The American Frontier in Hawaii: The Pioneers, 1789-1843

by Harold Whitman Bradley

Hardcover

First published December 31, 1899

About the author

Harold Whitman Bradley was Professor of History at Vanderbilt University, where he taught from 1954 until 1972.

Reviews

[John Wiswell · Rating 3 out of 5]

The history is in here. If all you want is the best-documented understanding of what people were doing at certain times during the "discovery" of Hawaii and its colonization, this is a great start. However, Bradley overreaches in several scenes that have too much detail or flair to be totally reliable - these have to be abstracted from biased firsthand accounts or letters. The strength is in his generalizations of morals and spirituality along the islands, and in the better documented motives and thoughts of foreigners coming into those areas. With those notions he grants a very sweeping, very long explanation of the European and United States experiences in Hawaii, as well as localized effects, particularly on social structures. Be warned that it can get pretty dry, but for a history it's quite readable.

[ck]

Working note to self: publication data is confusing. My clothbound copy, purchased new, lists 1942 copyright by the board of trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. "Reprinted, 1968 by permission of the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University"