Measles Hawaii

About Measles Hawaii

The introduction of measles to Hawaii in 1848 devastated the native Hawaiian population. Captain James Cook had arrived in Hawaii in 1778, beginning sustained contact with Europeans. The Hawaiian population was estimated at 300,000 to 800,000 at contact. Epidemics of measles, whooping cough, and influenza in 1848 to 1849 killed thousands of Hawaiians, roughly one tenth of the remaining population. Combined with other introduced diseases including smallpox in 1853, the Hawaiian population collapsed to approximately 40,000 by 1890. The demographic collapse of Hawaii mirrors the fate of the Americas after 1492, where some estimates suggest introduced diseases killed up to 90 percent of indigenous populations. The Hawaiian experience illustrates the devastating impact of virgin soil epidemics on immunologically naive populations. The population decline is seen by historians as having weakened Native Hawaiian political power in the decades before the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893.