Relative to the other habited places on our planet, Hawai'i has a very short history. The Hawaiian archipelago was the last major land area on the planet to be settled, with Polynesians making the long voyage just under a millennium ago. Our understanding of the social, political, and economic changes that have unfolded since has been limited until recently by how little we knew about the first five centuries of settlement. Building on new archaeological and historical research, Sumner La Croix assembles here the economic history of Hawai'i from the first Polynesian settlements in 1200 through US colonization, the formation of statehood, and to the present day.

• Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1. The Short History of Humans in Hawaiʻi
• Chapter 2. Voyaging and Settlement
• Chapter 3. The Rise of Competing Hawaiian States
• Chapter 4. Guns, Germs, and Sandalwood
• Chapter 5. Globalization and the Emergence of a Mature Natural State
• Chapter 6. Treaties, Powerful Elites, and the Overthrow
• Chapter 7. Colonial Political Economy: Hawaiʻi as a U.S. Territory
• Chapter 8. Homes for Hawaiians
• Chapter 9. Statehood and the Transition to an Open-Access Order
• Chapter 10. The Rise and Fall of Residential Leasehold Tenure in Hawaiʻi
• Chapter 11. Land Reform and Housing Prices
• Chapter 12. The Long Reach of History
• Appendix: A Model of Political Orders
• Notes
• References
• Index