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An important new analysis of Native Hawaiian efforts to construct relationships with other Oceanic peoples as missionaries, diplomats, and tourists.
Few people today know that in the nineteenth century, Hawai‘i was not only an internationally recognized independent nation but played a crucial role in the entire Pacific region and left an important legacy throughout Oceania. As the first non-Western state to gain full recognition as a coequal of the Western powers, yet at the same time grounded in indigenous tradition and identity, the Hawaiian Kingdom occupied a unique position in the late nineteenth-century world order. From this position, Hawai‘i’s leaders were able to promote the building of independent states based on their country’s model throughout the Pacific, envisioning the region to become politically unified. Such a pa...
In this groundbreaking work, Peter Mills reveals a wealth of insight into the emergence of the Hawaiian nation-state from sources mostly ignored by colonial and post-colonial historians alike. By examining how early Hawaiian chiefs appropriated Western sailing technology to help build their island nation, Mills presents the fascinating history of sixty Hawaiian-owned schooners, brigs, barks, and peleleu canoes. While these vessels have often been dismissed as examples of chiefly folly, Mills highlights their significance in Hawaiʻi’s rapidly evolving monarchy, and aptly demonstrates how the monarchy’s own nineteenth-century sailing fleet facilitated fundamental transformations of interi...
In this thematically rich book, Mary Kathleen Eyring examines authors whose writings were connected with their charitable endeavors, which addressed the worst by-products of the brisk maritime commerce in Atlantic seaport cities in the first half of the nineteenth century. She argues that charitable institutions and societies emerged in this era because they captured and contained the discontent of imperiled and impoverished groups, thereby effectively thwarting the development of a revolutionary class in America. According to Eyring, the men and women who most successfully wrote about and engaged in benevolent work strategically connected their work with the affluence generated by maritime ...
In contrast to past studies that focus narrowly on war and massacre, treat Native peoples as victims, and consign violence safely to the past, this interdisciplinary collection of essays opens up important new perspectives. While recognizing the long history of genocidal violence against Indigenous peoples, the contributors emphasize the agency of individuals and communities in genocide’s aftermath and provide historical and contemporary examples of activism, resistance, identity formation, historical memory, resilience, and healing. The collection also expands the scope of violence by examining the eyewitness testimony of women and children who survived violence, the role of Indigenous se...
In Everything Ancient Was Once New, Emalani Case explores Indigenous persistence through the concept of Kahiki, a term that is at once both an ancestral homeland for Kānaka Maoli (Hawaiians) and the knowledge that there is life to be found beyond Hawaiʻi’s shores. Kahiki is therefore both a symbol of ancestral connection and the potential that comes with remembering and acting upon that connection. Tracing physical, historical, intellectual, and spiritual journeys to and from Kahiki, Case frames it as a place of refuge and sanctuary, a place where ancient knowledge can constantly be made anew. It is in Kahiki, and in the sanctuary it creates, that today’s Kānaka Maoli can find safety ...
A study of colonialism and indigenous health in Hawaiʻi, highlighting cultural change over time.
Religion and empire were inseparable forces in the early modern Atlantic world. Religious passions and conflicts drove much of the expansionist energy of post-Reformation Europe, providing both a rationale and a practical mode of organizing the dispersal and resettlement of hundreds of thousands of people from the Old World to the New World. Exhortations to conquer new peoples were the lingua franca of Western imperialism, and men like the mystically inclined Christopher Columbus were genuinely inspired to risk their lives and their fortunes to bring the gospel to the Americas. And in the thousands of religious refugees seeking asylum from the vicious wars of religion that tore the continent...
Two Hundred and Fifty Ways to Start an Essay about Captain Cook, No. 29: With a Non-argument that’s Actually an Argument. Captain Cook? It’s all so very complex. I’m going to sit on the fence. (Whose fence? On whose land? Dividing what from what? You only have a fence when you fear something or when you’re trying to keep something in. Or, as a renovation show on TV informed me, when you want to upgrade your street appeal.) Alice Te Punga Somerville employs her deep research and dark humour to skilfully channel her response to Cook’s global colonial legacy in this revealing and defiant BWB Text.
From the Foreword— “Crucially, past, present, and future are tightly woven in ‘Ōiwi (Native Hawaiian) theory and practice. We adapt to whatever historical challenges we face so that we can continue to survive and thrive. As we look to the past for knowledge and inspiration on how to face the future, we are aware that we are tomorrow’s ancestors and that future generations will look to us for guidance.” —Marie Alohalani Brown, author of Facing the Spears of Change: The Life and Legacy of John Papa ‘Ī‘ī The title of the book, The Past before Us, refers to the importance of ka wā mamua or “the time in front” in Hawaiian thinking. In this collection of essays, eleven Kana...