Kahiki Native Hawaiian Relationships with Other Pacific Islanders 1850-1915.

Abstract

This dissertation examines how Native Hawaiians understood, promoted, and shaped relationships with other Pacific Islanders between 1850 and 1907, and explores the ways in which these relationships proved critical. It examines three different projects Native Hawaiians initiated in order to develop and define relationships with other Pacific Islanders: Native missionary efforts to Micronesia and the Marquesas, King Kaläkaua’s legation to Sämoa in 1887, and politician and businessman John T. Baker’s tour of Polynesia in 1810. It also examines the domestic and international contexts that shaped them, particularly the growth of formal empire in the Pacific and the threat of that imperial growth to the interests of the lähui. Specifically it looks at how Native Hawaiians sought to develop relationships with other islanders as part of a broader foreign policy effort to further the lähui’s interest at home, in the Pacific, and in the world in general. During the period in question, the primary factor in how Native Hawaiians understood and developed their relationships with other Islanders was their perception of the relationship between the lähui and the Euro/American empires active in the Pacific. To the degree that they viewed the Euro/American empires as sympathetic to the interests of the lähui, they developed their relationships with other Islanders through discourses of difference and Native Hawaiian superiority. In doing so they hoped to strengthen their cultural alliances with the Euro/American empires by claiming a shared superiority over other Islanders. To the degree that they viewed the Euro/American powers as antagonistic to the interests of the lähui, they developed their relationships to other Islanders through discourses of closeness, kinship, and alliance against the shared threat of empire. The two views were not mutually exclusive; they coexisted throughout the period in question. In general, however, between 1850 and 1907, Native Hawaiians experienced a gradual shift from the first view to the second in response to growing imperial threats to the preservation of the lähui.