BC Cook
COMPARED to most places around the world Hawaii has been unified for a very short time. Like many island groups throughout the Pacific, it proved difficult for one island chief to conquer another island, let alone the entire island chain. Each island answered to a local chief, and though warfare plagued the islands no one built enough power or loyalty to hold all of them together. Until Kamehameha. Most responsible for Hawaii’s entrance into the modern world, and in many ways the creator of the self-awareness of being Hawaiian, he was an extraordinary person and worth getting to know.
It was a miracle that he lived to adulthood. Hawaiian politics before the arrival of Captain Cook was a bloody, cutthroat business. Fearing a rival, the king of the big island of Hawaii ordered that Kamehameha be killed upon his birth in 1758. But like Moses, he was whisked away and hidden for his own protection.
As he grew into manhood other chiefs around the big island of Hawaii saw someone in whom they could put their trust. Kamehameha’s most solid support came from the Kona region, and with the backing of the Kona chiefs, Kamehameha united the island in a series of battles and then set about conquering the rest of the island chain.
With the support and advice of his charming wife Ka’ahumanu, who would earn her own place in history, he invaded Maui and Molokai in 1795 with a force of 10,000 warriors and nearly 1,000 war canoes. But Oahu was the real prize. It took another 15 years but finally the chief of Oahu acknowledged Kamehameha’s sovereignty. In 1810, for the first time in history, the Hawaiian Islands had a single ruler.
Like so many conquerors, Kamehameha’s peaceful, post-conquest rule did not last very long, but he did accomplish a great deal. He unified the legal system so that laws were standardized throughout the domain. He promoted trade with Europe and the United States, both as a way of modernizing Hawaii and to secure powerful friends who would help defend the islands against aggressors. Taking a lesson from other Pacific islands, Kamehameha did not allow foreigners to buy Hawaiian land. Too many other islands lost their independence by being, in effect, bought out by foreign investors.
When Kamehameha died in 1819 his body was hidden and remains so to this day. Hawaiian mysticism holds that the mana, or power of a person, is sacred. A person’s mana could be inherited by another if they consumed a part of their flesh. To protect his body from such treatment, Kamehameha’s friends hid it in an unmarked location.
How does history remember Kamehameha? He was an opportunist and although not a genius, was clever and intelligent. He used foreigners more than they used him. He knew that the conquest of the Hawaiian islands required some edge in battle. Foreign gunpowder weapons gave him an advantage that allowed for the unification of Hawaii that had eluded so many others. For his accomplishments on the battlefield and his political success afterwards he is remembered as “Kamehameha the Great.” He also married well, and his partnership with Ka’ahumanu served him throughout his life. After his death she made her own impact on the history of Hawaii and the Pacific region, but that will have to wait for another time.
BC Cook, PhD, taught history for 30 years and is a director and Pacific historian at Sealark Exploration (sealarkexploration.org).
