"AN ENTERING WEDGE": THE ORIGINS OF THE SUGAR PLANTATION AND THE MULTI-ETHNIC WORKING CLASS IN HAWAII.

The Hawaiian natives noticed in 1835 the arrival of William Hooper of Boston, Massachusetts. He was sent to Koloa by Ladd and Company of Honolulu to establish the first plantation in Sandwich Islands and to cultivate sugar cane as a cash crop, he was there to remake Hawaii in his own image, to advance American capitalism and civilization to a new Pacific frontier, undermining in the process the feudal society of Hawaii and the people's traditional relationship with their land. During the next century, the Hawaiian sugar industry, which Hooper had initiated, transformed both the ethnicity of the people and the economy of the islands. Within one year, the young man from Boston had transformed both the land and native society in Koloa. On September 12, 1836, he proudly listed his accomplishments. He had 25 acres of cane under cultivation, in addition, he had erected twenty houses for the natives, a house for the superintendant, a carpenter's shop, a blacksmith's shop, a mill dam, a sugar house, a boiling house, and a sugar mill.