Daily Life in Colonial Hawai''i

Discover the textures of everyday life in colonial Hawai''i—from missionary households and sugar plantations to hula schools and military bases—through the eyes of the people who lived it.

Daily Life in Colonial Hawai''i offers a rich, ground-level view of life in the Hawaiian Islands during the complex and often turbulent colonial period. Spanning the decades between the arrival of American missionaries in the 1820s and the islands’ eventual admission as the 50th U.S. state in 1959, this book explores how colonialism reshaped Hawaiian society—and how Hawaiians and immigrants from around the world adapted, resisted, and made lives of their own.

Organized thematically, each chapter examines a different facet of everyday experience, including missionary family routines, plantation labor and economic systems, the rise of public and private schooling, cultural practices such as hula and lei-making, religious transformations, military presence, and the birth of tourism. Drawing on a wide array of primary sources, Daily Life in Colonial Hawai''i brings into focus the stories of Native Hawaiians, Chinese and Japanese laborers, Portuguese immigrants, Filipino plantation workers, and American settlers navigating a world of rapid change and contested power.