Shoal of Time: A History of the Hawaiian Islands

This book is a very broad, expansive, and easy-to-read description of Hawaiian history, great for anyone just starting to learn about Hawaiian history. It is also significantly dated and told from a white colonial perspective that biases its telling of many events in Hawaiian history. As an overview, it's alright, but should definitely be supplemented with other works that have differing perspectives.

This book is a must read for any one studying or interested in Hawaiian history. It is very detailed and the timeline of events is easy to follow. There are even specific names mentioned that helped a friend with his genealogy research.

Everyone I know who has read Daws' book seems to agree with the other reviewers at this site that this is an excellent presentation of Hawaiian history. I've bought this book as presents for family and friends, and I keep going back to my dog-eared copy to re-read certain sections, such as the narrative of the infamous Charlton Affair.One criticism I might offer is that the book was written in 1989. An update would be appreciated.

Hawaii has a rich history involving chiefs, and kings, and wars, and international diplomacy. In "Shoal of Time," Gavan Daws relates this history in interesting, non-biased detail. Daws gives a quick sketch of Hawaii before James Cook arrived. He talks about the way the Hawaiians greeted the ships and gives snips from journal entries.When it comes to the reign of the Kamehamehas, Daws does a wonderful job of showing the practical brilliance of how Kamehameha the Great and Liholiho mastered the game of diplomacy--allying themselves with England, France, and the United States in ways that prolonged their independence.Daws also does a masterful job of showing how the once innocuous missionary families brought about the ultimate fall of the monarchy. Few authors can relate this story without showing passionate bias, but Daws succeeds. (Both Hawaiian activists and members of old missionary families will be offended, I think.) Daws avoids the common prattfall of painting King Kaulakaua and Queen Liliuokalani as saints, and Stanford Dole and Loren Thurston as demons. Some have complained that Daws's book ends with statehood. Books need to end somewhere. Statehood was the right place to end because Hawaiian statehood is an entirely different epic.Daws's book is a nearly perfect introduction to Hawaiian history--a survey book that covers all of the bases. After finishing this book you may want to move on to more detailed books on the fall of the monarchy (see the works of R.S. Kuykendall), ancient Hawaii (see "Ruling Chiefs of Hawaii" by S. M. Kamakau), and the attack on Pearl Harbor (see "At Dawn We Slept" by Prange and Goldstein).I absolutely recommend "Shoal of Time" for anybody curious about Hawaiian history. I especially recommend this book to tourists coming to the islands for the first time. Reading this book could improve a visit. Knowing the significance of Iolani Palace and other sites cannot help but improve your visit.If you are visiting Oahu, I also recommend purchasing a copy of "A Walk Through Old Honolulu" by the late O.A. Bushnell. This long out of print pamphlet gives a concise history of the buildings that speckle a small walkable distance in downtown Honolulu. ...

Anyone who has read James Mitchner's Hawaii, which includes just about anyone who has visited the islands, and is in need of a historical fix (as in correction) ought to read Gavan Daws excellent Shoal of Time: A History of the Hawaiian Islands. Daws has done what Mitchner could not with his admirably popular, historically inadequate, sprawling epic, told the whole story.Through no fault of the author in any historical fiction the emphasis is on the fiction, as it should be; as a result the history is bound to suffer in some form. This is a disservice to both history and the authors who choose to write about it, especially if people then believe "this is what happened, and how."Daws' book should be the book everyone who visits Hawaii should read at some point, especially if they have read Mitchner. Unlike Mitchner, the history Daws tells begins not with pre-history which to a certain degree can be sketchy and speculative at best (native Hawaiians had no written language, rather their stories/legends/beliefs/accomplishments were told and passed on orally from generation to generation via complex and myth laden chants). Rather Daws chooses to begin his story with the "discovery" of Europeans by the Hawaiians to turn a phrase. The history begins with the arrival of the ill-fated, but well intentioned, Captain Cook, as he stumbles into the Hawaiian islands in the late eighteenth century while looking for something else.As in Alan Moorehead's The Fatal Impact, this is where the real story begins, as this cultural collision portends ill for the Hawaiians as they then become even more belligerent eventually uniting under a single king with the help of a few well intentioned outsiders along.Again as in Moorehead the act of discovery becomes an act of destruction. Whalers, missionaries, planters, immigrants (Japan, China, Portugal, Philippines etc.), politicians, and various and sundry hangers on descend on the island to carve and shape what was once perfect into something much different. Something much changed and still evolving, like the islands themselves.All of this ultimately results in the overturning of the monarchy in the interests of what's best for Hawaii, but not necessarily the native Hawaiians.Shoal of Time is a compelling read. The full story is fascinating, disturbing, enlightening and sad as the Hawaiians are pushed out of their own history into some shadow existence where they tentatively remain today.Mitchner got some of it right. Daws gets it all right.

An excellent writing style by a knowledgable author combine here to give the reader a feeling for how and why Hawai'i moved from isolation to its current status. Rights and wrongs are both well presented leaving one to form their own conclusions as to what led to the nation of Hawai'i to become part of the United States. This is not just the story of that event, but of many events from the time Hawai'i was discovered by the Europeans up through statehood in the US. Highly recommended.