Editing Hawaii (section)

===First recorded contact ===
[[File:Tereoboo, King of Owyhee, bringing presents to Captain Cook by John Webber.jpg|thumb|''[[Kalaniʻōpuʻu|Tereoboo]], King of Owyhee, bringing presents to [[James Cook|Captain Cook]]'' by [[John Webber]] (drawn in 1779, published in 1784)|alt=Drawing of single-masted sailboat with one spinnaker-shaped sail, carrying dozens of men, accompanied by at least four other canoes]]
In January 1778, British Captain [[James Cook]] encountered the Hawaiian Islands serendipitously while crossing the Pacific during his [[Third voyage of James Cook|third voyage of exploration]]. This marked the first documented contact by a European explorer with Hawai{{okina}}i.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hough |first=Richard |title=Captain James Cook: a biography |date=1997 |publisher=Norton |isbn=978-0-393-31519-6 |location=New York |pages=311–315}}</ref> Cook named the archipelago "the Sandwich Islands" in honor of his sponsor [[John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich]]. Cook returned to the Hawaiian Islands in 1779 to resupply and over-winter, anchoring in [[Kealakekua Bay|Kealakakua]] off Hawaii Island for one month. Relations with the local people were peaceful then deteriorated and [[Death of James Cook|Cook was among those killed]] when violence broke out between the British and local Hawaiians.

After Cook, Hawaii was not visited by any foreign ships for seven years but, after 1786, visits became increasingly frequent. At the end of the eighteenth century, the [[maritime fur trade]] developed between the northwest coast of North America and Asia bringing the ships of many nations to the North Pacific Ocean. The Hawaiian islands became established as a convenient source of supplies and destination for overwintering not only for fur traders but also ships engaged in general cross-Pacific commerce.<ref name="Kuykendall">{{Cite book |last=Kuykendall |first=Ralph S. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nkXREAAAQBAJ&q=the+hawaiian+kingdom |title=The Hawaiian Kingdom 1778-1854 Vol 1 Foundation and Transformation |publisher=University of Hawaii Press |year=1938 |location=Honolulu|isbn=978-0-8248-4322-9 }}</ref>{{rp|p=20–21}}

Historian [[Ralph Simpson Kuykendall|Ralph Kuykendall]] has described the impact of these foreign visitors on the hitherto isolated Hawaiian Islands as an “invasion” which “little by little overwhelmed the old culture of the islands”.<ref name="Kuykendall"/>{{rp|p=12}} Over the decades following the first contact, the foreign resident population slowly grew; foreigners imported iron tools, manufactured items, and household utensils; they also introduced firearms, alcohol, tobacco, non-native plants, and - inadvertently -  insects previously unknown to the islands such as mosquitos and scorpions.<ref name="Kuykendall"/>{{rp|p=26–28}}Native Hawaiians were vulnerable to Eurasian diseases for which they had less resistance.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}}  Forty years after Cook's arrival, it is estimated that the native population had declined by half and continued to decline throughout the 19th century.<ref name="OHA"/> During the 1850s, measles killed a fifth of Hawai{{okina}}i's people.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=422 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070207121510/http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=422 |archive-date=February 7, 2007|title=Migration and Disease | website=Digital History}}</ref>