Ladd & Co.
Ladd & Company was an American company in the Kingdom of Hawaii . From 1835 it operated the first commercial and industrial sugar cane plantation on the islands (then known as the Sandwich Islands ), but already speculated ten years later with land and property.
The sugar cane plantation
Founded in July 1833 by William Ladd (1807–1863), Peter Allen Brinsmade (1804–1859) and William Northey Hooper (1809–1878), Ladd & Co. immediately opened a trading office in Honolulu . In 1835 Ladd acquired 400 hectares of land in Koloa on Kaua'i for the cultivation of sugar cane , which was already native to the islands, and in addition to the first commercial sugar cane plantation, he also built a sugar mill for its industrial processing.
The Belgian treaty
From 1841 Ladd & Company tried as a stock corporation, together with other plantation owners and the influential missionary William Richards, to buy up all of the land that had not yet been built or cultivated in the kingdom and thus to establish a monopoly. In order to raise the necessary money, Brinsmade agreed to take over the majority of the shares by the Compagnie Belge de Colonization , founded by the Belgian King Leopold I , although there were conflicts between the Protestant missionaries and the Catholicism to which the Belgians adhered, which was forbidden on the islands. There was also a clause according to which land could only be bought by those who recognized Hawai'i's independence or the purchase of land would be invalid if the kingdom lost its independence. This clause was intended to protect European and American shareholders, but also to prevent their governments from putting political pressure on Hawai'i.
Ex-missionary William Richard urged Ladd and the Hawaiian king into the land purchase business
Captain George Paulet's arbitrary occupation of Hawaii disturbed Ladd's shareholders
Belgium's King Leopold I intended to take over all of Hawai'i as the main shareholder
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Instead, British naval forces occupied the kingdom in 1843 (Paulet affair) and demanded control of all land sales. The Ladd business partner James Marshall entered into secret negotiations with the USA, which the British finally forced to give in. France, Great Britain and the USA recognized the independence of Hawaii. Brinsmade became US consul in the Kingdom in 1844.
The six-month occupation had meanwhile put off numerous shareholders, but with the Belgian contract as security, Ladd & Company borrowed money from the Kingdom of Hawaii. However, when the agreed funds did not flow as expected from Belgium, which had little interest in investing in an independent and Protestant Hawai'i, the company became insolvent in November 1844. In March 1845, their property was auctioned and the sugar mill was bought by the kingdom. The plantation was taken over by Hooper's brother-in-law Robert Wood (until 1874).
literature
- Edward Joesting: Kauai - The Separate Kingdom . Pages 129-138 and 173 . University of Hawaii Press, 1988
- Gavan Daws: Shoal of time - a history of the Hawaiian Islands , pp . 120-124 . University of Hawaii Press, 1968
- Ralph Simpson Kuykendall: The Hawaiian Kingdom , Volume 1, Pages 175-257 . University of Hawaii Press, 1938
- Chauncey C. Bennett: Honolulu directory and Historical sketch of the Hawaiian or Sandwich Islands , pages 24-36 . Honolulu 1869