“Very Dull No Business Doing”: A Reassessment of the American Sandalwood Trade between Hawaii and China, 1790-1832 (original) (raw)

Columbia at sea: America enters the Pacific, 1787-1793

2017

This dissertation evaluates the earliest phase of American engagement in the Pacific Ocean through a close examination of the fur-trading ship Columbia during the years 1787-93. I argue that Columbia established the dominant pattern of American commerce in the Pacific and, in doing so, played a significant role in the integration of disparate shores into a single Pacific World. This study also reconstructs her pioneering, yet understudied voyages in order to challenge a historiographical neglect of the eighteenth-century foundations of American empire in the Pacific. My research unfolds on three scales. First, Columbia reveals a series of interconnected local histories that hinge upon individuals in Boston, on the Northwest Coast of America, and in Canton. Second, her expeditions show how American merchants and sea captains leveraged transnational variations in trade to reorient the United States toward the commerce of the Pacific Ocean. Third, Columbia demonstrates how entrepreneur...

Plantation Colonialism in Late Nineteenth-Century Hawai'i: The Case of Chinese Sugar Planters

Global Plantations in the Modern World, 2023

This chapter suggests the utility of plantation colonialism as a prism to study the emergence of a plantation complex in Hawai‘i, focusing on the neglected participation of dozens of Chinese merchants in the sugar boom of the final quarter of the nineteenth century. The chapter begins by providing the political, legal, demographic, and economic background to the Reciprocity Treaty of 1874, namely the rise of Anglo-American property and labor law, the distinctive biopolitical concerns of the Kingdom polity, and the formation of migrant Chinese urban and rural communities. The second and third sections go on to describe how three Chinese merchants turned to sugar after 1874: first, the powerful mogul Chun Afong (陳 芳, 1825–1906) and second, the upstart duo of Goo Tet Chin Akina (GOO Tet-Tsin, 1838–1913) and Luke Aseu (CHANG Young Seu, 1841–1918). These three preliminary sections foreground an extended analysis of Hawai‘i’s largest labor rebellion prior to the overthrow of the monarchy, which occurred at Akina and Aseu’s plantation at Kohala, Island of Hawai‘i, in 1891.

The Beginnings of the American Trade Expansion in Asia 1783–1812

2011

It is establishing trade relations between the United States of America and the Asiatic states, and the European colonies that belong in Europe to little known themes of history regarding this area. Mapping long-distance trade in Asia, European historians tend to ignore traders from another side of the Atlantic, due to the Americans arrived in Asiatic trade centres relatively late, but in fact, immediately after the United States had been founded. The Americans’ share of British-Asian trade exchange in the Colonial Age is not practically known. What is, relatively, historically well elaborated is the trade run by the Americans in China, which might be regarded as extraordinarily important in many ways; as regards other Asiatic centres, the picture is less clear. Therefore the American phenomenon should not be underestimated not only because the development of trade exchange was highly dynamic, but also because after the Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars had been launched, t...

Water and Wood - The influence of the forest on Hawaiian legislature between 1850 and 1893

This article analyses the significance of the forest for Hawaiian legislature in the second half of the 19th century on the basis of government decrees. In addition, articles of Hawaiian newspapers written in English were consulted to reconstruct the history of the forest during that period. The results suggest that despite the need for intervention, the government barely combatted the problems caused by deforestation in order that destructive businesses such as ranching and the sugar industry could thrive. Furthermore, the inhabitants of the Hawaiian Islands expressed strong concern regarding deforestation, repeatedly demanding better forest protection and management. In brief people in 19th century Hawaii were aware of the fact that they had to treat nature in a sustainable way, while the government's main focus was profitability.