S umner L a C roix . Hawaiʻi

It might seem surprising to see a history with a specific focus on Hawaiian politics and economy that dates back to the thirteenth century. As Sumner La Croix demonstrates in Hawaiʻi: Eight Hundred Years of Political and Economic Change, writing about the particulars of socioeconomic life and politics in precontact Hawaiʻi is rife with challenges because the lack of a written language means that information has primarily been passed along through an oral tradition. But there are numerous other ways to triangulate and intersect sources to reach meaningful conclusions about a truly astonishing range of elements. The archaeological record of human habitation in the islands speaks volumes about hierarchy, population density, water usage, wealth or its lack, familial relations, and much more. Various tools and artifacts have survived, which tells us a great deal about social relations, war, specialized labor, and zoology before Western contact. Paleobotanical evidence, and the...

Archaeology · Ethnology · Hierarchy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Asian American and Pacific Histories · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies