Hawaiis political economy

Hawaii’s political economy went through some major changes. The development of plantations and tourism paved the path for how Hawaii’s economy is today. I will discuss how tourism, ethnicity, gender and education both constrain and enable opportunities in contemporary Hawaii.

Captain James Cook and his crew came to Hawaii in 1778. Bringing along many diseases such as, syphilis, gonorrhea, tuberculosis, and viral hepatitis.(Blaisdell, p.44) Native Hawaiians were not immune to these diseases, they were unable to be cured therefore died and a massive depopulation occurred. An estimated 500,000 Hawaiians were living in Hawaii before Western Contact, and in 1878 less than 45,000 Hawaiians remained.(Trask, p.10). With the rapid decrease of Hawaiians, also came the fact that their culture was in danger.

Foreign exploitation began, when Cook replaced the traditional island subsistence-sharing economy by the for-profit barter and afterward the money economy. Firearms, and sandalwood lumbering where just a few items that brought foreign economic and political control of the ruling ali’i, who were tricked by many greedy Western merchants. The Great Mahele of 1848 and the Kuleana Act of 1850 contained a major land redistribution act, which was forced onto the monarchy by Westerners(Blaisdell, p.44). Bringing fee simple ownership to Hawaiians, these land divisions actually alienated the land from them. The Mahele divided the lands between the chiefs, king and government. The Kuleana act supposedly guaranteed to the makaainana fee simple title to small plots of land, which would eventually separate the individual from the group. (Trask, p.10) Hawaiians depended on the land, they were not use to “private property”, which led to many problems, and the chiefs and the government were heavily indebt to the Western merchants.

A small company of thirty-four New England missionaries came to Hawaii between 1820 and 1930, were the first modern immigrants. (Lind p.59) Missionaries were powerful agents of cultural destruction, coming to Hawaii to settle and teach their ways and beliefs. Bloodthirsty priests and despotic chiefs had ruled one reason for missionaries arriving and settling in Hawaii, due to the fact that they believed ancient Hawaiians. (Trask p.14) Bringing along cultural havoc by establishing a western style educational system, which included the first textbook as the Bible. The most critical change was in the use of language as a tool of colonization. Language had once been inseparable from the Hawaiians and their history by communicating their heritage between and among many generations, now came to be used as the very vehicle of alienation from their habits of life.