Page 55 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

41.

the center of American trade at Honolulu. But now there was

not the opportunity to make a fortune in profits as had for­

merly existed. The Islands no longer had any native products
worth exporting. Their value lay in their use as an entrepot,

where articles brought from California and Canton were trans­

shipped elsewhere. Commercial success in this type of trade
1
was by no means predetermined. Profits depended on a merchant s

talent to predict the demands of future markets and his ability
54
to supply those demands. This sort of commerce, as had been

the case at Canton and other Pacific ports, was highly specula-

tive. It also required the merchants involved to reside at

the port of business to make the nec�ssary quick decisions.

As in California, the American merchants who became residents

at Honolulu gradually gained a stake in the future of the

Islands.

American merchants• commercial activity in the Hawaiian

Islands impelled the Islands toward closer ties with the

United States. Certainly no prominent American designed to

annex the Islands at this period in the nineteenth century.

But the Hawaiians, as early as 1816, voiced fears that the

United States wanted to colonize them. The foundation of

such a fear lay in the almost complete commercial dominance of

trade in the Islands by American merchants. Their vociferous

contentions that American commerce should remain dominant only

54
Letter, J. Hunnewell to Baker & Son, Mar. 16, 1830,
Hunnewell MSS. Letter, J. Hunnewell to Pierce & Brewer, Mar.
27, 1836, Hunnewell MSS.