Economic History of Hawai‘i

Author(s):  
Sumner La Croix

Hawai‘i became one of the last two major land areas on the planet to be settled when Polynesians from Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands navigated voyaging canoes to Hawai‘i in the 11th or 12th century. Settlers brought plants and animals needed to start taro farms modeled on those in their homelands and established chiefdoms using traditional norms of behavior and governance institutions from their home societies. Sometime round 1400, Hawaiians lost contact with the outside world and remained isolated for the next 350–400 years. During this period, competing states emerged, ruled by a sharply differentiated elite (ali‘i) and supported by agricultural surpluses sufficient to support religious and artisan specialists and construction of hundreds of monumental temples. Contact with the outside world was reestablished in 1778 and led to major demographic, economic, and political change: Exposure to outside diseases led to a massive decline in the Native Hawaiian population over the next 125 years; integration with global product markets transformed Hawai‘i’s economy; and warfare among competing states led to the emergence of a centralized monarchy after 1795 that incorporated and adapted some Western political institutions. In 1820, Protestant missionaries brought a foreign religion to Hawai‘i, helped develop a Hawaiian alphabet, and established mission schools that brought literacy to much of the population. A two-decade boom (1812–1833) in harvesting and trading sandalwood with American ships overlapped with a 50-year period in which hundreds of Pacific whaling ships visited Hawai‘i annually to hire Hawaiian sailors and purchase provisions and services. Sugar plantations spread from 1835, expanded rapidly during the U.S. Civil War, and fell back with peace in 1865. An 1876 trade treaty with the United States exempted Hawai‘i sugar firms from the high U.S. tariff on sugar, and they responded by expanding production tenfold by 1883, using immigrant labor from China, Portugal, and Japan. Problems with renegotiating the treaty led to a rebellion by a mostly Caucasian militia group in 1886 that culminated in the overthrow of Queen Lili‘uokalani in 1893. The United States annexed Hawai‘i in 1898 and established a colonial “territorial” government that persisted until Hawai‘i was admitted to the U.S. economic and political union in 1959 as its 50th state. Pineapple and sugar industries expanded under protection of U.S. tariffs and with employment of migrant labor from Japan, Europe, Korea, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico. Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 was followed by imposition of martial law and the buildup of a large U.S. military presence. The economy struggled after the war until the introduction of jet plane passenger service in 1958 prompted millions of tourists from the United States, Japan, and other countries to visit Hawai‘i each year. The tourism boom, institutional reforms of statehood, and population growth ignited an economic boom that would continue thru 1990 and modernize the economy. The 1990s saw economic contraction as Hawai‘i adjusted to changes in U.S. tourism and Japanese foreign investment. From 1990, periodic disruptions to tourism caused by recessions, security crises, and global pandemics punctuated otherwise moderate economic growth.

Author(s):  
Jose V. Fuentecilla

This chapter focuses on the reactions of overseas Filipino communities to anti-martial law activists in exile. Much of the print coverage of the U.S.-based anti-Marcos groups tended to spotlight prominent exile figures. Having found the freedom to speak out, to write for publication, to demonstrate, to organize openly—activities that could get their colleagues back home in trouble with the authorities—they plunged into furious rounds of organizing the resident Filipino population. They had assumed that their compatriots in the United States would empathize with their experience and respond readily to appeals for money, membership, and participation. However, anti-martial law activists who reached out to Filipino communities were met with two reactions—apathy and fear. Apathy was most pronounced among the newer immigrants. They had come to the United States to improve their prospects for a livelihood they found unachievable back in the Philippines. The first order of business was to get settled—employment, housing, education for their children—all the basics of survival in their new home. There was no room to indulge in politics, local or Philippine. There was also the fear of getting involved. News of roundups, interrogations, and military detentions was constant. They would not want to jeopardize relatives back home once their U.S. activities were made known.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Källén ◽  
Johan Hegardt

Olov Janse was an archaeologist with a remarkable life. From his birth in Sweden 1892 to his death in the United States 1985, he travelled several times across the world and was present in some of the most important episodes of 20th century world history. His works and networks connected museums and political institutions in Sweden, France, Vietnam and the United States: from the Swedish History Museum, the Museum of Far Easter Antiquities, the French Musée d’antiquites nationales, the Cernuchi museum, and the French research institute EFEO in Hanoi, to UNESCO, the Harvard Peabody Museum, the Smithsonian Institution, and the U.S. Department of State. He left behind artefacts and documents in museum collections and archives across the world. But his name is largely unknown, and his most important contributions – the connection of people and ideas between continents and contexts – have remained invisible in historical accounts of all these institutions. He was, in every sense, an archaeologist in-between. This book follows in the footsteps of Olov Janse and his wife Renée, as they move between continents and contexts, connecting key actors and institutions in social and professional networks across the world. It tells the formidable story of an archaeologist navigating through world politics, from a late 19th century industrial town in Sweden, to early 20th century Parisian museums, to French Indochina and the Philippines in the 1930s, to the formation of UNESCO in 1946, and ending with public diplomacy for the U.S. Department of State at the verge of the Vietnam War.


Author(s):  
Scott M. Moore

The Republic of France is in many ways the archetype of the centralized, unitary state, and its political institutions contrast sharply with those of the federations of India and the United States. Following the Revolution of 1789, the new republic undertook a series of political reforms intended to strip power from the landed nobility and vest it instead with a new set of egalitarian institutions, the basis of which was both centralization and uniformity. The revolutionaries believed that “justice requires the republic to be one and indivisible” (Berger 1974, 8). Inherent to this new model was a concentration of political authority, as well as political, legislative, and judicial powers, in the hands of the central government. In contrast to more decentralized and federal political systems, the French system is intended to tightly bind officials at both central and local levels and to minimize conflicts between them. Consequently, a defining feature of French political institutions is the relative cohesion of elite decision-making. According to one prominent observer, France “provides the prime example of a highly coherent administration, whereas the United States and Switzerland constitute the typical cases of lack of such coherence” (Kriesi 1995, 171). However, during the past thirty years even the French state has become more decentralized, and powers and responsibilities for some policy areas, including water resource management, have been devolved to regional governments. In comparative perspective, the outstanding feature of the French political system is in fact the presence of strong regional governance organizations, including several organized around river basin boundaries, that are among the world’s most successful interjurisdictional management institutions. France’s system of river basin governance organizations, called “water agencies” (agences de l’eau), is by many accounts the most collaborative and participatory in the world. A global survey of river basin governance institutions concludes, for example, that the French system “is remarkable for its longevity, in how it tries to formalize representation . . . and perhaps most important, how it has attempted local and decentralized water management within the centralist state tradition in France” (Delli Priscoli 2007, 17).


Author(s):  
Robert J. Thompson

American history is replete with instances of counterinsurgency. An unsurprising reality considering the United States has always participated in empire building, thus the need to pacify resistance to expansion. For much of its existence, the U.S. has relied on its Army to pacify insurgents. While the U.S. Army used traditional military formations and use of technology to battle peer enemies, the same strategy did not succeed against opponents who relied on speed and surprise. Indeed, in several instances, insurgents sought to fight the U.S. Army on terms that rendered superior manpower and technology irrelevant. By introducing counterinsurgency as a strategy, the U.S. Army attempted to identify and neutralize insurgents and the infrastructure that supported them. Discussions of counterinsurgency include complex terms, thus readers are provided with simplified, yet accurate definitions and explanations. Moreover, understanding the relevant terms provided continuity between conflicts. While certain counterinsurgency measures worked during the American Civil War, the Indian Wars, and in the Philippines, the concept failed during the Vietnam War. The complexities of counterinsurgency require readers to familiarize themselves with its history, relevant scholarship, and terminology—in particular, counterinsurgency, pacification, and infrastructure.


Author(s):  
Taylor K. Ruth ◽  
Joy N. Rumble

Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) is a major issue in developing countries and affects approximately 250 million children, and blinding 500,000 a year. A proposed intervention to VAD is Golden Rice, a rice that has been genetically modified (GM) to contain beta-carotene, the precursor to Vitamin A. However, Golden Rice is often associated with negatively perceived GM food. Because the media is the most trusted source in providing food-risk related information, a framing analysis of Golden Rice in United States and Philippine newspapers was conducted to determine past and current frames used to describe the rice. Understanding such frames could help domestic and international extension workers develop effective communication strategies and educational opportunities. In the United States, GM food was typically the main topic, and Golden Rice was used as a supporting argument. Science and humanitarian frames were used to describe the rice in the U.S. articles. Golden Rice was more often the main topic in the Philippine articles, and more frames were identified: human health, science, policy, risk, and conflict. Golden Rice appears to be in the emergence phase of the framing cycle in the U.S. and in the conflict/resolution phase in the Philippines. Extension in the U.S. and the Philippines should provide education toolkits to journalists about Golden Rice and consider providing press releases to shape the frames used by the media. Extension workers in the Philippines should educate consumers and farmers about the science of Golden Rice to help them create informed opinions toward the product.


2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-227
Author(s):  
Norhabib Bin Suod Sumndad Barodi

In view of the recent development brought about by the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges, jurisdictions that retain the traditional definition of marriage have sufficient reasons to revisit the concept of marriage under their own laws. This article is an academic effort to explore whether the traditional or historic definition of marriage adopted in the Philippines, as articulated in its Constitution and other pertinent laws like the Code of Muslim Personal Laws of the Philippines can withstand the new norm that Obergefell established in the legal system or constitutionalism of the United States. It attempts to project how the issue of same-sex marriage would be treated and decided in the Philippine context had it been an issue for which the Philippine legal system or constitutionalism is made to respond. This article emphasizes the incompatibility of the Obergefell decision with the Islamic definition of marriage and finds that the same decision is not entirely square with how the issue of same-sex marriage will be dealt with in Philippine constitutionalism.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
AISDL

The subprime mortgage crisis in the United States (U.S.) in mid-2008 suggests that stock prices volatility do spillover from one market to another after international stock markets downturn. The purpose of this paper is to examine the magnitude of return and volatility spillovers from developed markets (the U.S. and Japan) to eight emerging equity markets (India, China, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand) and Vietnam. Employing a mean and volatility spillover model that deals with the U.S. and Japan shocks and day effects as exogenous variables in ARMA(1,1), GARCH(1,1) for Asian emerging markets, the study finds some interesting findings. Firstly, the day effect is present on six out of nine studied markets, except for the Indian, Taiwanese and Philippine. Secondly, the results of return spillover confirm significant spillover effects across the markets with different magnitudes. Specifically, the U.S. exerts a stronger influence on the Malaysian, Philippine and Vietnamese market compared with Japan. In contrast, Japan has a higher spillover effect on the Chinese, Indian, Korea, and Thailand than the U.S. For the Indonesian market, the return effect is equal. Finally, there is no evidence of a volatility effect of the U.S. and Japanese markets on the Asian emerging markets in this study.


2022 ◽  
Vol 91 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-65
Author(s):  
Symbol Lai

In 1951, six years after the United States defeated Japan and commenced the Occupation of Okinawa, the U.S. Civil Administration of the Ryukyus (USCAR) issued an ordinance in support of agricultural cooperatives. Despite the appearance of altruism, the move marked the emergence of the U.S. anticolonial empire, a form that advocated racial and ethnic self-determination even as it expanded the U.S. military presence. This article shows how U.S. policymakers in Okinawa borrowed from modernization theory to implement models to foster ethnic identification through economic development. Their plans sought to render the United States an ally to Okinawa freedom despite the devastating effects militarism had on the local landscape. Specifically, military plans posited frameworks like the Okinawan economy, which strategically turned the military into a partner without whom Okinawa could not modernize. The article further focuses on agriculture, an arena where the contradictions of the U.S. Occupation was most acute. It argues that rehabilitating the local cooperative network drew Okinawans into the military project, not only to paper over the U.S. colonial presence, but also to further the reach of military discipline.


Author(s):  
Jose V. Fuentecilla

This chapter focuses on Raul Manglapus. Manglapus was an involuntary detainee in the United States as a self-exile—thirteen years, five months, and seven days by his count, beginning in 1972, when by sheer luck he found himself in America the day before martial law clamped down on the Philippines. Officially, at least, four court charges had been filed against him during his exile years, including subversion, rebellion, and plotting to kill Marcos and his wife. If he had returned, there is no doubt that he would have been hauled off to jail as soon as he stepped out of the plane. He had left behind an outstanding career that was cut short. Those who speculated about what he might have accomplished in his country without Marcos referred to his impressive record as a legislator and public servant. As head of the main exile opposition group, Manglapus had to deal with the challenges of a new leadership role. As a seasoned politician back home, he possessed the skills to respond to his constituents, both local and national. But in the United States, the tactics needed to win over Congress and the Filipino residents required a different set of skills.


Author(s):  
Jose V. Fuentecilla

This chapter details events following the arrival of Benigno S. Aquino, Jr. to the United States. Aquino, better known by his nickname “Ninoy,” arrived in Dallas, Texas, on May 8, 1980, for heart bypass surgery. He had spent the preceding seven years and seven months in a military prison in the Philippines. Caught in the dragnet of martial law mass arrests in 1982, he was among the first political prisoners to be rounded up. At thirty-four years of age, he was the youngest senator elected to the national Congress, the lone opposition Liberal Party candidate amid the election sweep of the incumbent Nacionalista Party of President Marcos. During the next four years, Aquino stood in the Senate as the severest critic of Marcos. While Aquino was in jail, he had a heart attack. Concerned with the consequences for his regime should Aquino die incarcerated, Marcos temporarily released him for medical treatment abroad. His arrival in the United States galvanized the Filipino opposition movement.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document