The State of Hawaii was the 50th state forming the United States, making Hawaii the most recent adopted territory of US. Precisely because Hawaii did not become a state until 1959, its history and culture have developed for a long period of time without any US influence. This particularity makes Hawaii a unique place, where one encounters a strong and lasting Hawaiian tradition and culture.
             Hawaii is one of the few US states that was previous to its annexation to the US organized independently. But comparing to the other states that had independent statehood, Hawaii became an US state quite recently. Perhaps this is one of the reasons for which the Hawaiian culture continues to last on this territory together with other ethnic groups' cultures and with hardly any American influence.
             It is hard to assert that Hawaii is primarily a state belonging to a single culture. In fact, the diversity of ethnicity is one of the main characteristics of Hawaii. The first contact that the islands now forming Hawaii had with Europeans was in 1778, when British explorer James Cook first discovered the islands. Following Cook's discovery, many European explorers and traders came to the islands and remained here, bringing ethnical diversity to the islands. However, they also brought new diseases which actually decimated the native population. This influenced greatly the demographics of Hawaii.
             Of course, the European influence in Hawaii was considerable, but it was not the only external influence that has changed the islands completely. In 1820, American missionaries arrived to Hawaii and managed to convert the remaining native population to protestant Christianity.1
             Hawaii was a Kingdom between 1810 and 1893 as the result of long-lasting campaigns of annexation of all the islands conducted by a Hawaiian warrior chief, Kamehameha the Great. As a monarchy, the Kingdom of Hawaii followed the model of European monarchies, becoming a mode...