Story

Polynesians began to settle in the Hawaiian Islands between the 1st and 10th centuries. Around 1200 CE, Tahitian explorers found and began settling the area as well. This marked the rise of the Hawaiian civilization, which would be largely separated from the rest of the world until the arrival of the British 600 years later. Europeans under the British explorer James Cook arrived in the Hawaiian Islands in 1778, and within five years of contact, European military technology would help Kamehameha I conquer most of the people, and eventually unify the islands for the first time; establishing the Hawaiian Kingdom.