In keeping up with my tradition of reading a little bit about every place I visit, I picked up this narrative history of the Hawaiian Islands in the Ala Moana bookstore in Honolulu. It had been released a few days earlier, so it was practically fresh off the presses.

I'm not sure what exactly qualifies Mr. James L. Haley as very suitable for the daunting task of writing down Hawaii's history. I'm pretty certain the moniker "independent scholar", touted on the cover, means that he's not a trained historian, however, I have to admit he does a reasonably good job of it. Particularly to be commended are his impartial ways, as he refuses to fall prone to several common traps, such as judging 19th century people from 21st century perspective and white-washing either the (often brutal) pre-contact Hawaiian culture or else the latter American, European and Asian influence. He also avoids putting important historical figures, such as Kamehameha the Conqueror or the last queen, Lili'uokalani, on pedestals and is in fact possibly more critical of them than the Hawaiians would be.

Naturally, the narrative starts with Captain Cook's "discovery" of the islands, his exploration of the archipelago and his eventual death on the Big Island. I was hoping for a bit more info on how life was like before European contact, but since the Polynesians never discovered writing, not much is known anyway, especially not about the first settlers who had been later conquered by Tahitian immigrants.

What follows is the description of Kamehameha's conquest of the entire island chain. I find this part to be possibly the least satisfactory one in the whole book. Not only do I feel that not enough ink was spent on such a crucially important persona as Kamehameha the Conqueror, but all the bloody battles fought to achieve the conquest are more mentioned than described. It is rather disappointing to have them listed in a factual way rather than having them pictured in one's mind, as it would be really interesting to see how the Hawaiians waged war and how the introduction of western-made weaponry and tactics had changed it all.

There's a couple more criticisms that could be leveled at Captive Paradise, such as too liberal use of footnotes (which reside in the back of the book, necessitating a lot of back-and-forth paging) and the dispatching of whole scores of years of Hawaiian history in a few paragraphs (particularly the post-annexation years - for example, the devastating tsunami of 1946 is not even mentioned and the attack on Pearl Harbor only in passing), but in the end I think the author achieves what he set out to do - provide a non-judgmental, non-biased overview of Hawaiian history. It falls short of literary greatness due to dry descriptions of historical figures and some important events, but that was probably never its goal, since it leans more towards academic narrative. ( )

Mostly concerned with the intricacies of Hawaiian royal politics from the rise of Kamehameha to the fall of Queen Liliuokalani's government, Haley traces the path of how the Anglo-Saxon planter class came to predominate and regards it as pretty much inevitable that Hawaii was going to wind up being dominated by some great power. However, even if you make the argument that American predominance was the best of the bad options and keep in mind that there was much that was less than admirable about the traditional culture of the islands (such as the crushing caste system and the practice of human sacrifice) Haley sees no point in denying that there are the results of economic oppression that in all fairness need to be addressed. ( )

Very readable and yet sufficiently detailed. I was aware that Hawaii lost its independence o the US against the will of the Hawaiin royalty and e majority of native Hawaiins, but Haley does a good job of retracing the history of Hawaii from the first contacts with Europeans through annexation by the US. He seems to take a more tolerant view of the Christian missionaries than many recent historians and he also notes that with Vritain, France and the US all interested in acquiring control of Hawaii, maintaining complete autonomy may not have been possible. But Haley is open about his biases and notes where he disagrees with other historians. Uses lots of primary source material and writes in a narrative style that kept me engaged. ( )

This review was originally posted on Doing Dewey. ( )

This review was originally posted on Doing Dewey. ( )