Hawaii - Jeff Campbell [16]
Born and raised in Hawaii after Western contact, King Kamehameha III (Kauikeaouli) struggled to retain traditional Hawaiian society while evolving the political system to better suit foreign, and frequently American, tastes. Hawaii’s absolute monarchy denied citizens a voice in their government or the right to own land. Traditionally, no Hawaiian ever ‘owned’ land, but ali’i managed it in stewardship for all. However, none of this sat well with US patriots who, but a generation before, had fought a revolution to prove that representative government and private property were the sine qua non of civilization.
So, in 1840, Kauikeaouli promulgated Hawaii’s first constitution, which established a constitutional monarchy with limited citizen representation. Given an inch, foreigners pressed for a mile, and in 1848, Kauikeaouli followed this with a revolutionary land reform act that was known as the Great Mahele (the great division).
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For a century, the trip to Moloka’i’s Kalaupapa Peninsula wasn’t an adventure but a death sentence. In The Colony (2006), John Tayman tells this incredible story with dignity, compassion and unflinching honesty.
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This act took Hawaii and divided it three ways: into crown lands (owned by the kings and their heirs), chief lands (ali’i holdings within traditional ahupua’a), and government lands (to be held for the general public). This was followed in 1850 by the Kuleana Act, which awarded 30,000 acres of government lands to Hawaiian commoners, and it gave foreigners the right to purchase some lands.
The hope was that the Great Mahele would create a nation of small freeholder farmers, but instead it was an utter disaster – for Hawaiians, at least. Confusion reigned over boundaries and surveys. Unused to the concept of private land, and sometimes unable to pay the tax, many Hawaiians simply failed to follow through on the paperwork to claim their titles. Many of those who did – perhaps feeling that life as a taro farmer wasn’t the attraction it once was – immediately cashed out, selling their land to eager and acquisitive foreigners.
Within 30 to 40 years, despite supposed limits, foreigners owned fully three-quarters of Hawaii, and Hawaiians, who had relinquished so much of their culture so quickly, had now lost their sacred connection to the land. As historian Gavan Daws wrote, ‘The great division became the great dispossession.’
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KING SUGAR & THE PLANTATION ERA
In another fateful moment of synchronicity, 1848 was the year gold was discovered in California – spurring the gold rush and Manifest Destiny, which swept west across North America and leapt from the coast to land on Hawaii’s shores.
American entrepreneurs, increasingly landowners, discovered it was cheaper to supply California’s gold miners from Hawaii than from the US East Coast. Foreign-controlled shipping, banking and agriculture grew, along with a struggling effort to make sugar commercially viable. All these shifts accelerated in the 1860s: the whaling industry collapsed (due to whale declines and the discovery of oil) at the same time that the American Civil War created a sharp demand for sugar in the north. In short order, sugar became Hawaii’s staple export.
In 1860, 12 plantations exported under 1.5 million pounds of sugar; by 1866, 32 plantations were exporting nearly 18 million pounds. After the war, the demand for Hawaiian sugar dropped and the industry languished. When King Kalakaua was elected to the throne in 1874, he immediately lobbied the United States for a reciprocity treaty that would end foreign import taxes on sugar (thus ensuring profits). The United States agreed in 1876, and sugar production instantly skyrocketed, rising to 58 million pounds in 1878 and 114 million pounds in 1883.
Abundant supplies of low-cost labor were also necessary to make sugar plantations profitable. The first and natural choice was Hawaiians, but even when willing, they were not enough. Due primarily to introduced diseases –like typhoid, influenza, smallpox and