PLANTER’S PARADISE: NATURE, CULTURE, AND HAWAIʻI’S SUGARCANE PLANTATIONS A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by Lawrence Helfgott Kessler May 2016 Examining Committee Members: Andrew Isenberg, Advisory Chair, Department of History Beth Bailey, University of Kansas Petra Goedde, Department of History Richard Immerman, Department of History John McNeill, External Member, Georgetown University © Copyright 2016 by Lawrence Helfgott Kessler _____________ All Rights Reserved ii ABSTRACT Over the course of the nineteenth century, the Hawaiian sugar industry rose from economic insignificance to become one of the world’s most efficient and productive sugarcane plantation systems. "Planter's Paradise" traces the transnational environmental history of cane planting in Hawaiʻi, from Polynesian settlement to the early twentieth century, to explore how an export-based mono-culture plantation system eclipsed diversified farming, how cultural encounters between indigenous and Euro-American groups influenced agriculture and natural resource use, and how the politics of planting contributed to the rise of American hegemony over the islands. With research grounded in plantation records, agricultural association publications, popular media, and personal correspondence, I address sugarcane planting as a point where ideas about nature, methods of converting nature into commodities for consumption in distant markets, and nature itself influenced each other within the context of U.S. imperial expansion. I argue that the ascendance of Hawaiʻi’s sugar industry was the result of cultural encounters, economic relations, and environmental conditions at the local level, but cane planting also connected the archipelago to particular transnational networks of economic, ecological, and cultural exchange. Sugarcane planting introduced to Hawaiʻi foreign ways of relating to the natural world, a host of alien organisms, and advances in agricultural science and technology that impacted all of Hawaiian society. These introductions contributed to planters' power. By the early twentieth century, Hawaiʻi had become a planter's paradise: a society and environment transformed for the industrial cultivation of sugarcane. iii For Allison iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation is the result of seven years of work in the History Department at Temple University. Andrew Isenberg, my advisor, introduced me to environmental history and helped me to see the interactions of ecology, economy, and culture in history. Drew also gave me crucial early encouragement and support, pushing me to apply for doctoral school hardly a month into my first semester as a Masters student and nominating me for a University Fellowship. Drew’s comments on my drafts of this dissertation have made it much stronger. My dissertation committee members, Beth Bailey, Petra Goedde, and Richard Immerman have also improved this project significantly. Beth’s attention to my writing and repeated questions of agency have helped me focus on the human actors and individual decisions that propelled this history as I veered into more abstract questions about industries, islands, nations, and peoples. Petra gave my writing the structural push to assert my arguments more plainly and helped me investigate cultural encounters in Hawaiian history. Richard helped me think of my dissertation within the broader context of U.S. transnational history. Each of these committee members led seminars at Temple helped me to develop the ideas I put forward here. John McNeill joined my dissertation committee later; his work on environmental history in the Pacific region and plantation systems has had a significant impact on this project. Several other faculty members, students, and groups at Temple helped me develop produce this dissertation. Bryant Simon helped me pay attention to questions about the labor involved in sugarcane planting--and took me to France to present some of my work. David Watt gave me insight into the religious ideologies that influenced the v history of sugarcane in Hawaiʻi. The students in the seminars, colloquia, and workshops at the History Department and Center for the Humanities all helped me write and refine this dissertation. The Center for the Humanities at Temple and the Department of History Colloquium provided opportunities for me to present chapter drafts. I also received generous funding from the Center for the Humanities, the Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy, the College of Liberal Arts, the Graduate School, and the Global Studies Program at Temple. I am grateful to the many archivists and librarians who have helped me conduct research, including Barbara Dunn at the Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society Library and Hawaiian Historical Society; Jodie Mattos and Stewart Dawrs at the Hamilton Library at the University of Hawaiʻi; and Patty Lai at the Hawaiʻi State Archives. Dan Lewis, Peter Blodgett, Brooke Black, Jenny Watts, and Bill Deverell were all exceedingly helpful during my research at the Huntington Library. Other readers and conference participants whose comments have improved this dissertation include Elizabeth Varon, Mark Fiege, Erin Mauldin, Mart Stewart, Harriet Ritvo, Jenny Newell, Jared Orsi, and David Igler. Brenda Frink and Mark Rodriguez at the Pacific Historical Review, Merry Ovnick at the Southern California Quarterly, and Sarah Hamilton at the World History Bulletin and the reviewers they enlisted all provided insightful comments and guidance as I prepared parts of my research for publication. Babak Ashrafi at the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine, and Etienne Benson, Jody Roberts, and Jeremy Vetter at the Consortium’s working group on environment and history helped me see my project in a different light and pushed me to consider new questions. I owe special thanks to Seth Archer and Gregory Rosenthal for vi their close reading, advice, and friendship. Those who hosted me during my research, including Leslie and Mitch Aiken in Pasadena, Ruby Goodall in Oakland, Howard Wiig in Honolulu gave me much more than hospitality. At the University of Hawaiʻi, Kieko Matteson, John Rosa, Noelani Arista, and Jon Kamakawiwo'ole Osorio were welcoming and helpful. Friends and family have been truly crucial to whatever success I have achieved. I am humbled by all the love and support I have received from too many people to make an exhaustive list, and trust you know who you are. I am especially grateful for the support I received from Ann Helfgott, David Kessler, and Vivian and Alan Goldberg. Most of all, I owe everything to Allison, whose love and understanding, as well as her very close and frequent reading, made this dissertation possible. I could not have done any of this without her. On the other hand, I definitely could have done this without Ezra and Zahava. They did not read a word of this, nor did they contribute any reasonable insights. They did, however, make the process more interesting, more fun, and infinitely more worthwhile. vii CONTENTS ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................ v CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION: ISLANDS HITCHED TO EVERYTHING ELSE ...... 1 The History of Hawaiian Sugar in a Transnational and Translocal Framework .......................... 3 Historiography ............................................................................................................................. 4 Dissertation Outline ................................................................................................................... 12 CHAPTER 2: NO PERFECT GARDEN: HAWAIIAN ENVIRONMENTS, SETTLEMENT, AND AGRICULTURE ......................................................................... 25 Hawaiian Geology, Climates, and Environment ........................................................................ 29 The Polynesian Invasion ............................................................................................................ 37 Western Invasions ...................................................................................................................... 48 CHAPTER 3: SUGAR WITHOUT RUM: HAWAIʻI’S MISSIONARIES AND THE FOUNDING OF THE SUGARCANE PLANTATION SYSTEM, 1821-1850 ............... 61 Sugar and Rum ........................................................................................................................... 68 Encouraging “Pious Merchants” ................................................................................................ 82 Promoting Self-Reliance ............................................................................................................ 84 Toward a New Definition of Labor and Class Relations ........................................................... 94 Plantations as a Remedy for Depopulation ................................................................................ 99 CHAPTER 4: EXPORTS AND IMPORTS, 1850-1876 ................................................ 106 The Tariff and Annexationism ................................................................................................. 111 Native Hawaiian Labor and Agricultural Expertise ................................................................. 116 Foreign Labor: Coolies and Slaves .........................................................................................