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History Talk: Hawaiian Migrant Workers in 19th-Century SF | SF

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Monday, October 19, 2015 - 4:00 pm | Cost: FREE
San Francisco Main Public Library | 100 Larkin St, San Francisco, CA 94102

Event Details

Exploring Nature in the San Francisco Bay Area: Lecture Series | SF

The SF Natural History Series lecture series explores all aspects of nature in the Bay Area, and seeks to understand our impact both past and present on those natural systems, and their impact on us.

Talks take place at different venues around the city and are sometimes scheduled with little notice, so check their blog to stay tuned to the latest updates. The lectures are free, but an RSVP is typically requested.

At least one thousand Hawaiians lived and worked in California in the mid-nineteenth century. As itinerant seamen and fur hunters they touched Alta and Baja California shores; as cowhide skinners, sea otter scalpers, agriculturalists and Catholic converts, they lived and worked in the Channel Islands and in Mexican ranching towns; as stevedores, boatmen, and day laborers they peopled the port city of Yerba Buena; and, during and after the Gold Rush, as miners, fishermen, boardinghouse keepers, opium farmers, factory workers, beggars, and vagabonds, they lived among others in Sacramento, San Francisco, and in the Central Valley.

In the course of research at the Huntington Library, the California Historical Society, the Bancroft Library, and throughout Hawaiʻi, Mr. Gregory Rosenthal have uncovered a multitude of stories of Native Hawaiian migrant workers in nineteenth-century California. In this talk, he will discuss Hawaiian migrants to California and their experiences of life and labor in early San Francisco, from the city’s sleepy beginnings as Yerba Buena in the 1830s and 1840s to the aftermath of the Gold Rush in the 1860s and 1870s. During this era, Hawaiians were a crucial part of San Francisco’s story of cosmopolitan growth and urban transformation.

Gregory Rosenthal is Assistant Professor of Public History at Roanoke College. His current book project is a history of Native Hawaiian migrant labor in the nineteenth-century global capitalist economy. He has published in Environmental History, World History Bulletin, Perspectives on History, and Solutions.

Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.


Cost: FREE
Categories: Lectures & Workshops, San Francisco
Address: 100 Larkin St, San Francisco, CA 94102