Chinese in Hawaii

Everyone always makes a big deal of Imperial China settling in the U.S. mainland as if people in the East cared about that. But baby steps. What about Hawaii? It makes a perfect rest stop in the smack dab middle of the Pacific. Why couldn't the Chinese have discovered Hawaii and claimed it? Or at least known about it?
 
Makes a certain amount of sense -- not outside the realm of possibility that a Chinese explorer sails east and runs across the islands; I can see that being followed up with Chinese settlers forming an outpost, a la Singapore...
 
Hawai'i is actuall a) off the main pacific wind systems and b) quite a small target to hit before working out longitude occurs (unlike the Mariana's which have a north-south orientation and lots of reefs thta makes finding them pretty easy).

They aren't strategic at all until steamships come along (which is why it took ages for the Europeans to find them). So China is both unlikely to find them and see no point in setting up a base/colony.
 
Hawai'i is actuall a) off the main pacific wind systems and b) quite a small target to hit before working out longitude occurs (unlike the Mariana's which have a north-south orientation and lots of reefs thta makes finding them pretty easy).

They aren't strategic at all until steamships come along (which is why it took ages for the Europeans to find them). So China is both unlikely to find them and see no point in setting up a base/colony.

It could prove useful even in the era of sail. Hawaii could serve as a sort of stock exchange between the two continents. Traders drop off their goods there and sell them without having to make a cross ocean journey.

This may require China to have a more advanced economic and navigation system though.
 
Why would Chinese people want to sail thousands of miles from home and live on an island with strange Polynesians? If they must live on an island for some reason, there are plenty off the Chinese coast.
 
It could prove useful even in the era of sail. Hawaii could serve as a sort of stock exchange between the two continents. Traders drop off their goods there and sell them without having to make a cross ocean journey.

I'm not sure it would be of use under sail though. You can't sail straight there from East Asia - you have to go north, follow the current past Alaska, the Pacific Northwest, and California, then cut southwest to the Equatorial current, then pull yourself off that to reach Hawai'i. In other words, you have to sail the whole way across then come halfway back. Mind-boggling waste of time.

The folks coming west from Mexico (or wherever) are in an almost equally weak position. They can get to Hawai'i much more easily, but can't sail back east. They have to sail most of the way to Asia to catch a proper breeze east.

In short, Hawai'i is only in the middle of the Pacific if you have motor transport. If you rely on wind power and want to do a round trip, you have to sail just as far as if you were sailing end-to-end.
 
Hawai'i is actuall a) off the main pacific wind systems and b) quite a small target to hit before working out longitude occurs (unlike the Mariana's which have a north-south orientation and lots of reefs thta makes finding them pretty easy).

They aren't strategic at all until steamships come along (which is why it took ages for the Europeans to find them). So China is both unlikely to find them and see no point in setting up a base/colony.

All good points, but they are strategic - at least in the sense they were the best source of fresh water and food in that region of the Pacific. That is one reason it virtually became a base of whaling operations in the 1800s.

The individuals most likely to hit Hawaii by Asia to North American route is the Spanish with their Manila Galleon routes that sailed relatively close by. I believe that if their landfall had been switched from Acapulco to Monterrey Bay they may have come closer.
 
@David: the effort made to reach them would cost more food and water than it'd save. Whaling boats who want to hang around an area for months are a very different kettle of fish to trade ships.

The Manila galleons did arrive at the California coast (generally near port Conception) and then sailed down to Acapulco because it was a Spanish port - and yet they still didn't find Hawai'i because it was off the route of the good winds.
 
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