Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
For more than a century beginning in 1866, Molokaʻi's Kalaupapa Peninsula was a bru-
tal, deadly place of involuntary exile for those afflicted with leprosy (now called Hansen's
disease). In
The Colony
, John Tayman tells the survivors' stories with dignity, compas-
sion and unflinching honesty.
King Sugar & the Plantation Era
Ko
(sugarcane) arrived in Hawaiʻi with the early Polynesian settlers. In 1835 Bostonian
William Hooper saw a business opportunity to establish Hawaii's first sugar plantation.
Hooper persuaded Honolulu investors to put up the money for his venture and then
worked out a deal with Kamehameha III to lease agricultural land on Kauaʻi. The next
order of business was finding an abundant supply of low-cost labor, which was necessary
to make sugar plantations profitable.
The natural first choice for plantation workers was Hawaiians, but even when willing,
they were not enough. Due to introduced diseases like typhoid, influenza, smallpox and
syphilis, the Hawaiian population had steadily and precipitously declined. An estimated
800,000 indigenous people lived on the islands before Western contact, but by 1800, the
Hawaiian population had dropped by two-thirds, to around 250,000. By 1860, they
numbered fewer than 70,000.
Wealthy plantation owners began to look overseas for a labor supply of immigrants ac-
customed to working long days in hot weather, and for whom the low wages would seem
like an opportunity. In the 1850s, wealthy sugar-plantation owners began recruiting
laborers from China, then Japan and Portugal. After annexing Hawaii in 1898, US re-
strictions on Chinese and Japanese immigration made Oʻahu's plantation owners turn to
Puerto Rico, Korea and the Philippines for laborers. All of these different immigrant
groups, along with the shared pidgin language they developed and the uniquely mixed
community created by plantation life, transformed Hawaii into the multicultural, multi-
ethnic society it is today.
During California's Gold Rush and later the US Civil War, sugar exports to the main-
land soared, making plantation owners wealthier and more powerful. Five sugar-related
holding companies, known as the Big Five, came to dominate all aspects of the industry:
Castle & Cooke, Alexander & Baldwin, C Brewer & Co, American Factors, and Theo H
Davies & Co. All were run by haole white businessmen, many the sons and grandsons of
missionaries, who eventually reached the same conclusion as their forebears: Hawaiians
could not be trusted to govern themselves. So, behind closed doors, the Big Five deve-
loped plans to relieve Hawaiians of the job.
