1776 was not only the year a bunch of white sons of religious refugees declared independence from England while simultaneously dispossessing what remained of native Americans. It was also the year Captain Cook set sail on a voyage that would lead to the discovery of the U.S.s final and perhaps most American of states: Hawaii.
Little more than two hundred years ago these peaks of a submerged mountain range sticking out of the Pacific like the tips of lush icebergs remained isolated from the tide of modern history. In the two centuries that followed, these volcanic islands quickly transformed from a land of indigenous fishermen waging inter-island conflicts to the launching point of every American war in the East: the Philippines, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. As such a vital staging point, these Westernized Polynesian islands themselves became the perfect stage, the synecdoche, for American Imperialism.
On the heels of The Wordy Shipmates, which explores how England's puritanical outcasts shaped the New World, bestselling author Sarah Vowell explores a parallel drama of cultural transfusion with a lively new cast of Polynesians, missionaries, and sailors.
The overthrow of Hawaii is often ignored because it wasn't a bloody conquest of weapons, but a cultural dispossession created by soft power. Westerners groomed Hawaiians to