Description
Book SynopsisBraided Waters sheds new light on the relationship between environment and society by charting the history of Hawaii's Molokai island over a thousand-year period of repeated settlement. From the arrival of the first Polynesians to contact with eighteenth-century European explorers and traders to our present era, this study shows how the control of resourcesespecially waterin a fragile, highly variable environment has had profound effects on the history of Hawaii. Wade Graham examines the ways environmental variation repeatedly shapes human social and economic structures and how, in turn, man-made environmental degradation influences and reshapes societies. A key finding of this study is how deep structures of place interact with distinct cultural patterns across different societies to produce similar social and environmental outcomes, in both the Polynesian and modern erasa case of historical isomorphism with profound implications for global environmental history.
Trade Review"Compellingly argued, theoretically robust, and deeply researched,
Braided Waters is an invaluable contribution to the historical literature about Molokai and the Hawaiian Islands in general that deserves a wide readership. Hopefully, it will spark more research into the environmental history of these stunningly beautiful and ecologically ravaged islands." * Journal of Interdisciplinary History *
"Braided Waters represents the first deeply researched history of Molokai (or Moloka‘i), whose enigmatic history fully merits the supple treatment Graham gives it."
* Journal of Pacific History *
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations List of Maps and Tables
Foreword by Donald Worster
Introduction: Outer Island, In Between
1. Wet and Dry: The Polynesian Period, 1000–1778
2. Traffick and Taboo: Trade, Biological Exchange,and Law in the Making of a New Pacific World, 1778–1848
3. A Good Land: Molokai after the Mahele, 1845–1869
4. The Bonanza Horizon: Molokai in the Sugar Era, 1870–1893
5. A Bigger, Better Hawai‘i: Making an American Molokai, 1893–1957
6. From Lonely Isle to Friendly Isle: Economic Struggles in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries and the Future of “the Most Hawaiian Island”
Conclusion: Two Experiences of Settlement
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index
