[150 years ago this week, Hawaii’s King Kalākaua arrived in Washington, DC for an extended series of events, a defining part of a more than two-month state visit to the US. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that visit and other Hawaiian histories, leading up to a special post on cultural representations of the islands.]
On three
moments through which Hawaii’s history significantly shifted.
1)
1778-1779, Contacts: I was pretty tempted to order
these three focal moments non-chronologically, as I really don’t want to
reinforce the idea that contact with non-Hawaiians/Europeans was the most
significant part of Hawaiian history. But with a full recognition that any
individual choices for a post like this will be partial and reductive, and a
hope that you all understand where I’m coming from, I decided to stick with chronology.
And there’s no doubt that Captain James Cook’s controversial
series of voyages to the islands in the late 1770s, the first
known encounter between Europeans and Hawaiians, altered the histories of
both this particular community and multiple nations (including Cook’s native
Great Britain but also the new United States). Not to mention the effects on
Cook, who was killed
in February 1779 during a confrontation with Hawaiian leaders.
2)
1795, Kingdom: I don’t know nearly enough
about the island’s histories to be able to say for sure whether this second shift
was in any direct way related to that first one, but it seems likely that there’s
some causality between the two events, that these encounters with outsiders
pushed Hawaiian leaders to establish a more formal and forceful rule. There had
of course been prominent native Hawaiian community leaders for centuries by this
time, but it was in 1795 that the leader
who came to be known as King Kamehameha I founded the House of Kamehameha, a
royal dynasty that would reign over the islands for the next century. As anyone
with a general knowledge of human history and/or human nature would expect, he
didn’t unify the islands under his rule without multiple, extended conflicts,
though—including a particularly significant, subsequent shift…
3)
1819, Conflicts over Kapu: Across much of
those prior centuries of leadership, Hawaii had been a theocracy, governed by a
set of religious and social rules known
as kanawai. More exactly, these rules outlawed various practices, known as kapu,
a list of forbidden customs that included women eating alongside men. But in 1819,
again likely influenced by the prior half-century of contacts and changes, King Kamehameha II
publicly dined with two royal women, including his mother Queen Keopuolani.
The controversial moment ignited an extended
civil conflict that ended with both a reinforcement of the dynasty’s rule
and with a newfound sense of Hawaiian modernity—one that would directly connect
to the royal outreach which inspired this week’s series and about which I’ll
write tomorrow.
Next
Hawaiian history tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Hawaiian histories or stories you’d highlight?
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