The ocean is integral to the story of Hawai‘i. It carried the first Polynesian settlers to the archipelago, and linked an island chain spanning 2,400km. In the 18th and 19th centuries, it also provided pathways for international diplomacy and unexpected alliances. Matthew Symonds spoke to Alice Christophe about the seldom-told stories brought to light in a new major exhibition at the British Museum.
A new exhibition at the British Museum explores Hawai‘ian history and culture, as well as the archipelago’s complex but enduring relationship with the United Kingdom. Carly Hilts visited to learn more.
It was, according to a famous speech made by US President Franklin D Roosevelt the following day, 'a date which will live in infamy'. Shortly before 8am on Sunday 7 December 1941 – 80 years ago next month – 360 aircraft launched in two waves from carriers belonging to the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) made a surprise attack on the US Pacific Fleet based at Pearl Harbor, on the Hawaiian island of Oahu.
Taylor Downing surveys screen depictions of Pearl Harbor in a ‘War on Film’ special.
It is a matter of debate as to whether Captain James Cook was really the first European adventurer to set eyes on the Hawaiian archipelago. According to some historians, the 1778 arrival of the British seafarer's ship, HMS Resolution, in the waters of the North Pacific island chain may have been preceded by a visit from the Spanish explorer Ruy López de Villalobos in 1542 – more than 200 years earlier. What is more clear-cut is the effect Cook's arrival would have on the islands' original inhabitants, who had themselves crossed the Pacific to reach these shores many centuries before. With colonisation rapidly taking hold, large numbers of immigrants from Europe and America introduced new diseases to which the locals had no resistance. This lead to a calamitous fall in the native Hawaiian population, from approximately 300,000 in the 1770s to fewer than 40,000 in the 1890s, barely a century later.
The temples of Hawaii are renowned for their varied forms and orientations, but could it be that this veneer of irregularity masks a pattern that sheds fresh light on these monuments? Patrick Kirch and Clive Ruggles told Current World Archaeology's Matthew Symonds what systematic study of the temple sites reveals.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor of 80 years ago not only brought the United States into a war, but provoked a wave of hostility to Japanese immigrants and their children across America. Daniel James Brown here explores the lives…