Joanna Poblete. Islanders in the Empire

Hawaiʻi’s labor history is complex and a fascinating case study of race, radicalism, and ethnic divisions—all within a system of industrial capitalism where sugar interests controlled the levers of political power. It is a history that also begs for attention because of the place it holds in the larger American story. In Islanders in the Empire: Filipino and Puerto Rican Laborers in Hawaiʻi, Joanna Poblete breaks from a more traditional inward focus, and expands our horizons outward to consider the role the islands played in creating an American empire. In a finely detailed assessment of the sugar plantation experience of U.S. colonials (a term she coins) from Puerto Rico and the Philippines, she offers an innovative approach that adds nuance to our knowledge of Hawaiʻi’s immigrant workers. Interestingly, during its territorial era (1900–1959) many did not think of Hawaiʻi as a colony, including historians and residents of Hawaiʻi. For decades, historians have treated the subsequent establishment of an independent republic that applied for and won U.S. Territorial status as an inevitable and natural course of events desired by island residents. Recent Hawaiian scholarship, including Poblete’s work, has shown otherwise. Many actively resisted the annexation of the islands to the United States in 1898. Hawaiʻi’s addition to the U.S. stable of possessions, along with the Philippines and Puerto Rico, created an offshore colonial empire and a migrant workforce with a distinctly different status from continental-based states and territories. Using Hawaiʻi’s sugar plantations as a stage, Poblete makes a significant contribution toward a history of American empire extending beyond the continent.

Ancient history · Annexation · Archaeology · Colonialism · Economic history · Empire · Ethnology · Immigration · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Scholarship · Sociology · Asian American and Pacific Histories · Gender Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies