The authors of this remixed Open Educational Resource textbook are immigrants on this ‘āina who now call O’ahu home.

We would like to acknowledge that the ‘āina on which we live and work, Niuhelewai, is part of the larger territory recognized by Indigenous Hawaiians as their ancestral grandmother, Papahānaumoku.

We recognize that Her Majesty Queen Lili‘uokalani yielded the Hawaiian Kingdom and these territories under duress and protest to the United States to avoid the bloodshed of her people. We further recognize that Hawai‘i remains an illegally occupied state of America.

We recognize that each moment we are in Hawai‘i she nourishes and gifts us with the opportunity to breathe her air, eat from her soils, drink from her waters, bathe in her sun, swim in her oceans, be kissed by her rains, and be embraced by her winds. We further recognize that generations of Indigenous Hawaiians and their knowledge systems shaped Hawai‘i in sustainable ways that allow us to enjoy these gifts today. For this we are grateful and as immigrants, we seek to support the varied strategies that the Indigenous peoples of Hawai‘i are using to protect their land and their communities, and we commit to dedicating time and resources to working in solidarity. Mahalo.

Acknowledgments:

As historians all know, what we make stands on the shoulders of what has come before. This book is a remixed version of World History: Cultures, States, and Societies To 1500, licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 4.0 license, in line with the requirements of the CC-BY-SA license of the original work. We wish to acknowledge our debt to the authors of World History: Cultures, States, and Societies To 1500, Eugene Berger, George L. Israel, Charlotte Miller, Brian Parkinson, Andrew Reeves, and Nadejda Williams, without whose work we would not have had a text to revise and update. We hope our efforts at localization have done them justice, and show evidence of the great respect in which we hold them.

We also wish to acknowledge Mark S. (Alapaki) Luke for his help in reviewing and refining the History of Hawai’i, and William Meinke for his essential and expert assistance in preparing this textbook. We are grateful to the UH Community Colleges Open Educational Resources Committee, Junie Hayashi, Wayde Oshiro, Sunyeen Pai, and Jason Yamashita, for their support and for the grant that helped get us through the first draft of this project, which was as important for encouragement as it was financially.

Patrick Patterson wishes to thank Takako, Erin, and Matthew for their support and patience during this project.

Mieko Matsumoto wishes to thank her partner, Devin, for his patience, support, and delicious cooking. This project is for her daughter and all the next generation who will hopefully learn from the past and work together for a more just and equitable future.

Cynthia Smith wishes to thank Neil, Ian and Mary for their loving support during these past years working on this project.