The History of Contract Labor in the Hawaiian Islands

Katharine Coman (1857-1915) was an American historian and economist who served as professor and later dean at Wellesley College. Her works include A History of England (1899), Economic Beginnings of the Far West (1912), and this 1903 monograph. Written following a trip to the islands, the short piece focuses upon the use of imported contract labour in the form of indentured servants. Used primarily in the sugar industry, the system was, in Coman's view, one of which the results 'advance[d] the interests of the labourers quite as much as those of the planters'. The United States' distaste with such arrangements ended this status quo upon annexation, even though the wage system subsequently imposed offered fewer opportunities than before. Covering the decades during which Hawaii underwent massive changes at the hands of Western powers, Coman's work helps illuminate the multiple layers of colonial paternalism in the age of imperialism.