Curtis Piehu Iaukea
Colonel Curtis Piʻehu Iʻaukea was a prominent official and diplomat of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, attending events such as the 1883 coronation of Tsar Alexander II and the 1887 Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria as envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary. He is sometimes cited as the second Hawaiian to ever circumnavigate the globe, King Kalakaua being the first in 1881,[1] but Kalakaua was accompanied by Charles H. Judd, William N. Armstrong, and a personal valet, making Iʻaukea perhaps the fifth (still a very noteworthy distinction).
Following his time in Moscow and St. Petersburg as envoy to the tsar's coronation, Iʻaukea traveled to Berlin, Vienna, Belgrade, London, and Rome, before turning back east and visiting India and Japan on his way home to Hawaiʻi. During his brief time in Japan, and in written correspondences afterward, he played a prominent role in negotiations with Japanese Foreign Minister Inoue Kaoru and others regarding Japanese immigration to Hawaii.
References
- Schweizer, Niklaus R. “King Kalakaua: An International Perspective,” Hawaiian Journal of History 25 (1991), 112.
- ↑ Sydney L. Iaukea, "Camera Ready," in Aloys N.M. Fleischmann et al (eds.), Narratives of Citizenship: Indigenous and Diasporic Peoples Unsettle the Nation-State, University of Alberta (2012), 230n15.