Sugar

Oil on canvas 16x20

$360.00

I guess that Maui can thank the gold rush for its sugar plantations. With gold at a premium, sugar became extremely overpriced, prompting a sea captain mesmerized by Maui’s beauty (and great sugar growing profit potential) to build the first sugar plantation in Hana in 1849.

With production growing the Chinese, the first wave of immigrants, started arriving in 1852. Sixteen years later the Japanese arrived, and one year later Samuel Alexander and Henry Baldwin founded Hawaii’s largest sugar company with over 5,000 acres in the central valley of Maui. In 1876 King Kalakaua signed the Sugar Reciprocity Treaty with the U.S. Federal Government, paving the way for the sugar industry in Hawaii to reap the rewards of favored deals on pricing and tariffs. And you know the rest...