Book: Unfamiliar Fishes

Overview
"Unfamiliar Fishes" traces the encounter between native Hawaiian society and nineteenth-century American missionaries, traders, and empire-builders, following the islands from the arrival of the first New England missionaries in 1820 through the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy and annexation by the United States in 1898. Sarah Vowell moves through episodes of conversion, commerce, legal overhaul, and political subterfuge to show how a mix of piety, profit, disease, and ideology reshaped Hawaiian life. The narrative centers on the human consequences of those transformations: the decline of indigenous sovereignty, the spread of Christianity, the commodification of land and labor, and the complicated collaboration and resistance among Hawaiians.
Vowell frames the story so that big events, mahele land division, the growth of the sugar industry, the 1893 coup against Queen Liliʻuokalani, and the eventual annexation, become linked elements of a longer sweep. The book highlights key actors, missionaries and their descendants, businessmen like the sugar planters, Hawaiian monarchs and nobles, and U.S. officials, showing how personal motives and national ambitions intertwined. Disease and demographic collapse run like a tragic subtext, undercutting Hawaiian ability to contest the wave of outsiders remaking the islands.

Key events and characters
Early missionaries such as Hiram Bingham and Asa Thurston set out to convert and "civilize" the islands, translating the Bible, establishing schools, and reshaping social norms. Their efforts brought literacy and new institutions but also cultural suppression: hula, native religious practices, and other customs were denounced or curtailed. The Great Mahele of 1848, initiated under Kamehameha III, formalized private property in ways that advantaged foreigners and transformed communal stewardship into marketable acreage, setting the stage for sugar plantation expansion and the rise of a powerful economic elite often descended from missionary families.
By the late nineteenth century the sugar industry dominated Hawaiian politics, with planters pressing for tariffs, labor, and secure American markets. Tensions culminated in the 1893 overthrow of Queen Liliʻuokalani by a small, mostly white Committee of Safety backed by the U.S. minister and Marines. President Grover Cleveland condemned the illegal action, but the shifting tides of American politics and the Spanish-American War-era appetite for empire led to formal annexation in 1898. Vowell gives voice to Hawaiian figures, monarchs, courtiers, and activists, whose struggles and indignities are often sidelined in conventional accounts.

Themes and arguments
Vowell argues that missionary zeal and economic interest were two sides of the same imperial coin: moral certainty opened doors that commercial ambition and strategic thinking completed. The narrative emphasizes how cultural paternalism and racialized rhetoric made dispossession seem justified to many Americans, while legal changes, disease, and economic pressure erased the material foundations of Hawaiian independence. The book stresses contingency, how choices by individuals and powerful nations together produced irreversible outcomes, and it insists that annexation was neither inevitable nor benign.
The title evokes the sense of dislocation felt by Hawaiians and newcomers alike as unfamiliar species, people, laws, and institutions, entered the islands. Vowell examines U.S. expansion not as heroic progress but as a story of contradictions: missionaries who preached humility and ended up shaping a colonial order, and republic-minded Americans who used force to secure markets and territory. The book reframes Hawaiian history as central to understanding American identity at the turn of the century.

Style and impact
Vowell's prose mixes sardonic humor, sharp research, and personal digressions, making complex political and legal developments accessible without diminishing their gravity. Her impatience with myth and her sympathy for displaced voices give the narrative moral clarity while retaining wit. The book invites readers to see Hawaiian history as both a cautionary tale about imperial hubris and a vivid reminder of the human costs of cultural and political conquest.