Lost Kingdom: Hawaii's Last Queen, the Sugar Kings, and America's First Imperial Adventure by Julia Flynn Siler - 2012

 

Lost Kingdom: Hawaii's Last Queen, the Sugar Kings, and America's First Imperial Adventure by Julia Flynn Siler - 2012

200 to 350 AD - Polynesian Settlers Arrive

1778  - arrival of British explorer Captain  James Cook was 

 the first documented contact by a European explorer with Hawaiʻi

1795, all inhabited islands were subjugated Under one ruler who established a dynasty that ruled the kingdom until 1872.

June 15, 1898 - Hawaii becomes a US Territory 

August 21, 1959 - Becomes a US State

An Autodidactic Corner Selection 

I am very glad I read this highly educational book.

If it has a flaw it would be in lacking an account of day to day governing of Hawaii before it was annexed by The USA.  I already knew sugar has caused imperial expansion and slavery so I was not surprised to learn 

the role owners of big sugar plantations played in the fall of the ancient monarchy of Hawaii.  

Siler goes into the settlement of Hawaii about 200 AD by Polynesians, pre-annex social customs, the disastour impact the arrival of Western Whaling ships had in terms of letting out plagues, rats, mosquitos had on indeginous populace.  She also details the attempts of Christian Missionaries to turn people away from tradition beliefs.  Many

 white settlerx saw 

the Hawaiians as savages, cannibals living a sexually promiscous Life Style.  Descendents of Missionarries, often with Hawain mothers, often became very wealthy.  Siler goes into a lot of detail on how this happened, including information on financial take over  of the royal Family.

Julia Flynn Siler is a New York Times best-selling author and journalist. Her latest book, The White Devil’s Daughters: The Women Who Fought Slavery in San Francisco’s Chinatown, was a New York Times Book Review “Editors’ Choice” and a finalist for a California Book Award. She is also the author of the bestselling nonfiction books, Lost Kingdom: Hawaii’s Last Queen, the Sugar Kings, and America’s First Imperial Adventure and the The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty.

As a veteran correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek magazine, Ms. Siler spent more than two decades in Europe and the United States, reporting from a dozen countries. She has covered fields as varied as biotechnology, cult wines, puppy breeding, and a princess’s quest to restore a Hawaiian palace’s lost treasures.

A graduate in American Studies at Brown University and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, Ms. Siler began her career as a staff correspondent for BusinessWeek, working in the magazine’s Los Angeles and Chicago bureaus. She wrote stories on everything from White Castle “sliders” to the roiling futures markets for the New York Times. By taking classes at night during that time, she earned an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management. - from

https://juliaflynnsiler.com/biography/

I am respectfully republishing this post in observation of the tragedy in  Hawaii 

Mel Ulm