ABSTRACT
The Chinese are recorded as being among the first sojourners to and settlers in the Hawaiian Islands following their discovery by outsiders in the late eighteenth century. The Chinese quickly recognized Hawaii's potential as a supplier of sandalwood and raw sugar and came to be the Hawaiian kingdom's largest group of business-holders through the mid-nineteenth century. However, the Chinese did not begin arriving in large numbers until the late nineteenth century when they were imported by Hawaii government officials or by plantation recruiters as contract laborers for the sugarcane plantations that came to dominate the islands' economy.!
