Timeline Hawaii

Of all the states in the Union, Hawaii has undoubtedly the most interesting history. It is the only state that was once a kingdom ruled by kings and a queen, the only state attacked in a world war, the only state settled predominately by non-Europeans and the only state that simultaneously had a saint, poet laureate, and president born or who had spent part of their lives living in the Islands. Not surprisingly Hawaii’s history has an amazing and dramatic number of events and personages. Hawaii’s history records a bewildering number of social, cultural, and political upheavals. In less than two centuries, the Islands experienced: civil wars leading to a unified monarchy; the arrival of American missionaries; the erosion of its traditional culture; the rapid decline of the native population due to the influx of Western diseases for which they had no immunity; immigration of Asians to work in the rapidly developing sugar industry made possible by new land ownership laws; the overthrow o