The Sugar Industry and Pu'ukoli'i Camp

Business and trade shaped the new era in Hawai‘i as much as Western theology. The first commodity Hawaiians cashed in on was sandalwood - prized by the Chinese - raiding their forests for profits. When sandalwood had run its course, the whaling industry pumped money into Hawaii's ports, especially Lahaina. Providing ship's stores boosted new ventures in agriculture, moving Hawaiians beyond subsistence farming to commercial cash crops.

One of the earliest crop ventures was coffee. Chief Boki brought coffee plants from Brazil on his return voyage from England in 1825. The first commercial coffee venture was started in 1836 on Kaua‘i; by the 1840s coffee was also being grown on Maui.

Soon, however, all ventures were eclipsed by sugar. The earliest efforts to grow sugar on Maui in the 1820s - by two Chinese named Ahung and Atai at Wailuku, and a Spaniard named Antone Catalina in Waikapu - quickly failed, but other planters persevered and by the 1840s, the new industry was flourishing. The 1850s and 1860s saw the growth of sugar plantations with profits amplified by sugar demand during the American Civil War.

In the Lahaina and Ka‘anapali area, Pioneer Mill became the engine of the local economy. It began in 1860 when James Campbell established a small mill. Shortly thereafter he was joined by Henry Turton and James Dunbar, the plantation was soon producing 45,000 tons of sugar annually with 10,000 acres planted in cane. Plentiful sunshine plus an abundant water supply from the West Maui Mountains provided perfect ingredients for sugar prosperity.

Pioneer Mill, like plantations throughout the Islands, imported labor for its expanding operations, first from China, then from Japan, Korea, Portugal, and the Philippines. Plantations provided housing, food, schools, churches, hospitals, and entertainment for their workers but demanded long hours of back breaking work. Housed in camps like Pu‘ukoli‘i, sugar fostered a tight-knit community life that shaped island society for generations.

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