The 1898 annexation of Hawai'i 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 Hawai'i 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.

Asian American History: Primary Documents of the Asian American Experience cultivates historical perspective through experiential and reflective learning. Designed to fill a content gap in general introductory books on the subject, this text shares documentary case studies of Asian immigrants struggling for the right to be fully American. These readings illustrate the dynamic, powerful, and divisive socially constructed nature of racial categories, as well as the legacy of colonialism that served as a foundation for the development of racial hierarchies.

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.