LITMIR.BIZ

      The Political Economy of Mana

      Obligation, Debt, and Trade

      Tamaahmaah: King of the Sandwich Islands. This Indian Prince, illustrious for his magnanimity, his love of civilization, and his great abilities, was one of nature’s great men who led the van of the age in which he lived.… He was the hero and conqueror of that cluster of islands in the Pacific Ocean (excepting Onehooi and Atooi,) of which Owhyhee is the principal … the Sandwich Islands from the exuberant fertility of the soil, their situation directly between Asia and America, their native and intelligent population; but above all from the noble character of their king, have become the most important groupe, inhabited merely by savages, in the known world.

      On New Years’ Day 1820, readers of American newspapers in Boston, New York, and Connecticut enjoyed a lengthy reflection about the life of Kamehameha soon after news of his death in Kailua, Hawai‘i, reached the United States. The timely essay may have been especially interesting since a group of missionaries sent by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) had left Boston a few months earlier and were at that moment en route to the islands to plant the first American mission field in the Pacific. Hence, readers in America were recipients of the news of the great chief’s passing before the missionaries themselves, who would not learn of Kamehameha’s death until they arrived in Hawai‘i some three months later.

      While lauding the chief’s “love of civilization,” the article also dwelt upon the importance of the Sandwich Islands to American and British commerce. In terms of their geographic situation, the islands provided ships in the China trade with a perfect stopping place between the markets of China and the northwest coast of America. But its placement as way station between ports did not diminish the importance of the islands to beleaguered ships in need of repair, and crews and captains that longed for respite from the regimented discipline of shipboard life. The excellent soil of the islands promised fresh fruit and vegetables aplenty. All long trading voyages depended on water, fresh meat, and salt to cure it, all found in abundance in Hawai‘i. The Sandwich Islands were indispensable to the expansion of Euro-American commerce in the early nineteenth-century Pacific.

      In American and British newspapers, Kamehameha was dubbed an “Indian Prince,” another “Bonaparte or Peter the Great conjoined in one.” The image of a savage who could conquer several island kingdoms while engaging in international commerce and employing foreign labor in service of his oceanic empire struck Euro-Americans as impressive.¹ What these articles shared in common was the conviction that Kamehameha had transformed himself from a savage into a civilized ruler by engaging in mutually beneficial trade relations with Euro-Americans, building his own fleet of ships, and employing foreigners as advisers and skilled laborers.

      Newspapers from the period (1805–1813) reported with something like wonder that since British captain George Vancouver had built a ship for Kamehameha in 1792, by 1805 the Hawaiian chief had amassed a fleet of twenty vessels of different sizes of “20 or 30 tons,” some with gleaming copper bottoms.² Kamehameha, according to these accounts, also encouraged the settlement of Europeans in his islands, “provided they be industrious,” in a surprising role reversal that bolstered the presumption that Kamehameha had been civilized by way of his newly cultivated value for “industry” and that overseeing foreign labor to manufacture Euro-American goods such as ships made him a noble ruler. His imperial triumphs were also impressive to Euro-Americans. As “proof” that his savage nature had been transformed, Kamehameha brokered a trade monopoly with New England ship captains. As a visionary, Kamehameha built ships of Hawaiian manufacture, such as the brig Kaahumanu (named after one of his wives), stocked it with sandalwood, and sent the cargo to Chinese markets in order to cut out the European middleman.³

      Not only was Kamehameha interested in trade and ship building, he also reportedly knew how to drive a hard bargain: “He is not only a great warrior and politician, but a very acute trader, and a match for any European in driving a bargain. He is well acquainted with the different weights and measures, and the value which all articles ought to bear in exchange with each other; and is ever ready to take advantage of the necessities of those who apply to him or his people for supplies.”⁴ Civilization, argued these narratives, was the main product of Euro-American trading interaction with Hawaiians. Euro-American narratives of the emergence of capitalism in the islands cannot be divorced from stories of the ambitious and bold leadership of Kamehameha as he propelled his people toward “civilization.”

      The myth of Kamehameha as a “great man” had been enshrined in American narratives about Hawaiians, serving to entice early trade between New England and Hawai‘i.⁵ In addition to his acuity at trade, American narratives portrayed Kamehameha as a visionary leader because he was capable of uniting all the islands under his singular rule. This admiration of his political and military abilities to conquer—like a Bonaparte or Peter the Great—set Kamehameha within a global historical context of leadership, even as such praise ironically lauded a model

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