Eugene Miller Van Reed (May 17, 1835 – February 2, 1873) was a

Dutch American Dutch Americans () are Americans of Dutch and Flemish descent whose ancestors came from the Low Countries in the distant past, or from the Netherlands as from 1830 when the Flemish became independent from the United Kingdom of the Netherlan ...

merchant A merchant is a person who trades in goods produced by other people, especially one who trades with foreign countries. Merchants have been known for as long as humans have engaged in trade and commerce. Merchants and merchant networks operated i ...

who was the

Kingdom of Hawaii The Hawaiian Kingdom, also known as the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian language, Hawaiian:

ɛ ɐwˈpuni həˈvɐjʔi Latin epsilon or open E (majuscule: Ɛ, minuscule: ɛ) is a letter of the extended Latin alphabet, based on the lowercase of the Greek letter epsilon (ε). It was introduced in the 16th century by Gian Giorgio Trissino to represent the pronunc ...

, was an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country from 1795 to 1893, which eventually encompassed all of the inhabited Hawaii ...

's first

consul Consul (abbrev. ''cos.''; Latin plural ''consules'') was the title of one of the two chief magistrates of the Roman Republic, and subsequently also an important title under the Roman Empire. The title was used in other European city-states thro ...

in Japan. He was the person who brought the first group of Japanese immigrants to

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; ) is an island U.S. state, state of the United States, in the Pacific Ocean about southwest of the U.S. mainland. One of the two Non-contiguous United States, non-contiguous U.S. states (along with Alaska), it is the only sta ...

. They became known as the "

Gannenmono The Japanese in Hawaii (simply Japanese Hawaiians or "Local Japanese", rarely Kepanī) are the second largest ethnic group in Hawaii. At their height in 1920, they constituted 43% of Hawaii's population. They now number about 16.7% of the isl ...

Early life

Eugene Miller Van Reed was born in

Reading, Pennsylvania Reading ( ; ) is a city in Berks County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. The city had a population of 95,112 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census and is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, fourth-most populous ...

, on May 17, 1835, to a

father, James Huy Van Reed (1809–1884), and his wife, Juliana Hiester Miller Van Reed (1813–1892). He had a sister, Margaret.

Career

As he met Joseph Heco (Hikozō Hamada) in U.S. and became interested in Japan, he started to work at the United States Consulate in

Kanagawa is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Kanagawa Prefecture is the List of Japanese prefectures by population, second-most populous prefecture of Japan at 9,221,129 (1 April 2022) and third-dens ...

in 1859. After returning to U.S., he came back to Japan as the

Kingdom of Hawaii The Hawaiian Kingdom, also known as the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian language, Hawaiian:

, was an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country from 1795 to 1893, which eventually encompassed all of the inhabited Hawaii ...

consul general A consul is an official representative of a government who resides in a foreign country to assist and protect citizens of the consul's country, and to promote and facilitate commercial and diplomatic relations between the two countries. A consu ...

in 1866, and tried unsuccessfully to get the

bilateral treaty A bilateral treaty (also called a bipartite treaty) is a treaty strictly between two subjects of public international law, generally either sovereign states or international organisations established by treaty. It is an agreement made by negotiat ...

between the Kingdom and Japan. He then lived in Japan and worked as a

. When

Takahashi Korekiyo Viscount was a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan, prime minister of Japan from 1921 to 1922 and Ministry of Finance (Japan), Minister of Finance when he was assassinated. He was also a member of the House of Peers (Japan) ...

traveled abroad with

Katsu Kaishu Katsu may refer to: Entertainment *''Katsu!'', manga by Mitsuru Adachi *"Katsu! (song), Katsu!" (:ja:喝!, ja), a 1984 song by Shibugakitai *Katsucon, an annual anime convention in Maryland Other *Katsu (Zen), a shout used in East Asian Chan and ...

's son, Kotaro, in the third year of Keio (1867), Van Reed embezzled their tuition and travel expenses. Furthermore, Van Reed's parents, who were Takahashi's host family, deceived him into signing an indenture contract and sold him to the Brown family in Oakland as a slave. In 1868, Van Reed had made an agreement with the Shogunate Government to bring Japanese immigrants to Hawaii, but the new

Meiji Government The was the government that was formed by politicians of the Satsuma Domain and Chōshū Domain in the 1860s. The Meiji government was the early government of the Empire of Japan. Politicians of the Meiji government were known as the Meiji ...

did not approve of their emigration. Van Reed nevertheless sent 148 Japanese immigrants to Hawaii, who are now called the

. Mistreatment of these immigrants resulted in a freeze on Japanese emigration until 1885. In 1871, with the help of Robert B. Van Valkenburgh, who was staying in Japan at that time, Van Reed successfully concluded the bilateral treaty between Hawaii and Japan, and remained in Japan as Hawaii's consul general. In 1873, Van Reed got sick and died on February 2, 1873, on a ship to San Francisco. He was buried in the Masonic Cemetery in San Francisco.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Reed, Eugene Miller Van Ambassadors of the Hawaiian Kingdom 19th-century American businesspeople Businesspeople from Pennsylvania American people of Dutch descent American expatriates in Japan 1835 births 1873 deaths People from Reading, Pennsylvania Burials at Masonic Cemetery (San Francisco)

Early life

Career

See also

References