History of the Hawaiian islands
presented by:Islands Multimedia

The first travelers to reach the islands weren't concerned with vacation activities: They wanted a new place to live. Polynesians arrived in the Hawaiian Islands more than a millennium ago, one of many moves these people had undertaken over the centuries. Evidence suggests that the settlers of Hawaii set out from the Marquesas Islands in present-day French Polynesia -- and never expected to return there. Their oceangoing canoes were filled with domesticated animals (chickens, dogs, pigs), plants and seeds -- everything they needed to start their new home. In time, the islands came to be ruled by a powerful hierarchy of chiefs and nobles. They oversaw elaborate agricultural projects and the construction of many ceremonial shrines and temples.
In January 1778, British explorer James Cook and his two ships reached Kauai. (This may have been the first Western contact with Hawaii, though another theory holds that a Spanish ship may have visited the area in the 1500s.) Cook's party traded with the locals and reported that the Polynesians were fascinated by anything made of iron. Common nails became valuable items for trade, and sailors used them to woo Hawaiian women, from whom they received a very cordial welcome. Unfortunately, this contact passed venereal disease to the Hawaiians, the first of many Western ailments that would devastate the population.

When Cook returned to the islands the next year, things didn't go as smoothly. A dispute arose when Hawaiians on the Big Island at Kealakekua Bay, Kona, took one of the ship's small boats; when violence broke out, Cook was killed. The islands were known in the West for many years by the name Cook gave them, the Sandwich Islands (after the Earl of Sandwich, Cook's benefactor who financed his voyages of exploration).

At roughly the same time that Europeans first came in contact with Hawaii, internal politics and warfare were also redefining the islands. Each island was ruled independently until King Kamehameha I (1753-1819) united them by force. The continuing presence of Westerners played a role in the wars: The armaments of the newcomers were a decisive factor in Kamehameha's victory. Greater encroachment by outsiders took place in the 1800s, with two rather divergent groups -- Calvinist missionaries and whale-hunting seamen -- leading the charge.

In the mid-1800s, another group, sugar planters, became a force in the islands. They gained control of large parcels of land, imported foreign workers and eventually, in 1893, orchestrated the overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani, the last Hawaiian monarch. The islands were annexed to the U.S. in 1898, though the island election approving annexation excluded most native-born Hawaiians. In 1941, the Japanese attack on the Pearl Harbor naval base on Oahu brought the U.S. into World War II. Following the war, the movement favoring statehood gained strength, and in 1959 the islands became the 50th of the United States.

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