REVIEWS
“How do political and economic institutions evolve? How does the past shape the present? Sumner La Croix answers those questions in an illuminating study of Hawaiʻi that links the original settlement by humans, endemic warfare among newly formed states, the arrival of Western colonizers, and finally statehood and problems today.”
— Philip T. Hoffman, author of Why Did Europe Conquer the World?
“Hawaiʻi may have been the last major archipelago on earth to be settled by humans, but its short history is enormously rich. La Croix makes an invaluable contribution to the social science history of Hawaiʻi by laying out clearly and persuasively how political and economic forces interacted throughout all of Hawaiian history, with particular emphasis on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This is an important book that will find a key place in the history of Hawaiʻi and the political economy of colonization and statehood.”
— John Joseph Wallis, coauthor of Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History
“A superb analysis of the economic and political history of Hawaiʻi from its inception over eight hundred years to the present. Using a unified framework of political orders, La Croix moves seamlessly through the various political transitions of local chiefs to Unified Kingdom, U.S. colony, and statehood, with their related economic implications. He documents how the structures put in place eight hundred years ago resonate in the present century. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in economic and political history and those interested in contemporary public policy.”
— Ann M. Carlos, coauthor of Commerce by a Frozen Sea: Native Americans and the European Fur Trade
"La Croix's analysis of [20th-century political and economic] changes from the perspective of an economic historian offers a new understanding of these fundamental changes to Hawaii’s economy and political landscape."
— Randall Akee, Journal of Interdisciplinary History
"Although not intended as a comprehensive history, Hawai‘i: Eight Hundred Years of Political and Economic Change is remarkable in its chronological scope. Incorporating the latest research in various fields, it is especially useful for those with an interest in the connections between economic and political developments in Hawaiian history."
— Douglas Askman, Pacific Historical Review
"Economic and political development is a longitudinal process. Sumner La Croix gives us 800 years of the development of Hawaii from its settlement by immigrants from the Society Islands in the mid-thirteenth century to the present. . . .The book is too rich in the details of institutional change. Indeed, it is the best case study that I have read on long run development."
— Lee Alston, EH.net
Hawai’i gives a clear and succinct exemplar of the true cost of colonialism for indigenous people and the aftermath that makes it relevant far beyond Hawaii’s shores."
— Glyn Ford, Asian Review of Books
"Sumner La Croix writes a carefully crafted and well‐documented economic history of one of the most famous—but perhaps, to the general reader, least familiar—US states."
— Justin R. Bucciferro, Economic History Review
"A very satisfying, well supported study on long-run political and economic development providing deep insights into the broader process of institutional change. I cannot recommend this book highly enough."
— Edwyna Harris, Australian Economic History Review
"Provides nuanced and persuasive evidence on the importance of political stability and instability for human welfare and the forces that structure institutions in any society; how the interaction of technology and institutions affects economic, political, and social development; and how unique, rich, and variegated every human society actually is."
— John Wallis, Journal of Economic History
"La Croix’s primary focus is how political and economic institutions co-evolved over the centuries and demonstrate continuity. This book will appeal to economists."
— The Journal of Pacific History
"The book aptly exposes how political and economic forces interacted throughout Hawai'i’s history... certainly worth adding to anyone's library on Hawai'i."
— Journal of New Zealand & Pacific Studies
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Short History of Humans in Hawai?i
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226592121.003.0001
[archaic states;property rights;unification;statehood;overthrow;land redistribution;open-access political order;limited access political order;epidemics;native Hawaiians]
Humans have a very short history in Hawai?i. The Hawaiian archipelago was the last major land area on the planet to be settled when Polynesians traveled over 2,000 miles north to the islands about 750–850 years ago. This chapter provides an overview of the topics covered by the book and the linkages between the past and present in Hawai‘i’s political history. Small, resource-rich chiefdoms, each supported by a state religion, merged into larger states and competed with one another for the next 350–400 years to control more territory and people within the eight major Hawaiian islands. In these well-organized states, property rights in land were well specified and enforced, and a system of post-harvest taxation facilitated risk sharing and mobilization of state resources for war. We see these well-functioning institutions mirrored in today’s sophisticated political institutions and high living standards. Three more general features of Hawai‘i’s past political institutions have persisted into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: relatively centralized political institutions, use of land redistribution as a mechanism to form and preserve ruling political coalitions, and pathways to establishing more independent societies.
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Voyaging and Settlement
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226592121.003.0002
[Polynesian triangle;Marquesas Islands;Tahiti;push-pull migration;taro;Patrick Kirch;population growth;settlement;archaeologists;voyages]
Understanding Hawai?i’s discovery, initial settlement, and ensuing rapid population growth are important for understanding the full sweep of Hawaiian history, as the effects of initial events, trends, and institutions often persist far into a society’s future. Three somewhat existential questions must be addressed: When did Polynesians voyage to the central Eastern Pacific and then to Hawai?i? Why did those Polynesians voyage? And why did they voyage to Hawai?i, far to the north of the Polynesian heartland? This chapter provides ingredients for tentative answers to these questions by bringing together material from pioneering studies of Hawaiian history recently undertaken by an array of teams of archaeologists and other social scientists. The same teams have also provided new glimpses into how the initial settlement of Hawai?i proceeded, and this chapter uses their materials, as well as insights gathered from other initial colonial settlements around the globe, to provide a rough and somewhat speculative sketch of Hawaiian polities and economies after 150–200 years of settlement.
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
The Rise of Competing Hawaiian States
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226592121.003.0003
[Makahiki;archaic states;heiau;mana;ho‘okupu;innovation;geographical isolation;population growth;agricultural surplus;ahupua‘a]
This chapter sets forth the case that Hawai?i had the necessary food surpluses to form complex states, and then compares several theories developed to explain state formation in Hawai?i during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. A central question considered is why Hawaiian states were simultaneously fragile enough to have frequent usurpation while durable enough to support large military invasions across the ocean channels separating the Hawaiian islands. The chapter concludes by briefly considering advantages that states on the islands of Maui and Hawai?i had been accumulating in the 100–150 years prior to the late eighteenth-century European voyages that brought foreigners, diseases, trade, and Western ideas to Hawai?i.
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Guns, Germs, and Sandalwood
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226592121.003.0004
[sandalwood;whaling;Liholiho;maka?ainana;resource boom;limited-access political order;Kamehameha;Ka‘ahumanu;population decline;ali‘i]
This chapter uses models of resource booms and political orders to provide a framework for understanding the massive changes in Hawai?i’s economy and political order that occurred during the first 50 years after Western contact. It shows why the interaction of three events—the discovery and opening of trade in sandalwood, the big decline in the Native Hawaiian population, and the consolidation of political power under King Kamehameha—led, between 1795 and 1830, to a decline in traditional agriculture, big changes in land rents and wages, and changes in the power of the Mo?i(king) and ali?i (chiefs).It then explains how the resource boom in sandalwood and the increased power of high-ranking chiefs led to a weakening of property rights in sandalwood during the transition to a new king in 1819.
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Globalization and the Emergence of a Mature Natural State
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226592121.003.0005
[mature natural state;property rights;global markets;population decline;Kauikeaouli;Mahele;sugar;land rents;missionaries;Hawaiian language]
Why did Hawai?i’s ruling chiefs reorganize property rights to land in the mid-nineteenth century? It is that the integration of Hawai?i’s economy with global markets increased the profitability of deploying rapidly evolving technologies of sugar production on fertile Hawai?i lands. Another way to say this is that Hawai?i’s rapid integration into the global economy gave it a comparative advantage in sugar production, as the development of U.S. West Coast markets in the 1840s increased the price of sugar for Hawai?i producers vis-à-vis prices for yams, sweet potatoes, and taro, the traditional goods produced by Hawai?i farmers. Globalization did for the Hawai?i economy what it does for all small economies that become closely linked to the global economy: changes in rents and wages lose their direct ties to changes in the country’s population and become more closely tied to changes in the prices of goods bought and sold in global markets.
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Treaties, Powerful Elites, and the Overthrow
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226592121.003.0006
[sugar;McKinley Tariff;Kalakaua;Pearl Bay;Bayonet Revolution;trade diversion;Lili‘uokalani;overthrow;reciprocity treaty;mature natural state]
The foundations of the overthrow of the monarchy in 1893 were laid in 1887 with the Bayonet Rebellion and the resulting “Bayonet Constitution.” The rebellion’s proximate cause was the problematic political dynamics unleashed by the renegotiation of the U.S.-Hawai‘i trade reciprocity treaty, but a deeper impetus was the rise of imperial interests within the United States that favored annexation of Hawai‘i. The opportunistic behavior of the United States in requesting additional concessions at treaty renewal unleashed political forces in Hawai‘i that led to the Bayonet Rebellion, but it was the passage of the McKinley Tariff in 1890 that unleashed the economic forces that would topple the monarchy. The new law’s termination of the sugar tariff eliminated economic rents fed to the Hawai‘i sugar industry and pushed it into depression. The ensuing economic crisis led to immediate political crises for Queen Lili‘uokalani and in January 1893, she lost her throne by signaling her willingness to act to reduce the influence of foreigners in Hawai‘i. A small group of foreigners, this time with the assistance of the U.S. minister to Hawai‘i and U.S. marines, staged a coup d’état, with the purpose of delivering Hawai‘i to the United States for annexation.
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Colonial Political Economy: Hawai?i as a U.S. Territory
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226592121.003.0007
[colony;plantations;Big Five;limited-access political order;crown lands;military;Organic Act;migrant workers;dominant coalition;native Hawaiians]
This chapter shows that the big winners from the change to U.S. colonial rule were the U.S. government, which moved quickly to establish a network of military bases within Hawai?i to serve as the focus of its projection of power in the Pacific Ocean, and the sugar plantations and Big Five agencies, whose influence in government deepened and whose property rights in plantation land became more secure. Native Hawaiians were the big losers, as their share of economic rents was much reduced due to elimination of the institution of the monarch within government; the transfer of sovereignty and most important decision-making powers to Washington, D.C.; the loss of the monarch’s vast crown lands; increased competition in labor markets with foreign contract laborers; and big influxes of U.S. and Asian immigrants. However, the Organic Act, which established a territorial government for the new U.S. colony, contained some provisions more characteristic of an open-access political order than a mature natural state.Groups dissatisfied with their shares of economic rents retained pathways by which they could compete away a portion of the dominant coalition’s economic rents and participate in political action to change the status of Hawai?i within the United States.
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Homes for Hawaiians
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226592121.003.0008
[Daniel Akaka;error correction model;rent control;rehabilitation;Jonah Kuhio Kalaniana‘ole;Hawaiian Homes Commission Act;territorial census;Territorial Legislative Commission;Dept. of Hawaiian Home Lands;John Wise]
During this decade, native Hawaiians began to organize more effectively to demand that the territorial and federal governments take action to address their declining welfare by returning some of the best government-owned agricultural lands to them for settlement. In 1921, the U.S. Congress responded by passing the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act (HHCA), the goal of which was to lease federal government lands to Native Hawaiians for use as ranches, farms, and house lots. This chapter analyzes why this program has struggled to fulfill its goals throughout its existence and concludes that it never had a chance of success due to the poor-quality lands assigned to the program and the restrictions placed on lessee farm and pastoral activities. Modern econometric techniques are used to test hypotheses that executive and legislative support for the program and distribution of program lands were driven by the power of Hawaiians at the ballot box and by the changing value of the lands dedicated to the program.
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Statehood and the Transition to an Open-Access Order
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226592121.003.0009
[John Burns;Big Five;constitution;Admission Act;martial law;property rights;Prepaid Health Care Act;Daniel Inouye;ILWU;tourism]
After several failed attempts, Hawai‘i became a state in 1959. In many respects, statehood transformed Hawai?i from a colonial society dominated by colonial elites to a vibrant, rich democratic society. Fueled by a rapidly expanding tourism industry, the state government transformed to provide more public accountability and expanded to provide public services to Hawai‘i’s growing middle class. This transformation came at a great cost, as the long-term economic and political foundations of the Admission Act and the 1950 constitution contained a serious flaw: They failed to address the loss of sovereignty for native Hawaiians and the expropriation of private crown lands from Queen Lili?uokalani.
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
The Rise and Fall of Residential Leasehold Tenure in Hawai?i
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226592121.003.0010
[Land Reform Act;Bishop Estate;Bernice Pauahi Bishop;land monopoly;Maryland bill;rent renegotiation;inflation;James Campbell;charitable dealer;leasehold]
This chapter analyzes the economic and political origins of a state law, the Land Reform Act (LRA) of 1967, that reorganized property rights for homeowners who leased the land under their homes. One of numerous major policy initiatives enacted in the decade after statehood, the LRA was highly controversial when it passed, when it was challenged in state and federal court, and when it was finally implemented. The act allows owners of single-family homes to petition the state government to use its powers of eminent domain to force the sale of the leased land on which their homes stood. Analysis focuses on why Hawai‘i landowners chose to develop so much housing on leased land in the first place and why homeowners after statehood demanded and received the right to buy the land under their homes and, in Honolulu, under their condominiums.
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Land Reform and Housing Prices
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226592121.003.0011
[housing prices;Midkiff;Bishop Estate;market power;oligopoly;open-access political order;natural supply;residential leases;land use regulations;George Ariyoshi]
This chapter shows that the LRA’s reorganization of property rights in leased residential land failed to achieve its stated purpose, a reduction in Honolulu’s high land and housing prices. It undertakes a critical examination of the US Supreme Court’s 1984 decision (Hawaii Housing Authority v. Midkiff) upholding the LRA and points out problems with the Court’s historical analogies and economic reasoning. The act’s ineffectiveness in reducing housing prices was not surprising, as three other factors besides market power in the land market are the main sources of Honolulu’s high land and housing prices: valuable natural and cultural amenities, a limited natural supply of developable land, and state and county land use regulations. These factors were responsible for the high land and housing prices in Honolulu in 1960, and continue to be responsible for even higher land and housing prices in the twenty-first century.
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
The Long Reach of History
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226592121.003.0012
[Hawaiian rights;crown lands;slavery;dominant coalition;Act 221;U.S. Supreme Court;Akaka bill;‘aha;language schools;open-access political order]
Hawai?i’s transition from a U.S. colony to a U.S. state came abruptly in 1959 and yet was carried out quickly. Over the next decade a new constitution was implemented, laws supporting the old territorial political order were replaced, the new state government expanded to provide services demanded by the growing middle class, and the Hawai?i economy boomed. Hawai?i’s success in partly overcoming its colonial legacy was mainly due to the rapid growth of the tourism industry after statehood, but was also driven by Hawai‘i’s avoidance of slave labor on sugar and pineapple plantations, the persistence of indentured labor for less than 50 years, the ability of competing economic and political groups to form organizations to compete away some economic rents, and long experience (over 450 years) with relatively centralized government institutions. However, the effects of colonialism in Hawai?i persist, as the welfare of native Hawaiians is still affected by lost sovereignty, lost lands, and lost opportunities. The chapter concludes with a review of progress made toward restoring a sovereign Hawaiian government and recent federal judicial decisions that have slowed progress toward that goal.
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
