Before the Horror: The Population of Hawaii on the Eve of Western Contact

by David E. Stannard

How many people were living in Hawaii in 1778 when the first white men arrived in the islands? The conventional belief is that the number was somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000. But now, in the most factually detailed and theoretically sophisticated study of the subject ever conducted, David E Stannard contends that the true figure was 800,000 or more – – a population almost as large as part of Hawaii today. Virtually every aspect of Hawaii is nearly 2000 years of human history Will bear re-examination in light of these revolutionary demographic findings. Archaeology, demography, comparative history, ethnology, geography, even physiology, and more – – historian David Stannard draws on each to suggest a 1778 population of 800,000 souls living in an epidemiological paradise. From 800,000 to a ghostly 40,000 a little over a century later, their bodies were literally eaten alive by the white man's venereal syphilis, consumed by fires of his influenza, and gored by his tuberculosis. Such was the savage power of the invisible microbe, the silent partner of European colonization. Stannard has done a magnificent job of telling hey most grim tale – – Calvin Martin, department of history, Rutgers University Before the Horror is a work of prodigious scholarship, impressive methodology, and plain common sense that exposes most authors of low native Hawaiian population estimates as denigrators of natives, deniers and selectors of evidence, and polemicists whose figures and conclusions collapse when subjected to the objective methodological scrutiny… It's scholarship is so persuasive and sound that I wish I had written it myself -- Henry F Dobyns, Center for the history of the American Indian, the Newberry library good books do good

Genres: History

168 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1989

Reviews

[Taveri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amazingly this whole book is about population estimates for pre-contact Hawai'i. The author make convincing arguments that initial estimates of around 200,000 - 300,000 by the likes of Captains Cooks and Vancouver were far too low and w/could have been closer to 800,000, even one million. He cites how disease and contact wiped out (severely reduced) many indigenous populations after contact and how the fertile lush environment of the islands could have supported such higher densities. It is not until the last page that reasons are given for whl it is important to have realistic numbers.

[Kartika Upadhyaya · Rating 3 out of 5]

demographic debate on inhabitants before james cook's arrival in 1778. lots of numbers. "societies faced with conditions of scarcity tend to restrict their rate of strenuous leisure activities, thus reducing unnecessary caloric expenditures."