Hawai'i between US and Japan

Hawai’i from ca. 1100 to the 1960s. Relationship with the United States since the arrival of New England missionaries in 1820. The Hawaiian kingdom as a site of inter-imperialist (British, French, Russian, U.S., and Japanese) contention into the 1890s. Relationship between Meiji Japan and Hawai’i and the arrival of Japanese workers in large numbers from 1885. Evolution of the monocrop economy worked by native, Chinese, Portuguese, Japanese, Okinawan, Korean, and Filipino workers. Development of a multiethnic Labor movement fueled by the U.S., Australian, and Japanese communist movements in the 1920s through 1950s. Impact of the Pearl Harbor attack and Pacific War on Hawai’i. Post-war strikes, ILWU organizing and the McCarthyite crackdown on communists. Tourism and the world economy. Considerable attention to Polynesian culture, canoe crops, and pan-Pacific commonalities. Comparative attention to sugar colonies elsewhere in the Pacific, Caribbean, and Atlantic islands. Issues of historical identity, racism, colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism. Leupp