The 1898 annexation of Hawaiʻi to the US is often framed as an
inevitable step in American expansion--but it was never a foregone
conclusion. By pairing the intimate and epic together in critical
juxtaposition, Christen T. Sasaki reveals the unstable nature not just
of the coup state but of the US empire itself. The attempt to create a
US-backed white settler state in Hawaiʻi sparked a turn-of-the-century
debate about race-based nationalism and state-based sovereignty and
jurisdiction that was contested on the global stage. Centered around a
series of flash points that exposed the fragility of the imperial
project, Pacific Confluence examines how the meeting and mixing of
ideas that occurred between Hawaiians and Japanese, white American, and
Portuguese transients and settlers led to the dynamic rethinking of the
modern nation-state.