Russian resettlers in unlikely places: Stepan Serdiukov, ‘The Russians ‘Americanize’ Hawai‘i: Russian Molokan Migrants and the Failed Labour Domiciling Experiment in Kaua‘i, 1905-6’, Journal of Pacific History, 2024 | settler colonial studies blog

Russian resettlers in unlikely places: Stepan Serdiukov, ‘The Russians ‘Americanize’ Hawai‘i: Russian Molokan Migrants and the Failed Labour Domiciling Experiment in Kaua‘i, 1905-6’, Journal of Pacific History, 2024

19Nov24

Abstract: Drawing on the archival correspondence between the parties involved and the English-language newspaper coverage, this article analyses the failed scheme to settle 110 Russian Molokan migrants in Kaua‘i in 1905–6. Supported by a part of Hawai‘i’s sugar planter elite, the experiment was to provide a blueprint for gradually replacing the predominantly Asian labour force with a White one, thus opening the door to a decisive ‘Americanization’ of the archipelago. I argue that the myth of the Molokans as model colonists, originating in the South Caucasus (where they had aided the Russian colonization effort in their capacity as settlers from the 1840s on), intersected with American settler mythologies. The article also discusses reasons for the experiment’s eventual demise, such as the Molokans’ struggles with unfamiliar climate conditions and agricultural technology and the resistance of the incumbent Asian and European labour force on the plantation where the Molokans settled.

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