Читать книгу Empire in Waves. A Political History of Surfing онлайн

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ALEXANDER HUME FORD AND THE CONSOLIDATION OF THE PACIFIC EMPIRE

However much the number of surfers had fallen by the end of the nineteenth century, surfing began to once more flourish as the twentieth century unfolded. As with its decline, this was due, at least in part, to the immediate concerns of the American imperial project. Just as contact had physically decimated the native population while the missionary onslaught had sought the cultural transformation of those who survived, following Hawai‘i’s annexation by the United States in 1898, a number of Americans sought to profit from the islands’ tropical climate by further opening up the territory to tourists as what one promotional booklet called “a marvelous out-of-door wonderland, a picnic ground from the earth.”⁴¹ Their objectives were obvious. For years tourism’s economic potential had been apparent. In 1888, for instance, a Honolulu newspaper, noting the considerable sums expended by visitors, argued that inducing “people to come and see us is wise policy and promotive of our own material interests.”⁴² As the twentieth century dawned, surfing would prove instrumental in marketing the “out-of-door wonderland” image.⁴³ Robert C. Allen, who served for thirty-five years after World War II as the islands’ most tireless and effective booster, identified the sport as the first of four “entities” that provided an isolated Hawai‘i “with publicity far beyond any paid advertising could possibly have generated.”⁴⁴ But even decades before Allen assumed his postwar leadership role, a middle-aged South Carolina– born journalist had seized upon the idea of using surfing to sell the archipelago as an exotic, though safely American, tropical retreat.