Colonizing Hawai'i/Part 4- The Great Māhele

A view of 'Iolani Palace in Honolulu, Hawaii. 2021. Gage Skidmore. Cc-by-sa-2.0

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Iolani_Palace_(51872681413).jpg

The official Māhele took place in 1848 but the term is also used as a catch-all for a process that spanned 1845-55. The Board of Commissioners to Quiet Land Titles was created in 1845. It was made to facilitate and arbitrate land claims by private individuals, native and foreign, that would ensue from the coming land reforms. Between January and March of 1848 the Māhele proper occurred as the King reached agreements with 240 ali’i and konohiki (Hawaiian chiefs) concerning their lands, after which they were to submit their claims to the Board.

The Hawaiian royal family and other indigenous elites throughout the islands had more access to the resources necessary to secure their land claims. Ordinary Hawaiians often did not. Language barriers, as well as the cost of surveyors, added to the challenge of navigating the Māhele’s legal requirements. By the 1848 claim deadline, many commoners had not filed either out of frustration, or outright resistance to what they saw as an alien system.

Also in 1848,  the king divided his own lands into those owned by the Hawaiian government, and those that were his own personal property. The last 2 major steps in the process of the Mālehe occurred in 1850. First the Legislature passed an act to allow foreigners to acquire land in “fee simple.” Fee simple, meaning as private property in the Euro-American fashion. Finally, the Kuleana Act of 1850 gave Hawaiian commoners who had acquired title to their lands by submitting claims, to sell it, completing their transition to fee simple ownership. 

Photograph of William Little Lee and Charles Reed Bishop. Photographer unknown. 1846. Public Domain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:William_Little_Lee_and_Charles_Reed_Bishop_1846.jpg

2 Americans who went on to serve in the Hawaiian government during this period were William Little Lee and Charles Reed Bishop. Both hailing from New York State, the young professionals had set out for Oregon in 1846, but found opportunities in Hawai’i before reaching the west coast of North America. 

Lee, a lawyer, was soon appointed as judge in O’ahu and made a member of Kamehameha III’s privy council. In 1848 he was appointed as Chief Justice of the Hawaiian Supreme Court. Lee was instrumental in drafting some of the laws of the newly formed constitutional monarchy and served on the land commission that facilitated the Great Mahele. He also helped draft the 1852 constitution which gave the other branches of government increased oversight over the king’s powers. Towards the end of his life, Lee was working on passing reciprocity treaties with the US. He died of tuberculosis in 1857 before the negotiations could be completed.

Charles Reed Bishop found work as a lawyer, then as an agent for the US consul, and then as a customs agent for the Kingdom of Hawai’i. He courted a member of the royal family, Bernice Pauahi Pākī. They were married in 1850. Bishop continued to prosper, founding a bank, and serving on the privy council to several Hawaiian monarchs. He was appointed to the House of Nobles by Kamehameha IV. He and his wife founded the Kamehameha Schools, a school system that educated children of Hawaiian ancestry. 

Kamehameha IV, born Alexander ʻIolani Liholiho Keawenui (1834–1863) Hawaii State Archives. Approx. 1863. Public Domain. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kamehameha_IV_(PP-97-8-002).jpg

Kamehameha IV reigned from 1855-1863 following the death of his predecessor. He worked to balance American subjects’ influence over the kingdom, as they were the largest landowners besides the Hawiian elite, and in many cases far wealthier. His successor, Kamehameha V went even further, refusing to uphold the 1852 constitution. He called a convention to draft a new one in 1864. This constitution abolished the office of kuhina nui, restored some of the king’s autonomy, and converted the House of Nobles and House of Representatives into a single Legislative Assembly. 

King Kamehameha V. Charles Weed. 1865. Public Domain. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kamehameha_the_Fifth.jpg

Kamehameha V died without naming a successor. Choosing the new sovereign from eligible royal family members fell to a vote by the Legislative Assembly. King Lunalilo was elected in 1873, but fell ill with tuberculosis and died in January of 1874. 

Another election was held between David Kalakaua and the former queen and widow of Kamehameha IV, Emma Rooke. Kalakaua won the election amid much controversy, leading to the Honolulu Courthouse Riot. Rooke’s supporters targeted legislators that had supported Kalakaua, injuring many. British and American soldiers docked nearby were called in to restore order.

King Kalakaua was staunchly opposed to ceding any land to foreign nations. At the same time, he negotiated a reciprocity treaty with the US that enriched the owners of Hawai’i’s sugar plantations. Most of these were IS, many of whom advocated American annexation of the kingdom.

Sources:

Kamehameha IV

Kamehameha V

King Lunalilo

King Kalākaua

Banner, Stuart. “Preparing to Be Colonized: Land Tenure and Legal Strategy in Nineteenth-Century Hawaii.” Law & Society Review 39, no. 2 (2005): 273–314.

Kashay, Jennifer Fish. “Agents of Imperialism: Missionaries and Merchants in Early-Nineteenth-Century Hawaii.” The New England Quarterly 80, no. 2 (2007): 280–98.

Kessler, Lawrence H. “A Plantation upon a Hill; Or, Sugar without Rum: Hawai ‘i’s Missionaries and the Founding of the Sugarcane Plantation System.” Pacific Historical Review 84, no. 2 (2014): 129–62.

Colonizing Hawai'i/Part 3- The 1840 Constitution

Portrait of Kamehameha III, painted in Boston from a daguerreotype, by an unknown artist

For centuries the Hawaiian islands were ruled by various Ali’is (ah-lee’-ee), a Hawaiian word for chief or leader. In 1795, after many wars, mostly among relatives, the islands were united under the rule of Kamehameha the Great (ka-may-ha-may-ha). Like many of his rivals, he had sought military help from Western sailors, particularly the British, mostly in the form of guns and cannons. After establishing his dynasty, Kamehameha continued to engage with Western powers in order to learn and profit from them, but also to protect his kingdom from them. His descendants continued this balancing act through the 1800s as commerce grew, and Western diseases and planters took an increasing toll on the Native population, their lands, and their labor. 

On June 7, 1839, Kamehameha III published the Hawaiian Declaration of Rights, also known as the 1839 Constitution. The following 1840 Constitution more comprehensively established the Kingdom as a constitutional monarchy with a bicameral (2 houses) parliament.

Kamehameha III’s intent was always to secure the Hawaiian people’s lands and rights, but we will see in coming weeks how this proved to be a continuous struggle as the kingdom modernized.

Sources:

Kamehameha the Great- US National Park Service

Kamehameha II- Royal Family of Hawaii

Kamehameha III- Royal Family of Hawaii

Forming the Hawaiian State- Punahou School

1839 and 1840 Constitutions- Hooilina.org

Colonizing Hawai'i/Part 2- Americans Immigrate

European merchants made frequent visits to the Hawaiian islands once Captain James Cook documented its location in 1778. Not only was it an ideal source of resupply for whaling ships, it was also a convenient stop gap between Canton, China and the western coast of the Americas, major nodes in a prestigious and growing trade network. Merchant ships traded furs, sugar, and coffee for Chinese items like silk, tea, silver, and spices. 

Agents of these trade corporations, like the Hudson’s Bay Company, as well as their suppliers, set up shop in Hawai’i throughout the late 1700s and early 1800s. Unlike many of the lands Europeans rediscovered around the globe, the Hawaiian islands were consolidated politically under a single royal government. Merchants made deals with the royal family or Ali’i or Konohiki (subordinate chiefs), to acquire land. This property was revocable at any time and was still technically owned by the Hawaiians they’d contracted with. 

Missionaries, as in other frontier regions of Euro-American societies, were not far behind the merchants. The first missionaries arrived in the 1810s and 20s. As in other locales, their method of Christianizing indigenous populations centered around European style agriculture and property ownership. In these early decades of the 19th century there was much antagonism between merchant and missionary communities, each blaming the other for encouraging vice and discouraging proper industriousness among the Hawaiian commoners. After the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) revoked funding for the Hawaiian missionaries after an economic downturn in 1837, they became more amenable to large scale plantations, rather than the small scale farming they had administered previously. 

Queen Ka’ahumanu. 1822. Jean-Pierre Norblin de la Gourdaine after painting by Louis Choris. Public Domain.

Kamehameha the Great had several wives. The most influential was Ka'ahumanu. She was born on the island of Maui to an elite family. Upon the king’s death, she informed his council that the king had wished her to rule alongside his named successor. The council created the title of kuhina nui, a sort of prime minister position. Kamehameha II, the former king’s firstborn son (not with Ka’ahumanu) reigned from 1819-1824. He died of measles while visiting London. As his brother and successor, Kamehameha III was only 10 at the time of his ascension, Ka’ahumanu continued her role as regent of the kingdom until her death in 1832. She was one of the primary elite Hawaiians to embrace Christianity and instigate reforms of traditional practices. This was not universally welcomed among Hawaiians, elite or commoners, but she had considerable influence over enough of the population that her leadership in this area was either accepted or cautiously tolerated. 

Kamehameha III in military uniform. Alfred Thomas Agate. 1838-42. Public Domain.

Kamehameha III hired numerous European and American advisors to assist him with foreign trade and increasingly became convinced it was in his kingdom’s and his people’s interests to reform his dynasty as a constitutional monarchy modeled on the British system with a 3-branch government system. It is impossible to say for certain why he took this course, but there were many possibilities.  As he came of age, many islands in the Pacific, such as New Zealand and Tahiti were claimed by the British and French Empires. Kamehameha III had his own brush with a hostile takeover when Lord George Paulet was sent to secure British possessions on the islands, and instead took the opportunity to claim the islands themselves for Britain. The king explained that he had already sent emissaries to settle these disputes, but Paulet was unmoved and threatened to open fire on the island. Under duress, the King yielded to Paulet, who raised the British flag over Hawaii. This episode only lasted 5 months, as Paulet’s superiors were outraged by the act and soon restored Hawai’i’s sovereignty. 

Many historians argue that incidents like these, as well as the high mortality of native Hawaiians to European diseases, convinced Kamehameha III and much of the Hawaiian elite that colonization was inevitable and that the best way to safeguard their land was to convert the kingdom to a constitutional monarchy with a system of land ownership that a colonizing Western power would recognize. Most of the king’s British and American ministers encouraged this view. It should be mentioned that they and other White residents stood to gain immensely by such changes, whether colonization occurred or not.

The Constitution of 1840 formally converted Hawai’i to a constitutional monarchy. In 1845 a land commission was established to process land claims by all of Hawai’i’s residents, native and foreign. This process took until 1855 to complete. It is known as the Great Māhele (ma-hail-ay). While intended to safeguard the lands of all Hawaiians, we will take a closer look at how the Māhele fell short of its goal.

Sources:

Ka’ahumanu- Punahou School

Paulet Episode 1843- Ka’iwakīloumoku 

Aftermath: the 1840s and Resistance- Punahou School