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In the late eighteenth century, Hawai'i's ruling elite employed sophisticated methods for resisting foreign intrusion. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, American missionaries had gained a foothold in the islands. Jennifer Thigpen explains this important shift by focusing on two groups of women: missionary wives and high-ranking Hawaiian women. Examining the enduring and personal exchange between these groups, Thigpen argues that women's relationships became vital to building and maintaining the diplomatic and political alliances that ultimately shaped the islands' political future. Male missionaries' early attempts to Christianize the Hawaiian people were based on racial and gender ideologies brought with them from the mainland, and they did not comprehend the authority of Hawaiian chiefly women in social, political, cultural, and religious matters. It was not until missionary wives and powerful Hawaiian women developed relationships shaped by Hawaiian values and traditions--which situated Americans as guests of their beneficent hosts--that missionaries successfully introduced Christian religious and cultural values. Incisively written and meticulously researched, Thigpen's book sheds new light on American and Hawaiian women's relationships, illustrating how they ultimately provided a foundation for American power in the Pacific and hastened the colonization of the Hawaiian nation.

Includes the Proceedings of the Royal geographical society, formerly pub. separately.

Excerpt from The Napoleon of the Pacific, Kamehameha the Great Just a century ago, - on May 8, 1819, - the greatest child of the Pacific, "from chaos until now," Kamehameha the First of Hawaii passed away, leaving to his children a legacy which they were unable to retain. The United States, which have providentially become the inheritors of his realm, are also made thereby the guardians of Kamehameha's fame. It is in the hope that Americans will find some interest in the story of one who surely deserves his title of "the Great" that this book has been written. The author has drawn freely upon all the materials available. Particular use has been made of Pomander's "Polynesian Race," Alexander's "History of the Hawaiian People," King Kalakaua's "Legends and Myths of Hawaii," and some of the older histories such as those of Jarves and Dibble. The writings of the old missionaries, such as Ellis and Bingham, have also been of great service, and, of course, also the Voyages of the great navigators, such as Cook and Vancouver. I wish to acknowledge very gratefully the help which has been thus derived and without which the memoir could not have been written. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.