flower tree

Description: Hawaii was first inhabited in roughly AD 1000, by foreign Polynesians who came from islands in the South Pacific, most likely the Marquesas. By colonizing Hawaii, these originally foreign settlers in effect became Hawaiian people. For about 800 years, these people were sometimes at peace and sometimes at war with each other, while they expanded... ( +expand to view full text )

Description: Hawaii was first inhabited in roughly AD 1000, by foreign Polynesians who came from islands in the South Pacific, most likely the Marquesas. By colonizing Hawaii, these originally foreign settlers in effect became Hawaiian people. For about 800 years, these people were sometimes at peace and sometimes at war with each other, while they expanded their colonial territory throughout the eight main islands. During this time, the Hawaiian people also developed a complex caste society governed by an extensive system of religious and social taboos called the kapu system. When British explorer James Cook chanced upon the Hawaiian archipelago in 1778, a Hawaiian warrior known as Kamehameha was beginning a gradual ascent to power. Before his death in 1819, Kamehameha had succeeded in conquering (through military force, or in the case of Kauai and Niihau, by other political means) all of the major Hawaiian islands. The kingdom established by Kamehameha lasted until 1893, when the last Hawaiian monarch, Liliuokalani, was overthrown and replaced by a Provisional Government, and later a Republic. During the kingdom and republic era, Hawaii's economy transitioned from that of an isolated state into that of a state integrated into the world's free market, producing and exporting more than two hundred thousand tons of sugar annually. [1] In 1898, Hawaii was annexed to the United States of America and attained statehood in 1959.