Hawaii: land of hula and lei, Pearl Harbor, surfing, Kona coffee and pineapples. In Captive Paradise, noted historian James L. Haley (Passionate Nation: The Epic History of Texas) aims to replace these stereotypes with a somewhat revisionist history of our only state that was once a kingdom. Haley digs deep into the early years of the Hawaiian monarchy before there were written records to chronicle its many chiefs and often savage wars.
While acknowledging and making no excuses for the many injustices, diseases and indignities brought to the islands by the mostly Japanese, British and American arrivals, Haley presents early Hawaii as equally cruel and violent. Before the appearance of British explorer Captain James Cook and even after the first King Kamehameha united the string of island tribes, the kanakas (native Hawaiian commoners) suffered infanticide, war, slavery, sodomy, disease, incest and human sacrifice. The Sandwich Islands could only be called paradise in so much as tropical weather and unbridled promiscuity are bliss--which to weathered seamen, they certainly were.
After the first explorers returned home with stories of the ideally located lush islands, a stream of missionaries followed. Haley attributes the rapid Westernization of Hawaii to these perseverant Christians who often left their evangelism for more lucrative opportunities to create businesses and craft a new government. United States politicians and ambassadors soon followed to cajole and pressure the strategic islands into the annexation of 1898--the final capture of paradise. Haley's story goes beyond surfboards and orchids; it is a dramatic history of the U.S.'s most recent and complex state. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.