Honolulu: The First Century

by Gavan Daws

Book by Daws, Gavan

464 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Gavan Daws (b. 1933) is an American writer, historian and filmmaker residing in Honolulu, Hawaii. He writes about Hawaii, the Pacific, and Asia. He is a retired professor of history at University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Daws is originally from Australia and got his B.A. in English and History from the University of Melbourne. He has a Ph.D. in Pacific History from the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
His best-known works are Shoal of Time: A History of the Hawaiian Islands, in print since 1968; Holy Man: Father Damien of Molokai, the biography of a nineteenth-century missionary priest to Hawaii who served leprosy sufferers, and who has recently been canonized; and Prisoners of the Japanese: POWs of World War II in the Pacific. Daws co-produced and co-directed Angels of War: The People of Papua New Guinea and World War II, which won the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Documentary. His other work includes song lyrics and a stage play with music and choreography. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Humanities in Australia, and served as the Pacific member of the UNESCO Commission on the Scientific and Cultural History of Humankind.

Reviews

[Spike Gomes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would not recommend this book as a starter for those interested in the history of Hawaii; I would recommend instead the author's "Shoals of Time" instead. This book is for someone already familiar with the general history of the islands looking for something which highlights the early political, cultural and economic history of the city of Honolulu in extreme detail. As such it's a pretty essential resource, and one far more modern than others in it's approach.

What is lacking is a strong sense of many of the personalities involved in a time and place when colorful characters flourished, but as I said before, if you're already familiar with Hawaiian history, you can fill that part in yourself. It's far from dry, however. One gets a sense of the city at the time in all of it's colorful chaos, as well as the sad sense of destiny: the monarchy and kingdom and by extent the Hawaiian people were doomed almost from the very start to be controlled not by themselves, but by powers and interests from abroad. There was no hope of survival in the face of pandemics, culture shock and the emerging global political and economic order. What is surprising is that the city by the sheltered bay was able to be an entity into itself for such a long time nevertheless.