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a credit risk. Kaumuali‘i appears in Jones’ letters, as in the writings of Hawaiian historian Kamakau, as being an excellent provider and welcoming host, having “received” Jones as he had Kamehameha’s emissaries with “every attention and honour.” Clearly Jones was being interpolated into Kaumuali‘i’s circle of allies and associates in ways consonant with Hawaiian chiefly practice, but which perhaps eluded Jones’ awareness as such.⁵³

      Jones’ reports show that he considered the ali‘i belonging to the generations preceding Liholiho—that of Kaumuali‘i, Ka‘ahumanu, and Kālaimoku—to be “honest”; these ali‘i had a “sense of propriety” and “integrity.” These character sketches of the chiefs were set in contrast to Jones’ damning view of the highest ruling ali‘i Liholiho Kamehameha II in the same letter: “King Rheo Rheo is only a boy, pleased with the rattle tickled with a straw, rum is his god, scarce have I seen him sober, he is flying from one island to another, devouring all before him.”⁵⁴

      Liholiho’s drunkenness was a frequent obstacle to trade that all agents faced. According to Jones, Liholiho’s frequent “frolicks” and “rounds of dissipation” would “put a stop to all business” wherever he was. On this particular occasion, Jones noted bitterly that “every man was recalled from cutting wood.”⁵⁵

      In October 1821, as Hammatt was signing his orders in Boston, Liholiho traveled to Kaua‘i on what appeared to outsiders like John C. Jones as yet another one of his “frolicks,” a drunken parade wending its way between the islands that drew all the chiefs along in its train. When this frolick was done, however, the result was that Kaumuali‘i had made public cession of his kingdom of Kaua‘i, Ni‘ihau, and Ka‘ula to Liholiho. He offered his guns, his lands, and the men who served him to Kamehameha II, a gesture which Liholiho gracefully declined while also affirming the superiority of Kaumuali‘i’s rank and age. Kaumuali‘i’s cession to Liholiho was a repetition of an early diplomatic exchange between himself and Liholiho’s father. Through this act, Kaumuali‘i conferred upon Liholiho the deference and honor that he had previously bestowed upon Kamehameha I.

      While not publicly proclaiming that he was taking possession of the lands, Liholiho accompanied Kaumuali‘i in a circuit of Kaua‘i, taking powerful symbolic charge of the lands, resources, and people of the island.⁵⁶ Taking over administration of the island for the time being would be Kahekili Ke‘eaumoku, or Gov. Cox as he was called by foreigners, one of Ka‘ahumanu’s brothers, who had been a trusted adviser of Kamehameha I. Kaumuali‘i was taken to O‘ahu for reasons none of the merchants could fathom. Though they were competitors, both Charles Hammatt’s and John C. Jones’ letters to the home office noted that Kaumuali‘i was one of their best chiefly customers, who they felt did not pose a credit risk until his change of situation altered their prospects.

      Imagine their surprise when Kaumuali‘i removed from Kaua‘i to O‘ahu and then married Ka‘ahumanu in November. Through this connection, Ka‘ahumanu had achieved what had eluded her former husband Kamehameha—namely, by allying herself directly with Kaumuali‘i through marriage, she had effectively extended her governing reach and that of her circle of chiefs to Kaua‘i and Ni‘ihau, encompassing all of the main islands in the archipelago. Competing circles of ali‘i continued to form alliances in order to solidify and extend particular claims and access to rule. While a male chief could produce social change through rebellion and war, or by taking care of the high-ranking male sons of other ali‘i, the female ali‘i could effect change in the social and political structure through marriage alliance and the birth or adoption of chiefly children. These political processes of genealogical elevation, succession, and alliance fell outside the knowledge of New England merchants, and missionaries as well. What Jones did know was that the political alliance between Ka‘ahumanu and Kaumuali‘i was “bad for business,” as Kaumuali‘i was made virtually a captive on O‘ahu, unable to return to Kaua‘i to organize his people and chiefs to cut and gather the sandalwood for Jones.

      But the removal of Kaumuali‘i to O‘ahu and his subsequent important political marriage to Ka‘ahumanu may have hidden another object of other prominent chiefs Kālaimoku, Kuakini, Ke‘eaumoku, Kaikio‘ewa, and Ka‘ahumanu—namely, to prevent Kaumuali‘i from entering deeper into debt with New England merchants. In a very anxious letter to his employers written on October 5, 1821, three days after the return of Liholiho and Kaumuali‘i to Kaua‘i, Jones noted that Kaumuali‘i owed their concern some eight thousand plus piculs, and the forecast only darkened with the pronouncements of others who claimed that “he [Kaumuali‘i] will never return,” to his island. Jones concurred with this assessment, observing that “Tamoree [Kaumuali‘i] is fast growing old, and I think, not long for this world.” According to Jones’ account book, Kaumuali‘i owed Marshall and Wildes eight thousand piculs alone, whereas ten months later, Jones’ catalog of debts owed by other chiefs showed that they owed much less than Kaumuali‘i in comparison. “The King is owing 850, Cox about 800, Pitt about 60, John Adams [Kuakini] 130, these are the principal debts at this island. We have received no wood from Atooi [Kaua‘i] since the ship sailed, Tamoree [Kaumuali‘i] and consort have been at Owhyhee [Hawai‘i Island] all summer … they intend paying about two thousand piculs of debt at this island.”⁵⁷ By bringing Kaumuali‘i to O‘ahu, these chiefs were able to keep a watchful eye on his transactions and separate him from the source of his payment—namely, the labor and forests of Kaua‘i.

      At the same time that Kaumuali‘i moved to O‘ahu, Kālaimoku himself had emerged from the uplands of O‘ahu after heading a labor force of two hundred men and women into the mountains five months before, in March 1821. He not only accompanied the people into the uplands, but he also made sure that provisions were made available for their use.⁵⁸ Kālaimoku, like Kamehameha I, saw to it that no important work was undertaken that he did not personally have a hand in.⁵⁹ By October, through the strenuous efforts of the ali‘i and people on different islands, an estimated thirty thousand piculs of sandalwood had shipped to Canton from Hawai‘i, selling poorly due to the miscalculation of rival American agents who had all pressed the ali‘i to pay debts at the same time. Sandalwood that year glutted the market, driving down prices, resulting in significantly lower profits for merchants.⁶⁰

      The chiefs were clearly savvy customers who were not confused by trade and not completely given over to self-indulgence. They often worked together to set the terms of trade, deploying kapu in innovative ways. By compelling political alliance through marriage, they also effectively blocked the ability of Kaumuali‘i to plunge himself and the chiefs collectively into deeper debt. They also worked together to organize labor and provisions in an unprecedented attempt to deliver thirty thousand piculs of sandalwood in 1821 to pay down the debt they owed to New England merchants.

      On the other hand, in their scramble for trade opportunities and collection of wood for debt, agents and ship captains from rival concerns engaged in vicious competition that threatened everyone’s profits with unforeseen consequences. While worrying about the laziness of chiefs to pay, and foreseeing an eventual surfeit in wood, they had prosecuted their claims successfully with disastrous results. “Every foreigner in this country is ready to cut his neighbor’s throat, truth is a stranger here,” Jones wrote that month, “the sandalwood fever will deprive some of their reason.”⁶¹ And apparently the fever for wood and the competition that fanned its temperature would also cheat them all of their profits.

      The boom of 1821, though an anomaly, affected the traders in the same way that hitting a jackpot affects a gambler: they simply wanted more.⁶² The problem lay not only in chiefly consumption or the way in which the well developed tastes of so-called savage rulers were off-putting to agents scrabbling over scraps of paper debt, who themselves could never hope to own such finery. It also lay in the distance between market and marketplace, which stoked, chafed, and inflamed longing and desire on the part of agents for the next cargo of better goods that would secure a “good voyage” and, most importantly, help them to best the competition.

      Fair Trade?

      Agents and ship captains used their persuasive powers to cajole the chiefs into purchasing more goods. But another way to secure large profit was to inflate prices. Jones, like other agents, had developed

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