Accounts of the Hawaiian Kingdom (1810-1893) have typically argued that since the "discovery" of 1778, the islands have been progressively colonized-as if the first footfall of Captain James Cook set off a sequence of inevitable events that led to the overthrow of the monarchy in 1893 and annexation by the United States in 1898. The Hawaiian Kingdom has been categorized as a colonial institution, where ali'i (native Hawaiian chiefs) were steadily duped by the invasion of Western people, ideas and institutions. This paper challenges such interpretations through a situated study of the first large-scale body of written law authored entirely in the Hawaiian language and passed by Kauikeaouli (Kamehameha III) in June 1839. This paper also challenges a colonial analysis of the Hawaiian Kingdom prior to 1893, and argues that ali'i such as Kauikeaouli selectively appropriated aspects of Euro-American legal frameworks and used them for their own means.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.