HAWAII - Rare Antique Illustrated Travel Books

An archipelago in the mid-Pacific, and thus commonly included in Oceania, it is not part of North America. Hawai'i is the southernmost state of the United States; it would be the westernmost, if not for Alaska. It is one of only two states (Alaska is the other) that are outside the contiguous United States, and do not share a border with another U.S. state.

Hawai'i is the only state of the United States that

* is without territory on the mainland of any continent
* is completely surrounded by water, and
* continues to grow in area because of active extrusive lava flows, most notably from Kilauea.
* is entirely in the tropics.

Except for Easter Island, Hawai'i is farther away from land than any other landmass on Earth. Hawai'i's tallest mountain, Mauna Kea stands over 13,000 feet (4,000 meters) and is taller than Mount Everest if followed to its base at the floor of the Pacific Ocean.

The Hawaiian Archipelago comprises eight islands and atolls extending across a distance of 1,500 miles (2,400 km). Of these, eight high islands are considered the "main islands" and are located at the southeastern end of the archipelago. These islands are, in order from the northwest to southeast, Niihau, Kauai, Oahu, Molokai, Lanai, Kahoolawe, Maui, and Hawaii. The latter is by far the largest, and is very often called the "Big Island" or "Big Isle" to avoid confusion with the state name.

All of the Hawaiian Islands were formed by volcanoes arising from the sea floor from a magma source described in geological theory as a hotspot. The theory maintains that as the tectonic plate beneath much of the Pacific Ocean moves in a northwesterly direction, the hot spot remains stationary, slowly creating new volcanoes. This explains why only volcanoes on the southern half of the Big Island, and the Loihi Seamount deep below the waters off its southern coast, are presently active, with Lo'ihi being the newest volcano to form.

The last volcanic eruption outside the Big Island happened at Haleakala on Maui in the late 18th century (though recent research suggests that Haleakala's most recent eruptive activity could be hundreds of years older.

The volcanic activity and subsequent erosion created impressive geological features. The Big Island is notable as the world's fifth highest island. If the height of the island is measured from its base, deep in the ocean, to its snow-clad peak on Mauna Kea, it can be considered one of the tallest mountains on the Earth.

Because of the islands' volcanic formation, native life before human activity is said to have arrived by the "3 'W's": wind, waves, and wings[disputed]. The isolation of the Hawaiian Islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and the wide range of environments to be found on high islands located in and near the tropic, has resulted in a vast array of endemic flora and fauna. Hawai'i has more endangered species per square mile than anywhere else [disputed].

Ethnically, Hawaii is one of only four states in which non-Hispanic whites do not form a majority, and has the largest percentage of Asian Americans. Hawaii was the first majority-minority state in the United States, having been one since the early 20th century. Hawaii also has the largest percentage of persons of mixed race, who constitute some 20% of the total population.

The third group of foreigners to arrive upon Hawaii's shores, after the Polynesians and Europeans, were the Chinese. Chinese employees serving on Western trading ships disembarked and settled starting in 1789. In 1820 the first American missionaries arrived in Hawaii to preach Christianity and teach the Hawaiians what the missionaries considered "civilized" ways. A large proportion of Hawaii's population has become a people of Asian ancestry (especially Chinese, Japanese and Filipino) many of whom are descendants from those waves of early foreign immigrants brought to the islands in the nineteenth century, beginning in the 1850's, to work on the sugar plantations. The first 153 Japanese immigrants arrived in Hawaii on June 19, 1868. They were not "legally" approved by the Japanese government established after the Meiji Restoration because the contract was between a broker and the Tokugawa shogunate, by then terminated. The first Japanese government-approved immigrants arrived in Hawaii on February 9, 1885 after Kalakaua's petition to Emperor Meiji when Kalakaua visited Japan in 1881.

* Ala Kahakai National Historic Trail on the Big Island
* Haleakala National Park in Kula
* Hawaii Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island
* Kalaupapa National Historical Park in Kalaupapa
* Kaloko-Honokohau National Historical Park in Kailua-Kona
* Puuhonua O Honaunau National Historical Park in Honaunau (Puuhonua o Honaunau)
* Pu'ukohola Heiau National Historic Site in Kawaihae (Puukohola Heiau)
* USS Arizona Memorial at Honolulu

The movement of the Hawaiian royal family from the island of Hawai'i to Maui, and subsequently to Oahu, explains why certain population centers exist where they do today. The largest city, Honolulu, was the one chosen by King Kamehameha III as the capital of his kingdom because of the natural harbor there, the present-day Honolulu Harbor.

The only city is the capital, Honolulu, located along the southeast coast of the island of Oahu. Other populous areas are not cities, but unincorporated areas, including Hilo, Kaneohe, Kailua, Pearl City, Waipahu, Kahului, Kailua-Kona, Kihei, and Lihue. The previous capital was Lahaina, Maui.

Archaeologic evidence points to earliest habitation in the 11th century, probably by Polynesian settlers from the Marquesas, Raiatea and Bora Bora. The first recorded European contact with the islands was in 1778 by British explorer James Cook. However, substantial evidence (Stokes 1932 for example) exists of earlier Spanish visits to Hawaii.

Hawaii is one of four constituent states of the United States that was an independent nation prior to its statehood, along with California, Texas, and Vermont. The Kingdom of Hawaii existed from 1810 until 1893, when the monarchy was overthrown. It was an independent republic from 1894 until 1898. It was annexed by the United States in 1898, became a territory in 1900 and has been a state since 1959.

Anthropologists believe that Polynesians from the Marquesas and possibly the Society Islands first populated the Hawaiian Islands at some time between AD 300 and 1000. There is a great deal of dispute regarding these dates.

Archaeologists and historians also differ as to whether there were one or two waves of colonization. It is believed by some authors that there had been an early settlement from the Marquesas, and a later wave of immigrants from Tahiti, circa 1300, who were said to have introduced a new line of high chiefs and the practice of human sacrifice. This later immigration is detailed in folk tales about Paao. However, other authors have argued that there is no archaeological or linguistic evidence whatsoever for a later influx of Tahitian settlers and that Paao must be regarded as a myth. Since there are still many supporters of the Paao narrative, this topic is still hotly disputed.

Leaving aside the question of Paao, historians agree that the history of the islands was marked by a slow but steady growth in population and the size of chiefdoms, which grew to encompass whole islands. Local chiefs, called Alii, ruled their settlements and fought to extend their sway and defend their communities from predatory rivals. This was conducted in a system of Alii of various ranks somewhat similar to Feudalism. Warfare was endemic.

The 1778 arrival of British explorer Captain James Cook is usually taken to be Hawaii's first contact with European explorers. Cook plotted and published the geographical coordinates of the Hawaiian Islands, so that they could be found again. Cook named his discovery the Sandwich Islands in honor of one of his sponsors, John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, and reported the native name as Owyhee. This is also the reason for the existence of the British Overseas Territory of the South Sandwich Islands near Argentina, as opposed to the Hawaiian ones.

Some writers have claimed that there were European visitors before Cook, citing Hawaiian legends and references in some Spanish chronicles in support of their argument. While it is possible that there were earlier visitors, this is not accepted as fact by most historians.

Cook visited the Hawaiian islands twice. The second visit ended badly for him, when he was killed at Kealakekua Bay in 1779. He had attempted to abduct a Hawaiian chief and hold him as ransom for return of a ship's boat that was stolen by a different minor chief; the chief's supporters fought back, killing him.

After Cook's visit and the publication of several books relating his voyages, the Hawaiian islands received many European visitors: explorers, traders, and eventually whalers who found the islands a convenient harbor and source of fresh food. Early British influence can still be seen from the design of the local Flag of Hawaii which has the British Union Flag in the corner. Visitors introduced disease to the formerly isolated islands, and the Hawaiian population plunged precipitously. American missionaries arrived in 1820 and eventually converted the chiefs and the remaining population to Protestant Christianity.

After a series of battles that ended in 1795 and peaceful cession of the island of Kauai in 1810, the Hawaiian Islands were united for the first time under a single ruler who would become known as King Kamehameha the Great. He established the House of Kamehameha, a dynasty that ruled over the kingdom until 1872.

The death of the bachelor King Kamehameha V-who did not name an heir-resulted in the popular election of King Lunalilo over Kalakaua. After Lunalilo's death, in a hotly contested and allegedly fraudulent election by the legislature in 1874 between Kalakaua and Emma (which led to riots and the landing of U.S. and British troops to keep the peace), governance was passed on to the House of Kalakaua.

In 1887, the influence of Walter Murray Gibson, a group of primarily American and European businessmen, including kingdom subjects and members of the Hawaiian government forced King Kalakaua to sign the derisively nicknamed "Bayonet Constitution" which stripped the king of administrative authority, eliminated voting rights for Asians and set minimum income and property requirements for American, European and native Hawaiian voters, essentially limiting the electorate to wealthy elite Americans, Europeans and native Hawaiians. King Kalakaua reigned until his death in 1891. His sister, Liliuokalani, succeeded him to the throne and ruled until her overthrow in 1893.

In 1893, Queen Liliuokalani threatened to abrogate the "Bayonet Constitution" and draft a new constitution that would restore power to the monarchy. Supporters of the Reform Party (primarily of American and European ancestry, but including some native Hawaiians) organized in response to this and took over the government of the Kingdom of Hawaii. American troops aboard the USS Boston were landed in Honolulu under strict orders of neutrality, to protect the "lives and property of American citizens, and to assist in preserving public order", while a 13 member council of businessmen, attorneys and politicians organized the Honolulu Rifles to depose Queen Liliuokalani.

The monarchy ended in January 1893, and there was much controversy in the following years as the queen tried to regain her throne. After an unsuccessful attempt at armed rebellion in 1895, a weapons cache was found on the palace grounds and Queen Liliuokalani was placed under arrest, tried by a military tribunal of the Republic of Hawaii, convicted of misprision of treason and then imprisoned in her own home. The Queen officially abdicated in 1896. In 1993, a joint Apology Resolution regarding the overthrow was passed by Congress and signed by President Clinton.

The Republic of Hawaii was the formal name of Hawaii from 1894 to 1898 when it was run as a republic. The republic period occurred between the administration of the Provisional Government of Hawaii which ended on July 4, 1894 and the adoption of the Newlands Resolution in Congress in which the Republic was annexed to the United States and became the Territory of Hawaii on July 7, 1898.

When William McKinley won the presidential election in November of 1896, the question of Hawaii's annexation to the U.S. was again opened. The previous president, Grover Cleveland, was a friend of Queen Liliuokalani. He had remained opposed to annexation until the end of his term, but McKinley was open to persuasion by U.S. expansionists and by annexationists from Hawaii. He agreed to meet with a committee of annexationists from Hawaii, Lorrin Thurston, Francis Hatch and William Kinney. After negotiations, in June of 1897, McKinley agreed to a treaty of annexation with these representatives of the Republic of Hawaii. The president then submitted the treaty to the U.S. Senate for approval.

Despite some opposition in the islands, the Newlands Resolution was passed by the House June 15, 1898, by a vote of 209 to 91, and by the Senate on July 6, 1898, by a vote of 42 to 21, annexing Hawaii as a U.S. territory. Although its legality was questioned by some at the time and in the present because it was a resolution, not a treaty between two independent nations, both houses of the American Congress carried the measure with two-thirds majorities, whereas a treaty would have only required two-thirds of the Senate vote (Article II, Sec. 2, U.S. Constitution).

The power of the plantation owners was finally broken by activist descendants of original immigrant laborers. Because they were born in a U.S. territory, they were legal U.S. citizens. Expecting to gain full voting rights, they actively campaigned for statehood for the Hawaiian Islands.

In 1900, Hawaii was granted self-governance and retained Iolani Palace as the territorial capitol building. Though several attempts were made to achieve statehood, Hawaii remained a territory for sixty years. Plantation owners, such as the Big Five, found territorial status convenient, enabling them to continue importing cheap foreign labor; such immigration was prohibited in various states of the U.S.

In March 1959, both houses of Congress passed the Admission Act and U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower signed it into law. (The act excluded Palmyra Atoll, part of the Kingdom and Territory of Hawaii, from the new state.) On June 27 of that year, a referendum was held asking residents of Hawaii to vote on accepting the statehood bill. Hawaii voted at a ratio of 17 to 1 to accept. On August 21, church bells throughout Honolulu were rung upon the proclamation that Hawaii was the 50th state of the Union.

After statehood, Hawaii quickly became a modern state with a construction boom and rapidly growing economy. The Hawaii Republican Party, which was strongly supported by the plantation owners, was voted out of office. In its place, the Democratic Party of Hawaii dominated state politics for forty years.

In recent decades, the state government has implemented programs to promote Hawaiian culture. The Hawaii State Constitutional Convention of 1978 incorporated as state constitutional law specific programs such as the creation of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs to promote the indigenous Hawaiian language and culture.

Controversy has erupted within the last decade over the extent of the Hawaiian cultural programs creating a new political dialogue within the state. Pitting the strong emotions of both integrationists and separatists, high rhetoric has been employed by both groups including the use of propaganda materials of dubious provenance. A much criticized example includes the Hui Aloha Aina (Hui Aloha Aina) and Hui Kalaiaina (Hui Kalaiaina) petitions allegedly rediscovered in 1998. According to their proponents, the petitions are contemporaneous to the annexation of Hawaii with one petition purportedly containing 22,000 signatures in opposition to the annexation while a second petition purportedly contains 17,000 signatures in favor of reinstating the monarchy. The validity of the petitions has been criticized by Lorrin Thurston in an analysis which indicates significant fraud.

The State of Hawaii has two official languages recognized in its constitution adopted at the 1978 constitutional convention: English and Hawaiian. Article XV, Section 4, specifies that "Hawaiian shall be required for public acts and transactions only as provided by law". Hawaii Creole English (locally referred to as 'Pidgin') is the native dialect of many born-and-raised residents and is a second dialect for many other residents. After English, the second- and third-most spoken individual languages are Ilokano (most are billingual in Wikang Filipino) and Japanese, respectively. Significant European immigrants and descendants also speak their native languages; the most popular are Spanish, German, and French.

As of the 2000 U.S. Census, 73.44% of Hawaii residents age 5 and older speak only English at home. Tagalog speakers make up 5.37% (which includes non-native speakers of Wikang Filipino, the national co-official Tagalog-based language), followed by Japanese at 4.96%, Ilokano at 4.05%, Chinese at 1.92%, Hawaiian at 1.68%, Spanish at 1.66%, Korean at 1.61%, and Samoan at 1.01%.

In Hawaiian-language newspapers published from 1834-1948, the spelling "Hawaii" was used. However, in texts written mainly for Hawaiian-language pedagogy, especially since 1950, the modern Hawaiian-language spelling used is Hawai'i, with an apostrophe or other similar character, such as an opening single quote, written between the final two vowels. The character represents a consonant, the glottal stop, in the Hawaiian language. Although not used and not needed by native speakers of Hawaiian for over 100 years, its use is appropriate in modern written Hawaiian. In that respect, English spellings of Hawaiian words are in harmony with the spellings familiar to Hawaiians before the 1957 Pukui and Elbert dictionary introduced the written kahako and 'okina.

Many residents speak Hawaii Creole English (HCE), often called "pidgin". During the 19th century, there was a great increase in immigration from foreign countries (mainly China, Japan, Portugal, the Portuguese Azores, and Spain), and a pidgin English developed (HCE is mostly made up of Chinese, Japanese, Filipino and Portuguese) which by the early 20th century became a creole English as pidgin speakers had children who acquired the pidgin as their own native language.

HCE contains some vocabulary and syntax from Hawaiian. HCE speakers can use some Hawaiian words without those words being considered archaic. Most place names are retained from Hawaiian, as are some names for plants or animals. For example, tuna fish are often called "ahi". Also, some Hawaiian words are loanwords in the mainstream American English lexicon. HCE speakers have modified the meanings of certain English words. For example, the terms "auntie" and "uncle" can be used to refer to any adult who is a friend, or a friend to the family. It is also used as a sign of respect for elders. Throughout the surfing boom in Hawaii, HCE has influenced surfing slang. Some HCE expressions, such as brah and da kine, have found their way to other places.

HCE syntax often follows that of Hawaiian. Certain words can be dropped if their meaning is understood. For example, instead of saying "It is hot today, isn't it?", an HCE speaker is likely to say simply "stay hot, ah?" Grammatically, pidgin follows an English translation of the Hawaiian language.

The Hawaiian language word Hawai'i derives from Nuclear Polynesian sawaiki, with the reconstructed meaning "homeland"; cognate words are found in other Polynesian languages, including Maori (Hawaiki), Rarotongan ('Avaiki), and Samoan (Savai'i). (See also Hawaiki).

According to Pukui and Elbert (1986:62) "Elsewhere in Polynesia, Hawai'i or a cognate is the name of the underworld or of the ancestral home, but in Hawai'i the name has no meaning; see Pukui, Elbert, and Mookini, 1974."