I just finished reading Sarah Vowell's Unfamiliar Fishes, a short history of the annexation and Americanization of Hawaii. Vowell is a thorough researcher and a captivating writer. The book serves as a wonderful introduction to Hawaiian history that I would recommend to others who are interested in the history of the Hawaiian islands. Here are some of the bits that made me dog-ear the pages (gasp!)
"...the Ancient Polynesians were some of the most skilled and talented natural-born navigators the world has ever known. Which is how the natives of Tahiti and the Marquesas settled the Hawaiian islands at least a millennium ago--eyeballing stars from their double-hulled canoes for 2,600 miles. The missionary Hiram Bingham dismissed the Polynesians' sailing expertise, writing off the migration to Hawaii as dumb luck, supposing they arrived "without much knowledge of navigation" just as "trees from foreign countries repeatedly land on their shores." The Polynesian Voyaging Society proved him wrong in 1976, when Hawaiians sailed a replica of an ancient voyaging canoe to Tahiti in thirty-three days without using navigational instruments."
"The word for Hawaii's commoner class--the people responsible for growing taro and other food--can be translated as "eyes of the land." Meaning, they are the stewards, keeping watch in a reciprocal family arrangement. The land takes care of them and they take care of the land."
"According to the journal of Captain George Vancouver of the Royal Navy, in 1794, Liholiho's father, Kamehameha, made "the most solemn cession possible of the Island of [Hawaii] to his Britannic Majesty." Kamehameha and his chiefs, Vancouver wrote, "unanimously acknowledged themselves subject to the British crown." For this the captain gave the king a Union Jack...Kamehameha I and Kamehameha II believed they ruled a British protectorate. This is the reason that the Hawaiian flag features a Union Jack."
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