"How do political and economic institutions evolve? How does the past shape the present? Sumner La Croix answers those questions in an illuminating study of Hawai?i that links the original settlement by humans, endemic warfare among newly formed states, the arrival of Western colonizers, and finally statehood and problems today."--Philip T. Hoffman, author of Why Did Europe Conquer the World? "Hawai?i may have been the last major archipelago on earth to be settled by humans, but its short history is enormously rich. La Croix makes an invaluable contribution to the social science history of Hawai?i by laying out clearly and persuasively how political and economic forces interacted throughout all of Hawaiian history, with particular emphasis on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This is an important book that will find a key place in the history of Hawai?i and the political economy of colonization and statehood."--John Joseph Wallis, coauthor of Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History "A superb analysis of the economic and political history of Hawai?i from its inception over eight hundred years to the present. Using a unified framework of political orders, La Croix moves seamlessly through the various political transitions of local chiefs to Unified Kingdom, U.S. colony, and statehood, with their related economic implications. He documents how the structures put in place eight hundred years ago resonate in the present century. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in economic and political history and those interested in contemporary public policy."--Ann M. Carlos, coauthor of Commerce by a Frozen Sea: Native Americans and the European Fur Trade