Ladd & Co.

Ladd & Company was an American company in the Kingdom of Hawaii. It operated from 1835, the first commercial and industrial sugar cane plantation on the ( then known as the Sandwich Islands ) islands, but miscalculated already ten years later with land and real estate.

The sugar cane plantation

Founded in July 1833 by William Ladd ( 1807-1863 ), Peter Allen Brinsmade ( 1804-1859 ) and William Northey Hooper ( 1809-1878 ), opened Ladd & Co. immediately a trading post in Honolulu. In 1835, Ladd acquired in Koloa on Kauai 400 acres of land for the cultivation of sugar cane, which was already indigenous to the islands, and established besides the first commercial sugar cane plantation and a sugar mill to their industrial processing.

The Belgian contract

As of 1841, Ladd & Company sought as a public company along with other plantation owners and the influential missionary William Richards sämtliches to buy up not yet built or cultivated land in the kingdom and thus to establish a monopoly. In order to raise the needed for this money, agreed Brinsmade a takeover of a majority shareholding by the Belgian King Leopold I. founded the Compagnie Belge de colonization, although there were conflicts between the Protestant missionaries and the forbidden on the islands of Catholicism, which adhered to the Belgians. There was also a clause stating that the country could only buy, who recognized the independence of Hawaii or the purchase of land would be invalid, the Kingdom would lose its independence. This clause was intended to protect European and American shareholders, but also keep them from their own governments exert political pressure on Hawaii.

Captain George Paulet unauthorized occupation of Hawai'i disturbed Ladd's shareholders

Belgium's King Leopold I intended to take over as the main shareholder throughout Hawai'i

Instead, occupied 1843 British naval forces, the Kingdom ( Paulet affair) and demanded control of all land sales. The Ladd - business partner James Marshall took secret negotiations with the United States, which eventually forced the British to back down. France, Great Britain and the United States recognized the independence of Hawaii. Brinsmade 1844 U.S. Consul in the kingdom.

The six-month occupation had become deterred many shareholders, but with the Belgian treaty as a security borrowed money from Ladd & Company Kingdom of Hawaii. When, however, the agreed funds did not flow well from Belgium, who had little interest in investing in an independent and Protestant Hawaii as hoped extent that Company in November 1844 became insolvent. In March 1845 their property was auctioned and bought the sugar mill of the kingdom. The plantation took over Hooper's brother Robert Wood ( until 1874 ).