Hawai'i's Masters and Servants Act: Brutal Slavery
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Hawai'i's Masters and Servants Act:
Brutal Slavery?
Wilma Sur*
I. INTRODUCTION
The Kingdom of Hawai'i began importing indentured labor in 1852.' The
primary immigrants were Chinese and Japanese under three-to-five-year
contracts designated to work on sugar plantations.2 Between 1852 and 1896,
the number of Chinese and Japanese grew from 364 to 46,023,3 or from 4.5%
to 56.5% of the total population.4 Although Hawai'i was only one of many
sugar venues to use contract labor,5 it was unique. Hawai'i's planter class had
never institutionalized slavery and Hawai'i had never been a formal European
colony. Without a slave paradigm and circumscribing laws of a mother
country, Hawai'i was free to implement its own laws regulating immigration
and the treatment of immigrants. Examination of these laws presents an
opportunity to learn how the need for immigrant labor affected the legal system,
its integrity, and perhaps the moral fabric of the society at large.
Hawai'i's Masters and Servants Act (Act), passed by the Kingdom's
Legislature in 1850, codified contract labor and provided the legal framework
within which Hawai'i would receive indentured workers. Although the Act's
provisions were more humanitarian than those governing slavery, the Act
nevertheless shared the economic goal of slave laws-to harness labor. Hence,
the manner in which the Act was implemented by the Board of Immigration
(Board) and construed by the Hawai'i Supreme Court illustrates the tension
between Hawai'i's liberal leanings and its economic compulsion for labor.
Examination of the Act over its fifty-year history suggests that the Hawaiian
government and the court allowed the wealth generated by immigrant labor to
infect their ideals. Contract laborers were marginalized despite the Act's liberal
* Wilma Sur obtained her J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, is a practiced
litigator and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies at the University of Hawai'i at
Minoa.
1 REPORT OF PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF IMMIGRATION TO THE LEGiSLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF
1886, at 4 (1886) [hereinafter 1886 REPORT OF BOARD].
2 Id. at 4-5.
3 ROBERT C. ScHmITT, HISTORIcAL STATISTICS OF HAWAI'I 25 (1977).
4 3 RALPH S. KUYKENDALL, THE HAWAIAN KINGDOM 1874-1893: THE KALAKAUA
DYNASTY 116 (1967).
5 See Stanley L. Engerman, Contract Labor, Sugar, and Technology in the Nineteenth
Century, 43 J. EcON. HIST. 635, 642 (1983).](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/uhawlr31&div=7&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Hawai'i's Masters and Servants Act: Brutal Slavery
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