Plays out across an international arena but centered in the U.S. and Hawaii for the second half of his life."Celso Cesare Moreno was a schemer on an international level involved in the Hawaiian revolution, a promoter of colonialism in Southeast Asia to the governments of Italy, France, and the U.S., and involved also as a lobbyist in Washington in the "little slaves" /padrone controversies of the 1870s.The story of Celso Cesare Moreno, one of the most famous of the emigrant Italian elites or "prominenti." Moreno traveled the world lying, scheming, and building an extensive patron/client network to to establish his reputation as a middleman and person of significance. Through his machinations, Moreno became a critical player in the expansion of western trade and imperialism in Asia, the trafficking of migrant workers and children in the Atlantic, and the conflicts of Americans and natives over the fate of Hawaii, and imperial competitions of French, British, Italian and American governments during a critically important era of imperial expansion.Offers a detailed illustration of the well-known but poorly understood pattern of the Italian prominenti--their relationships, their polemics, their intense battles over disappearing causes, and their personal idiosyncrasies.