The Gifts of Civilization: Germs and Genocide in Hawai'i

by O.A. Bushnell

In 1778 Captain James Cook made his first visit to the Hawaiian Islands. The members of his expedition and subsequent visitors brought to the previously isolated Hawaiian people new things, novel ideas, and, of greatest consequence, devastating alien germs. The infectious diseases introduced since 1778 have claimed more Hawaiian lives than all other causes of death combined.

During their long isolation in space and time, Hawaiians had not been exposed to the many microbes that afflicted populations in other parts of the world. They had developed no immunity to those germs and gained no experiences to enable them to endure the sicknesses the newly introduced germs caused. That terrible vulnerability to foreigners' diseases has almost destroyed Hawaiian society and culture.

The nine essays in this collection discuss the impact of these "gifts of civilization" upon the native Hawaiian people and upon the social history of Hawai‘i. Dr. Bushnell constructs a concise historical framework, including an examination of the native medical profession, and interprets the few facts known about it in light of present knowledge in the medical sciences. He presents information, opinions, and conclusions harvested from many years of thinking about the fate of native Hawaiian people, studying all the relevant documents, and writing about this and related subjects.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Medicine

352 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1993

About the author

O. A. (Oswald Andrew) "Ozzy" Bushnell (11 May 1913 - 21 August 2002) was a microbiologist, historian, novelist, and professor at the University of Hawaiʻi. Descended from contract laborers from Portugal and Norway and a mechanic from Italy, he was born in the working-class neighborhood of Kakaʻako. His friends and classmates in the area were Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Hawaiian, and "hapa-haole" [part-white], so he grew up "local," mastering Hawaiian "pidgin" as well as English as his novels attest. As a youngster he developed a love for the cultures of Hawai`i as well as literature and classical music. He graduated in 1934 from the University of Hawaii, where he served as student body president. By 1937 he had earned both his MS and PhD degrees in bacteriology from the University of Wisconsin and later worked and taught (1937–40) at George Washington University Medical School in Washington D.C. He returned to Hawai`i in 1940 working for the Department of Health on Kaua`i and Maui before joining the U.S Army after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Following the war he taught at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, retiring in 1970 as emeritus professor of medical microbiology and medical history. He served as editor in chief of the journal Pacific Science from 1957 through 1967. Married to Elizabeth Jane Krauskopf in 1943, he had two sons, Andrew and Philip and a daughter, Mahealani.

Bushnell's first novel, The Return of Lono, won the Atlantic Monthly's fiction award in 1956, at a time when most books about Hawaiʻi were written by outsiders. Later novels dealt with other aspects of Hawaiʻi's history and he encouraged and inspired many other local writers to tell their own stories. Molokaʻi (1975) tells the story of leprosy patients quarantined at Kalaupapa; Kaʻaʻawa (1972) describes life on Oʻahu in the 1850s, during the great smallpox epidemic when many native Hawaiians were dying of newly introduced diseases; and Stone of Kannon (1979) and its sequel Water of Kane tell about the first Japanese contract laborers who arrived in 1868. In 1974, the Hawaiʻi Literary Arts Council presented him an Award for Literature, saying he "brought life to fact and reality to fiction."

His historical works include "Hawaii: A Pictorial History" (1969) with Joseph Feher and Edward Joesting, "A Walk Through Old Honolulu" (1975), and "A Song of Pilgrimage and Exile: The Life and Spirit of Mother Marianne of Molokai" (1980) with Sister Mary Laurence Hanley, O.S.F.

His last work, Gifts of Civilization: Germs and Genocide in Hawaii (1993), combined his interests in microbiology, Hawaiian history, and literature. It remains the definitive study of how Native Hawaiians, having lived in isolation for centuries, were very nearly wiped out by exposure to newly introduced diseases such as tuberculosis, smallpox, and leprosy.

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

For some four centuries, between 1500 and 1900, white travelers encountered primitive cultures and, in the process, did their level best to destroy them. Finally, a sympathetic microbiologist and novelist named O. A. Bushnell has written a detailed study of one such encounter: The islands of Hawai'i from Captain Cook until approximately 1900. His The Gifts of Civilization: Germs and Genocide in Hawai'i shows exactly what happened to the happy and thriving people of Hawai'i once they had to deal with syphilis, gonorrhea, leprosy, smallpox, malaria, and a whole host of other ailments imported from America and Europe.

Bushnell was in a unique position to write this book, as he was a professor of medical microbiology and medical history at the University of Hawai'i. He is also the author of five excellent novels, three of which I have read, which dovetail very nicely with the subject of the book under review.

I can think of no better book to read before you are planning a vacation to Hawai'i, at least if you have any interest in the sad history of the islands after Captain Cook discovered them in 1778.

[Talia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Told in the style of nine separate essays (I would say lectures, actually, as the author is a medical doctor and has a kind of professorial, slightly condescending "let me tell you a story..." way of presenting his arguments), this history of "Germs and Genocide in Hawaii" walks through the many causes for the loss of the true Hawaiian race, leading up to the 1970 decision to eliminate the category for full-blooded Hawaiians from U.S. Census definitions. Most everyone places the original blame on Captain Cook for discovering the islands and his sailors spreading venereal disease where before there was none. But, Bushnell says, if it hadn't been Cook, it would have been sailors from someone else's boat, and besides, there were many other contributing forces. Bushnell looks at what made the Hawaiians particularly vulnerable to the new germs, and also at how families and native doctors attempted to fight them. Most interesting to me was Bushnell's hypothesis that the collapse of the kapu system in the early 1800s (including some basic mores related eating, tending the fields, and sanitation), contributed to some of the spread of disease, which further harmed health and thus caused more social decline. This book made vivid for me the sense of loss and the destroyed native primacy that is today more often expressed in aggressive and angry pro-isolation words and actions (think: "Defend Hawaii" bumper stickers with pictures of machine guns). An interesting book for the Hawaii history shelf.

[Madie · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. While I think this is an incredibly important premise, the overall author vibe of "white saviour" is really overwhelming. Some books remain relevant with age. This aged poorly.