making their fortunes and were unprepared for sweating in the fields; thus, it was said, "they liked to fight and everything else more than work."
Yet despite this apparent less-than-exemplary record, sentiment lingered for bringing more Negroes westward. Why? As one witness told Congress, "The Asiatics are our carpenters, our drivers, our salesmen, our cooks, our servants, our gardeners, our grocers, our tailors, our farmers. God knows what they will be next. They may be our masters yet [for] as long as the Asiatics are running the country, this can not be a white man's land."[n67] As long as such an attitude persisted, Negroes would be in demand.
=====================
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** Endnotes from all portions of the book included above; except that the endnotes pertaining to page 91 were placed inside the text of page 91.
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pg 211
Notes to Pages 90-93
Chapter 6: Hawaiian Supremacy?
1. Merze Tate, "Hawaii's Interest in Polynesia," Australian Journal of Politics and History 7, no. 2 (November 1961): 232-244, 232.
2. Report from Charles St. Julian, March 25, 1870, 404-43-686, Hawaii State Archives-Honolulu. For more on Hawaiian supremacy, see Charles St. Julian to Charles C. Harris, March 30,1871,404-43-687, Hawaii State Archives.
3. Michael Dougherty, To Steal a Kingdom: Probing Hawaiian History(Waimanalo, HI: Island Style Press, 1992), 129.
4. The Polynesian, January 26, 1850; Ralph S. Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom, Volume 1: 1778-1854, Foundation and Transformation (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1965), 386.
5. Paradise of the Pacific, March 1893, Bishop Museum-Honolulu.
6. "An Address by the Hawaiian Branches of the Sons of the American Revolution, Sons of Veterans, and Grand Army of the Republic to Their Compatriots in America concerning the Annexation of Hawaii" (Washington, DC: Gibson Bros., 1897), Huntington Library-San Marino, California.
7. The Polynesian, March 13, 1841; Ralph S. Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom, Volume 1: 1778-1854, Foundation and Transformation (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1965),275.
8. Paradise of the Pacific, December 1893, Bishop Museum-Honolulu.
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Notes to Pages 94-95
9. Lucien Young, The Boston at Hawaii or the Observations and Impressions of a Naval Officer During a Stay of Fourteen Months in Those Islands on a Man-of-War (Washington, DC: Gibson Bros" 1898), 289, 290. See also Sally Engle Merry, Colonizing Hawaii: The Cultural Power of Law (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000),
10. But see, for example, E, M, Willis Parker, The Sandwich Islands as They Are, Not as They Should Be (San Francisco: Burgess, Gilbert, 1852), 17: "Should annexation to the United States ever be contemplated, our government must consider well whether it is worth their while to raise again the vexed question of slavery or anti-slavery on the extreme verge of the western world; and where, too, from the nature of the climate, slavery will certainly exist, ere many years passed," Emphasis in original. See also William H, Meyers, Journal of a Cruise: To California and the Sandwich Islands in the United States Sloop-of-War Cyane, 1841-1844, ed, John Haskell Kemble (San Francisco: The Book Club of California, 1955), See also Edward James Carpenter, America in Hawaii: A History of United States Influence in the Hawaiian Islands (Boston: Small, Maynard & Company, 1899).
11. Merze Tate, "Slavery and Racism as Deterrents to the Annexation of Hawaii, 1854-1855," Joumal of Negro History 47, no, 1 January 1962): 1-18,4,5,12,13,
12, Jacob Adler, ed" The Joumal of Prince Alexander Liholiho: The Voyages Made to the United States, England & France in 1849-1850 (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1967), 108.
13. Merze Tate, The United States and the Hawaiian Kingdom: A Political History (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1965), 15.
14. Merze Tate, "Slavery and Racism as Deterrents to the Annexation of Hawaii, 1854-1855," Journal of Negro History 47, no. 1 January 1962): 1-18, 17, 18, See also Albert W. Palmer, The Human Side of Hawaii: Race Problems in the Mid-Pacific (Boston: Pilgrim Press, 1924).
15. See Sydney Morning Herald, February 5, 1855, 404-42-677, Hawaii State Archives.
16. Michael Dougherty, To Steal a Kingdom: Probing Hawaiian History (Waimanalo, HI: Island Style Press, 1992), 82.
17. See Margaret A. Ramsland, "The Forgotten Californians" (typescript narrative, University of California-Berkeley, 1974): "When John Sutter arrived in the islands ... and needed recruits to bring his ship on to San Francisco, the Hu-hina-nui, Kal-o-Ia allowed ... grandson of Ka-i-ana to go with Sutter to the mainland."
18. Letter to "Dear Sir," August 16, 1849, Box 1, William Little Lee Collection, University of California-Berkeley,
19. Janice K. Duncan, "Minority without a Champion: Kanakas on the Pacific Coast," n.d" MSS 2436, Oregon Historical Society-Portland.
20. Margaret A. Ramsland, "The Forgotten Californians" (typescript narrative, University of California-Berkeley, 1974).
21. Sylvester K. Stevens, American Expansion in Hawaii, 1842-1898 (Harrisburg: Archives Publications of Pennsylvania, 1945),62-63.
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** pg 213
Notes to Pages 95-99
22. C. Hitchcock to R. Wylie, January 8, 1852, Miscellaneous: Foreign and Ex., Hawaii State Archives.
23. Charles St. Julian to "Sir," April 25 , 1856, 404-42-679, Hawaii State Archives.
24. Ralph S. Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom, 1854-1874: Twenty Critical Years (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1953), 177.
25. Ralph S. Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom, Volume Ill, 1874-1893: The Kalakaua Dynasty (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1967), 127.
26. Ralph S. Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom, 1854-1874: Twenty Critical Years (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1953), 186.
27. "Copy" of "Extracts from the Log of Mr. Blake, Government Agent, 'Stormbird,'" December 7,1886, FO&EX33, Hawaii State Archives.
28. S. W. Griffith to A. B. Webster,January 11,1887, FO&EX33, Hawaii State Archives.
29. F. Hornbrook to Polynesian Inspector, Brisbane, January 3,1887, FO&EX33, Hawaii State Archives.
30. Interrogation of Captain Phillips, April 10, 1887, FO&EX33, Hawaii State Archives.
31. Gary Y. Okihiro, Cane Fires: The Anti-Japanese Movement in Hawaii, 1865-1945 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991), 59.
32. Letter to William Seward, circa 1869, Despatches from United States Consuls in Honolulu, 1820-1903, Volume 11, Hawaii State Library-Honolulu. See also Hawaiian Gazette, February 17,1869.
33. Pacific Commercial Advertiser, November 18, 1871: The journal added, "this wretched traffic in men is not yet stopped, nor will it be so long as the planters will pay high prices for the stolen 'labor' and the strong arm of civilized governments is not interposed between the islanders and the kidnappers."
34. Pacific Commercial Advertiser, August 19, 1871. See also Pacific Commercial Advertiser, April 27, 1872.
35. Diary of J. Degreaves, Hawaiian Government Immigration Agent of Pomare to Jaluit and New Hebrides Recruiting Labor, July 26 to Feb. 26, 1881, M-235, Hawaii State Archives. See also Log of Brig Pomare, kept by William Ramm, Honolulu to New Hebrides, July 26, 1880-March 2,1881, Hawaii State Archives.
36. Letter signed by Samuel G. Wilder, Minister of the Interior and President of the Board of Immigration, July 22,1880, M-40,J. Degreaves Papers, Hawaii State Archives.
37. Report by President of Board of Immigration, Hawaii, circa 1882, Roll 15, Despatches from United States Consuls in Honolulu, Hawaii State Library-Honolulu.
38. Report from Consul, July 13, 1869, FO58/126, Public Records Office-London.
39. Remarks by "L. McCully, Secretary Pro Tem" of Planters Society, n.d., M-123, Planters Society Papers, Hawaii State Archives.
40. Resolution, n.d., M-I23, Planters Society Papers, Hawaii State Archives.
41. R. C. Wyllie to Charles St. Julian, April 15, 1863,403-22-336, Hawaii State Archives.
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** Pg 214
Notes to Pages 99-102
42. A. S. Webster to Minister of Foreign Affairs, May 5, 1876,404-43-690, Hawaii State Archives.
43. A. S. Webster to Minister of Foreign Affairs, August 25, 1876,404-43-690, Hawaii State Archives. Emphasis in original.
44. A. S. Webster to Minister of Foreign Affairs,June 30, 1876,404-43-690, Hawaii State Archives. Emphasis in original.
45. "Clippings Gathered by Martha W. Beckwith, Most of Them Not Dated from Honolulu Papers," Box 53, Theo H. Davies Papers, Bishop Museum Honolulu.
46. A. S. Webster to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, September 8, 1881,404-436-90, Hawaii State Affiirs.
47. William Hillebrand, "Report on Supply of Labor" to the "Honorable Board of Irnmigration," Honolulu, 1867, HD 4875.H3 H55, Hawaii State Archives.
48. See, for example, Michael Ewanchuk, Hawaiian Ordeal: Ukrainian Contract Workers, 1897-1910 (Winnipeg: Ewanchuk, 1986).
49. Ralph S. Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom, Volume 1: 1778-1854, Foundation and Transformation (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1965), 329.
50. William Haywood, Consul General, to Thomas Cridler, U.S. State Department, May 11, 1899, Despatches from United States Consuls in Honolulu, 1820-1903, Hawaii State Library.
51. "An Address by the Hawaiian Branches of the Sons of the American Revolution, Sons of Veterans, and Grand Army of the Republic to Their Compatriots in America Concerning the Annexation of Hawaii" (Washington, DC: Gibson Bros., 1897), Huntington Library-San Marino, California.
52. Letter to Thomas Cridler, Assistant Secretary of State, from Consul General, April 28, 1903, Despatches from United States Consuls in Honolulu, 1820-1903, Hawaii State Library.
53. Letter from A. Zeehandelaar Employment Agency to Samuel G. Wilder, November 25, 1878, Samuel G. Wilder Papers, Hawaiian Mission Children's Society Library-Honolulu. Emphasis in original.
54. Arthur Alexander, Koloa Plantation, 1835-1935: A History of the Oldest Hawaiian Sugar Plantation (Honolulu: Star-Bulletin, 1937), 22. Emphasis in original.
55. Letter to "Dear Sir," May 8, 1866, Castle and Cook Papers-Hawaiian Mission Children's Library-Honolulu.
56. Report from Charles St. Julian, June 25, 1859, 404-43-684, Hawaii State Archives.
57. Charles St. Julian to Charles C. Harris, September 27, 1871, 404-43-688, Hawaii State Archives. Emphasis in original.
58. Charles St. Julian to Charles C. Harris, September 27,1871,404-43-688, Hawaii State Archives. Emphasis in original. See also Charles St. Julian to Minister of Foreign Affairs, October 26, 1871, 404-43-688, Hawaii State Archives: St. Julian "impressed upon such of the leading men of Fiji as I had been in confidential communi-
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** pg 215
Notes to Pages 103-107
cation with, on the subject of a possible establishment of Fijian nationality under Hawaiian auspices and sovereignty."
59. Merze Tate, "Hawaii's Early Interest in Polynesia," Australian Journal of Pol itics and History 7, no. 2 (November 1961): 232-244, 241.
60. Report from Charles St. Julian, March 25, 1870, 404-43-686, Hawaii State Archives. Emphasis in original.
61. George Oakley to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, March 5, 1873, 404-26-409, Hawaii State Archives.
62. See, for example, Melbourne Age, January 28, 1873; Melbourne Express, April 4, 1873; April 10, 1873.
63. James R Okahata, ed., A History of Japanese in Hawaii (Honolulu: United Japanese Society of Hawaii, 1971), 135.
64. Franklin Odo and Kazuko Sinoto, A Pictorial History of the Japanese in Hawaii, 1885-1924 (Honolulu: Bishop Museum, 1985), 17.
65. Letter from Yokhama, March 14,1881, FO&EX28, Hawaii State Archives.
Emphasis in original.
66. William N. Armstrong, Around the World with a King (New York: Stokes, 1904), 62.
67. Samuel Eliot Morison, "Boston Traders in the Hawaiian Islands, 1789-1823," Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings 54 (October 1920 - June 1921): 9-47, 10.
68. Hilary Conroy, The Japanese Frontier in Hawaii, 1868-1898 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1953). Emphasis in original.
69. Memorandum on Chinese Population, n.d., M-58, Frances Hatch Papers, Hawaii State Archives. See also Arlene Lum et al., eds., Sailing for the Sun: The Chinese in Hawaii, 1789-1989 (Honolulu: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Hawai'i, 1989).
70. David McKinley to State Department, October 30, 1884, Roll 16, Despatches from United States Consuls in Honolulu, 1820-1903, Hawaii State Library.
71. Katharine Coman, The History of Contract Labor in the Hawaiian Islands (New York: Arno Press, 1978), 36. Originally published in 1903.
72. Journal of William Armstrong, December 5, 1880, Box 5, William Armstrong Papers, Yale University.
73. Memorandum from the United Chinese Society, August 9, 1907, M-58, Frances Hatch Papers, Hawaii State Archives.
74. Ronald Takaki, Pau Hana: Plantation Life and Labor in Hawaii, 1835-1920 (Honolulu: University ofHawai'i Press, 1983),25. See also Alan Takeo Moriyama, "Imingaisha: Japanese Emigration Companies and Hawaii, 1894-1908" (PhD diss., UCLA, 1982); Dorothy Ochiai Hazama and Jane Okamoto Komeji, Okage Sama De: The Japanese in Hawaii, 1885-1985 (Honolulu: Bess Press, 1986); Masayo Umezawa Duus, The Japanese Conspiracy: The Oahu Sugar Strike of 1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).
75. Journal of William Armstrong, December 12, 1880, Box 5, William Armstrong Papers, Yale University.
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** pg 216
Notes to Pages 107-112
76. William Hunter, "Annual Report," November 25, 1879, with attached letter of September 15, 1879 from "Mr. Whitney," Roll 15, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Honolulu, 1820-1903, Hawaii State Library.
77. "Excerpts from the Very Fragmentary Journals of Dr. G. P. Judd, labeled by him 'Memoranda,'" April 22, 1840, Bishop Museum-Honolulu.
78. Franklin Odo and Kazuko Sinoto, A Pictorial History of the Japanese in Hawaii, 1885-1924 (Honolulu: Bishop Museum, 1985), 13. See also Andrew Lind, Hawaii's Japanese: An Experiment in Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1946).
79. Van Reed to Charles C. Harris, March 22, 1870,404-15-241, Hawaii State Archives.
80. Journal of William Armstrong, March 6,1881, Box 5, William Armstrong Papers, Yale University.
81. Van Reed to "My Dear Sir," December 22, 1871,404-15-242, Hawaii State Archives.
82. Report from Hawaii Consul General in Tokyo, December 21,1882, 404-15-250, Hawaii State Archives.
83. Consul General in Tokyo to Walter Gibson, November 23, 1883, 404-15-250, Hawaii State Archives. Emphasis in original.
84. George Oakley to Ernest Smith, September 3, 1886, 404-43-693, Hawaii State Archives.
85. Ernest Smith to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, September 4, 1889, 404-44-696, Hawaii State Archives.
Chapter 7: Hawaii Conquered
1. Ralph S. Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom, Volume 1: 1778-1854, Foundation and Transfirmation (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1965),206.
2. Merze Tate, "Great Britain and the Sovereignty of Hawaii," Pacific Historical Review 31 (1962): 327-348, 330.
3. Lord Aberdeen to William Miller, September 28, 1843, Series 375, Box 4, Hawaii State Archives.
4. Mr. McBride to Mr. Seward, October 9, 1863, Papers Relating to the Annexation of the Hawaiian Islands to the United States (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1893), Huntington Library-San Marino, California. See also Andrew Ure, The Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain Systematically Investigated (London: Charles Knight, 1836).
5. Jean Ingram Brooks, Intenzational Rivalry in the Pacific Islands, 1800-1875 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1941),263,270,273.
6. Walter A. McDougall, Let the Sea Make a Noise: A History of the North Pacific from Magellan to MacArthur (New York: HarperCollins, 2004),339,340.
7. Letter to William Seward, October 15, 1868, Despatches from United States Consuls in Honolulu, 1820-1903.
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pg 217
Notes to pages 113-117
8. Ralph S. Kuykendall, "American Interests and American Influence in Hawaii in 1842," 39th Annual Report of the Hawaii Historical Society for the Year 1930, 48-67, 48,49, Hawaii State Archives.
9. Lord Clarendon to William Miller, December 31, 1855, Series 375, Box 4,
Hawaii State Archives.
10. Ralph S. Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom, Volume III: 1874-1893, The
Kalakaua Dynasty (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1967), 6.
11. Ralph S. Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom, Volume II: 1854-1874, Twenty Critical Years (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1953), 201.
12. Report from James Wodehouse, F058/132, Public Records Office-London.
13. Eric T. L. Love, Race over Empire: Racism and U.S. Imperialism (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 92, 93.
14. Report from James Wodehouse, FO58/132, Public Records Office-London.
15. Report from James Wodehouse, F058/132, Public Records Office-London.
16. Anonymous to James G. Blaine, November 19, 1881, 327 ANY, Hawaii Historical Society.
17. Edward Crapol, James G. Blaine: Architect of Empire (Wilmington, DE: SR
Books, 2000), 76, 78.
18. An Italian Baroness in Hawaii: The Travel Diary of Gina Sobrero, Bride of Robert Wilcox, 1887 (Honolulu: Hawaii Historical Society, 1991), 7.
19. Michael Dougherty, To Steal a Kingdom: Probing Hawaiian History (Waimanalo, HI: Island Style Press, 1992), 148, 149, 156.
20. Ralph S. Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom, Volume III: 1874-1893, The Kalakaua Dynasty (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1967), 315, 318, 331.
21. James Wodehouse to "My Lord," August 30,1872, F058/132, Public Records Office-London. See also letter to "My Lord," August 30, 1872, Series 375, Box 4, Hawaii State Archives.
22. "Confidential" letter from Foreign Office, May 31,1887, Series 375, Box 4,
Hawaii State Archives.
23. J. Paunceforte, Foreign Office, to Major Wodehouse, April 28, 1887, Series
375, Box 4, Hawaii State Archives.
24. Marquis of Salisbury to Sir E. Malet, May 31,1887, Series 375, Box 4, Hawaii State Archives.
25. Charles Scott to Marquis of Salisbury, July 28, 1887, Series 375, Box 4, Hawaii State Archives.
26. "Report of Consul General Travers, Special Commissioner Concerning Affairs in Samoa" to "His Highness Prince von Bismarck," December 8, 1886, Box 1, Folder 14, George Bates Papers, University of Delaware.
27. D.S. Parker to George Bates, September 6, 1886, Box 1, Folder 12, George Bates Papers, University of Delaware.
28. George Bates, "Some Aspects of the Samoan Question," April 1889, in The Century Magazine, 945-949, Box 2, Folder 24, George Bates Papers, University of Delaware.
------------
pg 218
Notes to Pages 118-120
29. "Report on the Condition of the Samoan Islands by Mr. J.B. Thurston, CMG (British Commissioner), Colonial Office, January 1887, United Kingdom, Box 1, Folder I5, George Bates Papers, University of Delaware.
30. "British Despotism in the South Sea Islands and the Persecution of Mr. W.J. Hunt by Sir Arthur Gordon, High Commissioner under the Western Pacific Orders in Council, 1877-1879, by Vox Populi" (Wellington: New Zealand Times, 1883), Box 1, Folder 4, George Bates Papers, University of Delaware.
31. New York Herald, January 22, 1889. See also Peter J. Hempenstall, Pacific Islanders Under German Rule: A Study in the Meaning of Colonial Resistance (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1978); R. P. Gilson, Samoa, 1830-1900: The Politics of Multi-Cultural Community (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1970).
32. Paul M. Kennedy, The Samoan Tangle: A Study in Anglo-German Relations, I878-1900 (Dublin, Irish University Press, 1974), 81, 159, 305.
33. See, for example, J. W. Davidson, Samoa Mo Samoa: The Emergence of the Independent State of Western Samoa (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1967). See also R.W. Robson, Queen Emma: The Samoan-American Girl Who Founded an Empire in 19th Century New Guinea (Sydney: Pacific Publications, 1979). At the Hawaii Historical Society in Honolulu, see the Papers of Henry Poor, which contains information on the Hawaii legation in Samoa.
34. Walter Gibson to H. A. Carter, January 18,1887, FO&EX34, Hawaii State Archives.
35. John Bush to Walter Gibson, February 1, 1887, FO&EX34, Hawaii State Archives.
36. King MaIietoa to "My Dearest and Good Brother," circa 1887, FO&EX34, Hawaii State Archives. But see A. Gordon to "My Lord," January 14,1877, G4/7, Archives of New Zealand: "Two chiefs, both named Malietoa, aspire to rule in Samoa. The parties of these two men are in point of numbers about equally matched but the aid of white men, moral and material, will doubtless decide the issue. ... money can be obtained with great ease in the United States for objects of this kind. ... Every prospect of serious difficulties arising in our neighborhood from the love of excitement and adventure prevalent among certain classes of Americans."
37. Mr. Wilson to "Marquis of Salisbury," August 10, 1887, Series 375, Box 4, Hawaii State Archives.
38. James Wodehouse to "My Lord," March 6, 1872, FO58/132, Hawaii State Archives.
39. Consul Cusack-Smith to Earl of Rosebery, January 23, 1893, F0534, Great Britain. Pacific Islands, S00627, University of Hawai'i-Manoa. See Thomas Trood, Island Reminiscences (Sydney: McCarron, 1912), 126: Moors "has played in many respects an important part in the political history of Samoa during the last twenty years. ... When Mataafa returned [in 1898,] he was ever found in the thick of the fray supporting the claims of candidates for kinship, who he believed, was the most eligible and thereby drawing upon himself the wrath of cliques professing all opposite opinion."
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pg 219
Notes to Pages 121-123
40. Thomas Trood, Island Reminiscences (Sydney: McCarron, 1912), 126.
41. H. Stonehewer Cooper, Coral Lands, Volume I (London: Bentley & Sons, 1880),38,174-175.
42. Clipping, n.d., circa 1880s, South Sea Islands: Newspaper Cuttings, Q988S, State Library of New South Wales-Sydney.
43. Thomas Trood, Island Reminiscences (Sydney: McCarron, 1912),78,48.
44. Lord Carnarvon to "Sir," March 27, 1877, G417, Archives of New ZealandWellington.
45. Report from U.S. Consul, January 2, 1873, Roll 3, Despatches from United States Consuls in Apia, National Archives and Records Administration-College Park, Maryland.
46. J.M. Coe to Second Assistant Secretary of State, July 28, 1874, Roll 3, Despatches from United States Consuls in Apia, National Archives and Records Administration College Park, Maryland.
47. Walter Gibson to H.A. Carter, May 7, 1887, FO&EX34, Hawaii State Archives.
48. See "Copies of a Treaty between Samoa and Hawaii Officially Published ... the Treaty is one of Political Confederation," March 29,1887, Roll 23, Despatches from United States Ministers in Hawaii, National Archives and Records Administration.
49. Translation of document, circa 1887, FO&EX34, Hawaii State Archives.
50. H. A. Carter to "Sir," April 9, 1887, FO&EX34, Hawaii State Archives.
51. H. M. Sewall, "Partition of Samoa and the Past Relations between that Group and the United States Read before the Hawaiian Historical Society, May 11, 1900," 7th Annual Report of the Hawaii Historical Society, 1900, 11-27, 14, Hawaii Historical Society.
52. Secretary of State Frelinghuysen to H.A. Carter, December 6, 1883, FO&EX34, Hawaii State Archives.
53. Walter Gibson to "Sir," January 18,1887, FO&EX34, Hawaii State Archives.
54. Ralph S. Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom, Volume III: 1874-1893, The Kalakaua Dynasty (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1967), 313.
55. Walter Gibson to H. A. Carter, April 9, 1887, FO&EX34, Hawaii State Archives.
56. "Interview between Mr. Bayard and Mr. Carter," April 28, 1887, FO&EX34, Hawaii State Archives.
57. H. A. Carter to Godfrey Brown, November 10, 1887, FO&EX34, Hawaii State Archives.
58. Paul M. Kenney, The Samoan Tangle: A Study in Anglo-German Relations, 1878-1900 (Dublin: Irish University Press, 1974), 13.
59. His Majesty King Kalakaua to "Sir," April 12, 1889, MS B K 128, David Kalakaua Papers, Hawaii Historical Society.
60. Joseph Waldo Ellison, "The Partition of Samoa: A Study in Imperialism and Democracy," Pacific Historical Review 8, no. 3 (September 1939): 259-288, 260.
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pg 220
Notes to Pages 123-130
61. Edward Crapol, James G. Blaine: Architect of Empire (Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 2000), 116.
62. L. Sackville West to "My Lord," November 4, 1887, Series 375, Box 4, Hawaii State Archives.
63. Report from James Wodehouse, May 28, 1874, F058/132, Public Records Office.
64. Report from James Wodehouse, August 21, 1874, F058/132, Public Records Office.
65. Merze Tate, The United States and the Hawaiian Kingdom: A Political History (New Haven: Yales University Press, 1965),52.
66. Lorrin H. Thurston, Memoirs of the Hawaiian Revolution (Honolulu: Advertiser, 1936), 70.
67. Report from David McKinley, October 14, 1884, Roll 16, Despatches from United States Consuls in Honolulu, Hawaii State Library-Honolulu.
68. "An Act to Organize the Military Forces of the Kingdom," October 5,1886, Roll 23, Despatches from United States Ministers in Hawaii, Hawaii State Library-Honolulu.
69. John H. Portman to James D. Porter, July 26, 1887, Roll 17, Despatches from United States Consuls in Honolulu, Hawaii State Library-Honolulu.
Chapter 8: A Black Pacific?
1. Michael Dougherty, To Steal a Kingdom: Probing Hawaiian History (Waimanalo, HI: Island Style Press, 1992), 147.
2. Susan Bell, Unforgettable True Stories of the Kingdom of Hawaii (Pearl City: Press Pacifica, 1986), 53.
3. Mary H. Krout, Hawaii and a Revolution (London: John Murray, 1898), 189.
4. Michael Dougherty, To Steal a Kingdom: Probing Hawaiian History (Waimanalo, HI: Island Style Press, 1992), 165.
5. Michael Dougherty, To Steal a Kingdom: Probing Hawaiian History (Waimanalo, HI: Island Style Press, 1992),89.
6. Eric T.L. Love, Race over Empire: Racism & U.S. Imperialism (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 81, 83.
7. Noenoe K. Silva, Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), 53.
8. Pittsburgh Courier, April 13, 1937.
9. Susan Bell, Unforgettable True Stories of the Kingdom of Hawaii (Pearl City: Press Pacifica, 1986), 49. See also William Atherton Du Puy, Hawaii and Its Race Problem (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1932); W. R. Johnston et al., Imperialism and Racism in the South Pacific (Brisbane, Australia: Brooks, 1983).
10. James A. Michener and A. Grove Day, Rascals in Paradise (New York: RandomHouse, 1957), 10.
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pg 221
Notes to Pages 130-132
11. Lloyd L. Lee, "A Brief Analysis of the Role and Status of the Negro in the Hawaiian Community," American Sociological Review 13, no. 4 (August 1948): 419-437, 421,422.
12. Willard B. Gatewood, Black Americans and the White Man's Burden, 1898-1903 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975), 14, 15,297,298,299.
13. Kenneth Porter, "Notes on Negroes in Early Hawaii," Journal of Negro History 19, no. 1 (January 1934): 193-197, 194, 195.
14. Bradford Smith, Yankees in Paradise: The New England Impact on Hawaii (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott), 1956,53.
15. Susan Bell, Unftrgettable True Stories of the Kingdom of Hawaii (Pearl City: Press Pacifica, 1986), 54.
16. Harold Whitman Bradley, The American Frontier in Hawaii: The Pioneers, 1789-1843 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1942),38-39.
17. Journal of Sylvia Moseley Bingham, June 20, 1820, Box 2, Bingham Family Papers, Yale University.
18. See, for example, Pacific Commercial Advertiser, August 31,1867: William Livingston, a Negro, arrived in Hawaii in 1808 and left then returned in 1824, when he developed an admirable reputation for his work on stone buildings. He passed away in 1867.
19. Michael Dougherty, To Steal a Kingdom: Probing Hawaiian History (Waimanalo, HI: Island Style Press, 1992),77. See also A. Grove Day, ed., Melville in the South Seas (New York: Hawthorn, 1970); Charles Robert Anderson, Melville in the South Seas (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939).
20. Frederick W. Horway, "Negro Immigration into Vancouver Island in 1858," British Columbia Historical Quarterly 3 (April 1939): 101-114; James William Pilton, "Negro Settlement in British Columbia, 1858-1871" (master's thesis, University of British Columbia, 1951).
21. Adelbert von Chamisso, Excerpts from Chamisso's Werke (Chamisso's Works), Vol. III, trans. Maria and Helmuth Hormann (Honolulu, 1970), Hawaii State Archives.
22. Letter from Titus Coan, July 18, 1836, Sandwich Islands Mission Collection, Hawaii Mission Children's Society Library-Honolulu. See Titus Coan, Life in Hawaii:
An Autobiographical Sketch (New York: Randolph, 1842). See also "Census Data on Blacks in Oregon," 1850, Box 2, Oregon Black History Project, MSS 2854, Oregon Historical Society-Portland: A number of Negroes were born in Hawaii by the mid-nineteenth century. See also "Autobiography of Henry W. Bigler," 1857, Henry W. Bigler Papers, Huntington Library-San Marino, California: Visiting Maui in the 1850s he observed, "We called on the American Counsel and through him we got an introduction to the Governor of the Island, who was a half breed .... We told the Governor that we were missionaries and anxious to learn the native language and preach to the people. He said that if we did learn the language and preach to the people it would be hard to get the natives out of their old belief and traditions."
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pg 222
Notes to Pages 132-134
23. Edith Armstrong Talbot, Samuel Chapman Armstrong: A Biographical Study (New York: Doubleday, Page and Co., 1904),3,257. See also Robert C. Ogden, Samuel Chapman Armstrong: A Sketch (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1894).
24. William N. Armstrong, Around the World with a King (New York: Stokes, 1904),89.
25. Norman E. Gabel, A Racial Study of the Fijians (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1958),4. See also David Duncan, comp., Descriptive Sociology; Or, Groups of Sociological Facts Classified and Arranged by Herbert Spencer ... Types of Lowest Races, Negrito Races and Malango-Polynesian Races (New York: Appleton, circa 1874).
26. Thomas Trood, Island Reminiscences (Sydney: McCarron, 1912), 14.
27. Journal of Milo Calkin, circa 1833, Huntington Library-San Marino, California.
28. H. Stonehewer Cooper, Coral Lands, Volume I (London: Bentley & Son, 1880),205.
29. See "The Natives of Hawaii: A Study of Polynesian Charm," in Publications of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, no. 305 Guly 1901): 9-17, Bingham Family Papers, Yale University.
30. H. Stonehewer Cooper, Coral Lands, Volume 2 (London: Bentley & Son, n.d.),87.
31. "Fifty Years Ago, Old Sydney Harbour, 1911," micro 0749, MS 0150, Louis Becke Papers, National Library of New Zealand. For similar usage, see Claude Cumberlege, Master Mariner (London: Peter Davies, 1936), 33. See also Captain H. E. Raabe, Cannibal Nights: The Reminiscences of a Free-Lance Trader (London: Geoffrey Bles, 192 7), 13.
32. Gilbert Bishop, The Beachcombers or Slave Trading under the Union Jack (London: Ward & Downey, 1889), 109.
33. Edward Reeves, Brown Men and Women or the South Sea Islands in 1895 and 1896 (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1898), 191. In the Cook Islands, where the British and particularly New Zealanders held sway, the indigenes were referred to as "niggers." 34. Thomas Dunbabin, Slavers of the South Seas (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1935), vii.
35. Gilbert Bishop, The Beachcombers or Slave Trading under the Union Jack (London: Ward & Downey, 1889), 129.
36. "The Slave Trade in the New Hebrides," pamphlet in Deportation of South Sea Islanders: Dispatch from Secretary of State with Correspondence Respecting (Sydney: Richards, 1871), National Library of Australia-Canberra.
37.James Cowan, Suwarrow Gold and Other Stories of the Great South Sea (London: Jonathan Cape, 1936), 47.
38. George Palmer to "My Lord," circa 1869, F058/130, Public Records OfficeLondon.
39. Thomas Dunbabin, Slavers of the South Seas (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1935),182.
40. See, for example, Gerald Home, The Deepest South: The U.S. & Brazil and the African Slave Trade (New York: New York University Press, forthcoming).
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pg 224 (skipped 223)
Notes to Pages 138-142
56. Z. Y. Squires, "The Planters' Mongolian Pets or Human Decoy Act," 1884, Hawaiian Historical Society.
57. Edward D. Beechen, Working in Hawaii: A Labor History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 181.
58. Julius A. Palmer, Jr., Memories of Hawaii and Hawaiian Correspondence (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1894), 104.
59. Letter from Mark Twain, April 1886, in Mark Twain's Letters from Hawaii, ed. A. Grove Day (New York: Appleton-Century, 1966),75. See also Frederick Anderson et aI., eds., Mark Twain's Notebooks and Journals, Volume I, 1855-1873 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975); Walter Francis Frear, Mark Twain and Hawaii (Chicago: Lakeside, 1947).
60. Arthur G. Pettit, "Mark Twain and the Negro, 1867-1869," Journal of Negro History 56, no. 2 (April 1971 ): 88-96, 89. See also Edwin Hoyt, Pacific Destiny: The Story of America in the Western Sea from the Early 1800s to the 1980s (New York: Norton, 1981).
61. William R. Davis, "Pioneering the Pacific: Imagining Polynesia in U.S. Literature from 1820 to 1940" (PhD diss., Claremont Graduate School, 2002), 111, 149.
62. Report to William Seward from Vice Consul, April 20, 1868, Despatches from United States Consuls in Honolulu, Hawaii State Library-Honolulu.
63. William A. Russ, Jr., "Hawaiian Labor and Immigration Problems before Annexation," Journal of Modern History 15, no. 3 (September 1943): 207-222,208,211.
64. Merze Tate, "Decadence of the Hawaiian Nation and Proposals to Import a Negro Labor Force,"Journal of Negro History 47, no. 4 (October 1962): 248-263, 256, 258. 65. Willard B. Gatewood, Black Americans and the White Man's Burden, 1898-1903 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975), 298.
66. Report, circa 1905, Gov. 2-7, Territory of Hawaii, Report of Labor Committee, Book No.1, Hawaii State Archives.
67. Report of Subcommittee on Pacific Islands and Porto Rico on the Labor Question and Views of the Minority (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1902), Hawaii Historical Society.
68. Walter Coote, Wanderings South and East (London: Sampson, Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1882),67-68.
69. "Further Papers on the Subject of the Claims of Citizens of the United States to Land in Fiji," June 1901, Correspondence on the Subject of the Claims of United States Citizens to Land in Fiji, August 1902, National Archives of Fiji.
70. Governor Sir J.B. Thurston to Mr. Chamberlain, October 17, 1896, Correspondence on the Subject of the Claims of United States Citizens to Land in Fiji, National Archives of Fiji.
71. A. G. Ross, "The Future of the Fijian," Transactions of the Fijian Society (1910): 43 - 5 0, 48. See also Timothy M. Macnaught, The Fijian Colonial Experience: A Study of the Neo-Traditional Order under British Colonial Rule prior to World War II (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1982).
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** Skipping to page 232
Notes to Pages 159-163
67. Anthony Trollope, NS, Wales & Queensland (London: Chapman and Hall, 1874),165, See also his Australia and New Zealand (London: Chapman and Hall, 1873), 68, A. G, Russell, Colour, Race and Empire (London: Victor Gallancz, 1944), 145, 69, "A Bill to Restrict the Influx of Chinese into New South Wales," 1881, CS, SB, CGS906, 4/829,1, New South Wales State Records Authority-West Sydney, Kingswood.
70. Colonial Secretary of New Zealand to Colonial Secretary New South Wales, July 21, 1880, CS, SB, CGS906, 4/829,1, New South Wales State Records AuthorityWest Sydney, Kingswood.
71. Sydney Morning Herald, January 19, 1881.
72. Representatives from the Colonies and New Zealand to the Earl of Kimberley, January 25,1881, CS, SB, CGS906, 4/829,1, New South Wales State Records Authority- West Sydney, Kingswood.
73. John Hamill, The Strange Career ofMr, Hoover under Two Flags (New York: William Faro, 1931),42.
74. Sydney Morning Herald, May 29,1880.
75, Edward Dowling, Australia and America in 1892: A Contrast (Sydney: Potter, 1893),72-74,
Chapter 10: Toward Pearl Harbor-and Beyond
1. Edward Dowling, Australia and America in 1892: A Contrast (Sydney: Potter, 1893),73.
2. E. W, Cole, The White Australia Question (Melbourne: Cole, 1903),7.
3. See the fascinating pictures and documents vividly illustrating these points in Franklin Odo and Kazuko Sinoto, A Pictorial History of the Japanese in Hawaii, 1885-1924 (Honolulu: Bishop Museum, 1985).
4. Japan Daily Mail, June 21,1887, Series 404-15-252b, Hawaii State Archives.
5. Ralph S, Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom, Volume III: The Kalakaua Dynasty, 1874-1893 (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1969), 174, 178.
6. See John James Mahlmann, Reminiscences of an Ancient Mariner (Yokohama: Japan Gazette, 1918), 55: "It has been said that the natives of Ponape are descendants of Japanese, which may be the case to a more or less extent, as some of them show a resemblance to Japanese in build and physiognomy." See also Stephen Gerard, Strait of Adventure (Dunedin: A, H. & A. W, Reed, 1938).
7. William A. Russ, "Hawaiian Labor and Immigration Problems before Annexation," Journal of Modern History 15, no, 3 (September 1943): 207-222, 208.
8. Ralph S, Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom, Volume III: The Kalakaua Dynasty, 1874-1893 (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1969), 183.
9. Report of Labor Committee, Volume I, Statement by Samuel Gompers, Gov, 2-7, Territory of Hawaii, Hawaii State Archives.
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pg 233
Notes to Pages 163-166
10. Katharine Coman, The History of Contract Labor in the Hawaiian Islands (New York: Arno Press, 1978), 46-47. Originally published in 1903.
11. Ralph S. Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom, Volume III: The Kalakaua Dynasty, 1874-1893 (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1969),48.
12. Reports by Honolulu Trades and Labor Council, Gov. 2-7, Territory of Hawaii, Hawaii State Archives.
13. Report of Subcommittee on Pacific Islands and Porto Rico on the Labor Question and Views of the Minority (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1902), Hawaii Historical Society.
14. Contract for Recruiunent, July 21, 1898, Box 24, Folder 9, Theo H. Davies Papers, Bishop Museum-Honolulu.
15. See, for example, "Labor Requirements," 1884-1885, Box 53, Folder 1, Theo H. Davies Papers, Bishop Museum-Honolulu.
16. J. W. Gregory, The Menace of Colour: A Study of the Difficulties Due to the Association of White & Coloured Races, with an Account of Measures Proposed for Their Solution & Special Reference to White Colonization in the Tropics (London: Seeley Service, 1923),225.
17. "Report of the Minister of Foreign Affairs to the President of the Republic of Hawaii for the Biennial Period Ending December 31, 1897," Roll 30, Despatches from US. Ministers in Hawaii, 1843-1900, National Archives and Records AdministrationCollege Park, Maryland. See also Ronald Takaki, Pau Hana: Plantation Life and Labor in Hawaii, 1835-1920 (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1983),25.
18. Edward M. McCook to General Van Valkenburgh, August 3, 1867, Papers Relating to the Annexation of the Hawaiian Islands to the United States (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1898).
19. Audley Coote to William Jarrett, March 9,1880, Series 404-12-201, Hawaii State Archives.
20. T. G. Clarke to Audley Coote, January 20, 1880, Series 404-12-201, Hawaii State Archives.
21. Ernest O. Smith to George Oakley, November 23, 1883, Series 404-43-692, Hawaii State Archives.
22. Ernest O. Smith to Frank Hastings, Secretary, Department of Foreign Affairs, August 4, 1891, Series 404-44-698, Hawaii State Archives. Emphasis in original. 23. Robert Walker Irwin to Viscount Sinzo Aoki, December 19, 1890, Series 404-15-253a, Hawaii State Archives.
24. Viscount Sinzo Aoki to Robert Walker Irwin, "21st day, the 1st month, the 24th year of Meiji," Series 404-15-253a, Hawaii State Archives.
25. Robert Walker Irwin to Samuel Parker, July 15, 1892, Series 404-15-253d, Hawaii State Archives.
26. Robert Walker Irwin to Foreign Ministry, February 6, 1893, Series 404-15-253d, Hawaii State Archives.
27. Robert Walker Irwin to Frank Hastings, April 28, 1893, Series 404-15-253d, Hawaii State Archives.
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pg 234
Notes to Pages 166-170
28. Robert Walker Irwin to Sanford B. Dole, April 27, 1893, Series 404-15-253e, Hawaii State Archives.
29. Robert Walker Irwin to Sanford B. Dole, July 13, 1893, Series 404-15-253e, Hawaii State Archives.
30. Letter by Jonathan Austin from Tokyo, October 21, 1889, Series 404-15-252d, Hawaii State Archives.
31. Mutus Munemitus to Robert Walker Irwin, circa 1894, Series 404-15-253f, Hawaii State Archives.
32. Robert Walker Irwin to Sanford B. Dole, August 8,1894, Series 404-15-253f, Hawaii State Archives.
33. "Memorandum as to Relations between Hawaii and Japan," circa 1894, Series 404-15-263, Hawaii State Archives.
34. Hisashi Shimamura to Henry Cooper, January 22,1896, Series 404-15-262a, Hawaii State Archives.
35. Undated memorandum, Series 404-15-264, Hawaii State Archives.
36. Japanese Consul General to Henry Cooper, September 17, 1896, Series 404-15-262a, Hawaii State Archives.
37. Count Okuma to Hisashi Shimamura, December 7, 1896, Series 404-15-262a, Hawaii State Archives.
38. Hisashi Shimamura to Henry Cooper, April 10, 1897, Series 404-15-263, Hawaii State Archives.
39. Robert Walker Irwin to "Minister Hatch," August 8, 1894, Series 404-15-253f, Hawaii State Archives.
40. Clipping, Advertiser, March 1893, Roll 19, Despatches from the U.S. Consul in Honolulu, National Archives and Records Administration -- College Park, Maryland. See also Patsy Sumie Saiki, Early Japanese Immigrants in Hawaii (Honolulu: Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii, 1993).
41. Clipping, April 25, 1893, Roll 19, Despatches from the US. Consul in Honolulu, National Archives and Records Administration-College Park, Maryland.
42. Helena G. Allen, Sanford Ballard Dole: Hawaii's Only President, 1844-1926 (Glendale: Arthur H. Clark, 1988), 115.
43. Noenoe K. Silva, Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004),148.
44. Liliuokalani, Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen (Rutland, VT: Charles Tuttle, 1991),311.
45. Major Wodehouse to the Earl of Rosebury, May 10, 1893, S00627, no. 8, F0534, Great Britain, Foreign Office, Pacific Islands, University of Hawai'i-Manoa. See also Gregory Lawrence Garland, "Southern Congressional Opposition to Hawaiian Reciprocity and Annexation, 1876-1898" (MA thesis, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, 1983).
46. Clipping, Spring 1893, Roll 19, Despatches from the U.S. Consul in Honolulu, National Archives and Records Administration-College Park, Maryland.
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pg 235
Notes to Pages 170-174
47. British Representative to "My Lord," February 7, 1893, F0581279, Public Records Office-London.
48. Washington Post, December 20,1894.
49. Report from Consul General Hawes and "Wodehouse to Lord Kimberley," July 10,1894, F0581288, Public Records Office-London.
50. Hui Aloha Aina to Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, September 11, 1894, F0581288, Public Records Office-London.
51. James Wodehouse to "My Lord," August 5,1894, F0581288, Public Records Office-London.
52. Lucien Young, The Real Hawaii: Its History and Present Conditions (New York: Doubleday, 1899),68.
53. Washington Evening Star, March 19, 1897.
54. Clifford Gessler, Tropic Landfall: The Port of Honolulu (Garden City: Doubleday, 1942),217.
55. Washington Evening Star, July 6, 1897.
56. The Independent, May 6, 1898, Roll 31, Despatches from U.S. Ministers in Hawaii, 1843-1900, National Archives and Records Administration-College Park, Maryland. 57. See attachment to letter from Harold Sewall to John Sherman, May 10,1898, Roll 31, Despatches from U.S. Ministers in Hawaii, 1843-1900, National Archives and Records Administration-College Park, Maryland.
58. Harold Sewall to W. R. Day, June 22, 1898, Roll 31, Despatches from U.S.
Ministers in Hawaii, 1843-1900, National Archives and Records Administration College Park, Maryland.
59. F. M. Hatch to H. E. Cooper, July 10, 1897, in Recollections of the Republic of Hawaii, by B. L. Marx (Honolulu, 1935), Bishop Museum.
60. Afro-American Sentinel [Omaha], February 26,1898.
61. Indianapolis Freeman, March 12, 1898.
62. Indianapolis Freeman, July 9, 1898.
63. Richmond Planet, April 23, 1898.
64. Letter to Departments of Commerce and Labor, June 15, 1905, Gov. 2-7, Carter, Hawaii State Archives.
65. Theodore Roosevelt to A. L. C. Atkinson, May 17, 1906, Gov. 2-7, Hawaii State Archives.
66. Secretary to the President to Hon. George R. Carter, August 21, 1906, Gov. 2-7, Hawaii State Archives.
67. P. F. Ryan to Theodore Roosevelt, August 11, 1906, Gov. 2-7, Hawaii State Archives.
68. Hawaiian Star, January 7, 1907, John Francis Gray Stokes Papers, Hawaii Historical Society.
69. "Proceedings of the Twenty-third Annual Meeting of the Lake Mohonk Conference of Friends of the Indian and Other Dependent Peoples," 1905, Hawaiian Historical Society.
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pg 236
Notes to Pages 174-176
70. "Proceedings of the Twenty-fifth Annual Meeting of the Lake Mohonk Conference of Friends of the Indian and Other Dependent Peoples," 1907, Hawaiian Historical Society. See also William Eleroy Curtis, The United States and Foreign Powers (Meadville, PA: Chautauqua-Century Press, 1892); John W. Foster, American Diplomacy in the Orient (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1904). Emphasis in original.
71. Letter to Editor, June 13, 1913, in Letters and Papers of Alfred Thayer Mahan, Volume III, ed. Robert Seager II and Doris D. Maguire, 498 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1975).
72. Alfred Thayer Mahan to S. A. Ashe, December 12, 1858, in Letters and Papers of Alfred Thayer Mahan, Volume I, ed. Robert Seager II and Doris D. Maguire, 498 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, n.d.), 33.
73. Alfred Thayer Mahan to Leopold J. Mase, May 30, 1907, in Letters and Papers of Alfred Thayer Mahan, Volume III, ed. Robert Seager II and Doris D. Maguire, 498 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1975), 214. Actually Mahan had a point connecting Tokyo with African-Americans in that both had a distinct distaste for white supremacy. Another aspect is reflected in the case of Masumizu Kuninosuke, one of the first Japanese emigrants to the United States who settled in Sacramento. "In 1869, he married Carrie Wilson, the daughter of a former slave from Missouri. Their four 'mixed blood' children thus became the first Nisei, the second generation ofJapanese-Americans." See Furukawa Tetsushi, "Black Asian Relations" in Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African & African American Experience, by Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., 479-480 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
74. Letter by Alfred Thayer Mahan to the New York Times, April 2, 1912, in Letters and Papers of Alfred Thayer Mahan, Volume III, ed. Robert Seager II and Doris D. Maguire, 498 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1975), 214.
75. Geoffrey C. Ward, Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (New York: Knopf, 2004), 117.
76. Fred Ivay, KKK-Moose Jaw, Canada, April 9, 1928, A458(A458), 745/1/333, National Archives of Australia. In same file see also Secretary to Stanley Bruce, May 22, 1928.
77. Sydney Morning Herald, May 10, 2005.
78. See Gerald Horne, Race War! White Supremacy and the Japanese Attack on the British Empire (New York: New York University Press, 2004).
79. See also Hermann Joseph Hiery, The Neglected War: The German South Pacific and the Influence of World War I (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1995).
80. Weekly Magazine, October 20, 1892, Bishop Museum-Honolulu. See also John B. Thurston to Marquis of Ripon, January 6, 1893, S00627, no. 8, Great Britain, Foreign Office, Pacific Islands, University of Hawai'i-Miinoa: Reference here is made concerning recruiting of "natives of the Gilbert Islands for employment on plantations in Guatemala" (404 names were attached).
81. Julia Collins, "America's Hidden Slave Trade Exposed," Boalt Hall Transcript 38,no.1 (Spring 2005): 14-15, 14.
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pg 237 ** final page of footnotes for the book
Notes to Pages 176-177
82. New York Times, January 25, 2004; June 4, 2005.
83. See "Allegations of Forced Labour, New Hebrides," CO 1036/558; Forced
Labour, Dominions Respond, 1930, DO 35/357/2, Public Records Office-London.
84. New York Times, July 12, 2005.
85. Los Angeles Times, July 21,2005. See also New York Times, July 17, 2005.
86. Edward Crapol, James G. Blaine: Architect of Empire (Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 2000),125-126.
87. Haunani Kay-Trask, From a Native Daughter (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1999).
88. National Farmers Union, Children of the Indus, 1879-2004 (Suva: NFU, 2004), 1.
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