Shoal of Time

Shoal of Time by Gavan Daws. I read this to learn about the history of Hawaii during the trip to Kauai. It starts from around the first encounter with the expedition led by Captain Cook, who was killed in one of the islands. After acquiring weapons from Europeans, Kamehameha was able to unified the islands and start a dynasty, which gradually lost power to colonizers who had competing interests. The book also covers Asian immigration (which I had learned a bit from The Making of Asian America). Sugar plantation owners wanted statehood to get better deals on their sales, but it was rejected many times because it would make too many non-whites citizens. The inclusion of Alaska as state created the necessary precedent for Hawaii.

One trivia I learned: the C&H sugar company which we often see in grocery stores stands for California and Hawaii. The deal was that Hawaii planted the sugar canes and California refined it.

This entry was parsed from an older retrospective post.