History of Hawaii

History of Hawaii

The first people to inhabit the Hawaiian islands were from the South Pacific islands,  the Marquesas. Upon conquering Hawaii, these settlers -of foreign origin- became "Hawaiian".  During approximately 800 years, these towns lived from time to time in peace and from time to time in war, to the extent that they went expanding their colonial territories by the eight main islands.  In this period, the Hawaiian town developed a complex social framework based on a system of castes, governed by an extensive assembly of taboo of social and religious type, known as "kapu system".  When the English explorer James Cook arrived of fortuitous form to the archipelago in 1778, the King Kamehameha I, that would pass to the history with the name of Kamehameha The Lonely one, had begun his gradual ascent to the power. 

After a series of battles that finished in 1795 and the peaceful transfer of the island of Kauai in 1810, the Hawaiian Islands were unified for the first time under the command of an only ruler, which died in 1819.  Kamehameha I founded the House of Kamehameha, the reigning dynasty until 1872. 

The death of the King Kamehameha V, single and without naming heir, gave rise to the celebration of a referendum, which granted the victory to the King Lunalilo set against Kalakaua.  Finally, the power would finish in the hands of the House of Kalakaua, after the death of Lunalilo, and an election very disputed and plagued of accusations of fraud in the year 1874 between Kalakaua and Emma (with disturbances and the arrival of troops of the United States and of the United Kingdom to maintain the peace), remaining the throne in the hands of Kalakaua. 

King Kalakaua managed to maintain in power until his death in 1891.  His sister, Queen Liliuokalani, followed him in the throne until she was ousted by a coup defeat financed by Americans, being substituted by a provisional government and, subsequently, by a republic.  During the republican and monarchical epoch, the economy of Hawaii passed to be the own one of a remote state to that of one that formed part of the market free world, that produced and exported more than two hundred thousand tons of sugar to the year.  In 1898, Hawaii was enclosed to the United States of America, obtaining the category of state in 1959. 

The Hawaiian islands were baptized, in gratitude to the fourth Count John Montagu, with the named of 'the Sandwich islands' by Captain James Cook, on January 18, 1778.  John Montagu supported in great measure the exploration of the Pacific, conducted by James Cook, giving him the necessary money to build four embarkations, with which discovered not only the Sandwich islands, but also the Island Montagu, at present splits of Alaska.  The name of 'the Hawaiian Islands' began to be utilized in the 19th century, and these became state sovereign until 1898, when the United States revoked the Hawaiian monarchy and imposed an American style constitution. 

In 1941, in the island of Oahu, the complex harbor and military base Pearl Harborwas object of a preventive attack on the part of Japan, before the economic blockade that was exercising United States.  The attack on Pearl Harbor caused the active participation of the United States in World War II.  Hawaii arrived to be an official sate of the United States on August 21, 1959.

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