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Description of  Pacific Confluence: Fighting over the Nation in Nineteenth-Century Hawai'i (Volume 69) (American Crossroads)

The 1898 annexation of Hawaii to the US is often framed as an inevitable step in American expansionbut it was never a foregone conclusion. By pairing the intimate and epic together in critical juxtaposition, Christen T. Sasaki reveals the unstable nature not just of the coup state but of the US empire itself. The attempt to create a US-backed white settler state in Hawaii sparked a turn-of-the-century debate about race-based nationalism and state-based sovereignty and jurisdiction that was contested on the global stage. Centered around a series of flash points that exposed the fragility of the imperial project, Read more