ABSTRACT
Britain and France signed a noncolonization agreement in 1843, recognizing the Kingdom of Hawai'i as a sovereign state. The main reason for lack of interest in colonization by the major powers was that the kingdom had progressively adopted capitalism and was eager to trade. France's first colony in the Pacific came during 1843 - a protectorate in the Society Islands, with a capital in Tahiti. Persecution of Catholics by Protestant missionaries in Hawai'i, was a pretext for colonization in 1849, when French Admiral Louis Tromelin presented ten demands to the king. Meanwhile, France established a colony in tin-rich New Caledonia in 1853; Hawai'i had no equivalent resource to mine. In short, for nearly fifty years after the confrontation with the French, no foreign power sought to make the Islands into a colony, while imperial powers gobbled up the rest of the Pacific.
