Hawaii's earliest inhabitants were Polynesians who came to the islands in double-hulled canoes between 1,000 and 1,400 years ago, either from Southeast Asia or from the Marquesas in the South Pacific. The Western world learned of the islands in 1778, when an English navigator, Captain James Cook, sighted Oahu; he named the entire archipelago the Sandwich Islands after his patron, John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich. At that time, each island was ruled by a hereditary chief under a caste system called kapu. Subsequent contact with European sailors and traders exposed the Polynesians to smallpox, venereal disease, liquor, firearms, and Western technology—and fatally weakened the kapu system. Within 40 years of Cook's arrival, one of the island chiefs, Kamehameha (whose birth date, designated as 11 June, is still celebrated as a state holiday), had consolidated his power on Hawaii, conquered Maui and Oahu, and established a royal dynasty in what became known as the Kingdom of Hawaii.
The death of Kamehameha I in 1819 preceded by a year the arrival of Protestant missionaries. One of the first to come was the Reverend Hiram Bingham, who, as pastor in Honolulu, was instrumental in converting Hawaiians to Christianity. Even before Bingham arrive, however, Liholiho, successor to the throne under the title of Kamehameha II, had begun to do away with the kapu system. After the king's death from measles while on a state trip to England in 1824, another son of Kamehameha I, Kauikeaouli, was proclaimed King Kamehameha III. His reign saw the establishment of public schools, the first newspapers, the first sugar plantation, a bicameral legislature, and the establishment of Honolulu as the kingdom's capital city. Hawaii's first written constitution was promulgated in 1840, and in 1848 a land reform called the Great Mahele abolished the feudal land system and legitimized private landholdings, in the process fostering the expansion of sugar plantations. The power behind the throne during this period was Dr. Gerrit P. Judd, a medical missionary who served as finance minister and interpreter for Kamehameha III.
Diplomatic maneuverings during the 1840s and 1850s secured recognition of the kingdom from the US, Britain, and France. As the American presence on the islands increased, however, so did pressure for US annexation—a movement opposed by Alexander Liholiho, who ruled as Kamehameha IV after his father's death in 1854. His brief reign and that of his brother Lot (Kamehameha V) witnessed the arrival of Chinese contract laborers and of the first Japanese immigrants, along with the continued growth of Hawaii as an international port of call (especially for whalers) and of the increasing influence of American sugar planters. Lot's death in 1872 left no direct descendant of Kamehameha, and the legislature elected a new king, whose death only a year later required yet another election. The consequent crowning of Kalakaua, known as the Merry Monarch, inaugurated a stormy decade during which his imperial schemes clashed with the power of the legislature and the interests of the planters. The most significant event of Kalakaua's unstable reign was the signing of a treaty with the US in 1876, guaranteeing Hawaii an American sugar market. The treaty was renewed in 1887 with a clause leasing Pearl Harbor to the US.
Kalakaua died during a visit to San Francisco in 1891 and was succeeded by his sister, Liliuokalani, the last Hawaiian monarch. Two years later, after further political wrangling, she was deposed in an American-led revolution that produced a provisional government under the leadership of Sanford B. Dole. The new regime immediately requested annexation by the US, but the treaty providing for it bogged down in the Senate, and died after the inauguration of President Grover Cleveland, an opponent of expansionism. The provisional government then drafted a new constitution and on 4 July 1894 proclaimed the Republic of Hawaii, with Dole as president. The Spanish-American War, which fanned expansionist feelings in the US and pointed up the nation's strategic interests in the Pacific, gave proponents of annexation the opportunity they had been seeking. The formal transfer of sovereignty took place on 12 August 1898, and Dole became Hawaii's first territorial governor when the act authorizing the annexation became effective in June 1900.
Notable in the territorial period were a steady US military buildup, the creation of a pineapple canning industry by James D. Dole (the governor's cousin), the growth of tourism (spurred in 1936 by the inauguration of commercial air service), and a rising desire for statehood, especially after passage of the Sugar Act of 1934, which lowered the quota on sugar imports from Hawaii. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, crippling the US Pacific fleet and causing some 4,000 casualties, quickly turned Hawaii into an armed camp, under martial law. The record of bravery compiled by Nisei of the 442nd Regiment on the European front did much, on the other hand, to allay the mistrust that some mainlanders felt about the loyalties of Hawaiians of Japanese ancestry. Hawaii also bore a disproportionate burden during the Korean conflict, suffering more casualties per capita than any of the 48 states.
Hawaiians pressed for statehood after World War II, but Congress was reluctant, partly because of racial antipathy and partly because of fears that Hawaii's powerful International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union was Communist-controlled. The House of Representatives passed a statehood bill in 1947, but the Senate refused. Not until 1959, after Alaska became the 49th state, did Congress vote to let Hawaii enter the Union. President Eisenhower signed the bill on 18 March, and the question was then put to the Hawaiian electorate, who voted for statehood on 27 June 1959 by a margin of about 17 to 1. Hawaii became the 50th state on 21 August 1959.
Defense, tourism, and food processing have been mainstays of Hawaii's economy, with the state playing an increasingly important role as an economic, educational, and cultural bridge between the US and the nations of Asia and the Pacific. In the 1990s Hawaiians faced the challenge of preserving the natural beauty of their environment while accommodating a growing population (especially on Oahu) and a thriving tourist industry. In May 2000 President Clinton issued orders to federal agencies to expand their coastline protection programs, including those protecting Hawaii's coral reefs.
A prominent political issue in recent years has been the achievement of some form of sovereignty by native Hawaiians. Control of an estimated two million acres of land are also at stake. In 1996 a majority of the islands' roughly 200,000 descendants of indigenous Hawaiians voted to establish some form of self-government. In August 1998, the 100th anniversary of the US annexation of Hawaii, protesters marched in Washington, D.C., demanding their full sovereignty from the US government. In July 2000 the movement got some backing in a rights bill introduced in Congress by Hawaiian Senator Daniel Akaka. The bill asked that native Hawaiians be allowed to form their own government and have status similar to that of American Indians.
Hawaii's tourism industry was negatively affected by the 2001 recession, the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the US, and the 2003 Iraq war. Hawaii's tourism business by April 2003 declined by about one-third since the start of the war with Iraq on 19 March 2003. That year, the Hawaii legislature was debating a non-binding resolution condemning portions of the 2001 USA Patriot Act and the 2002 Homeland Security Act (which include sweeping new federal powers to combat terrorism) and calling on state and local officials to avoid any actions that threatened the civil rights of any of Hawaii's residents. Hawaii would have been the first state to go on record against the Patriot and Homeland Security Acts.