Kōkua Aku, Kōkua Mai: Chiefs, Missionaries, and Five Transformations of the Hawaiian Kingdom

"The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) sent the first Christian missionaries to Hawaii in 1820. From the moment they landed, the first group of missionaries and the reinforcements who followed have been the subject of controversy. Understandably suspicious of their motives when they first arrived, King Kamehameha II agreed to allow the first group to stay for one year on a trial basis. The missionaries quickly gained the trust of the king and most of the high chiefs, who began supporting them with food and shelter. Working with chiefs, chiefly advisors, and Hawaiians trained at the Cornwall Foreign Mission School, the missionaries and their supporters developed a written Hawaiian language within two years of their arrival. The chiefs were fascinated by the written language, and they began expressing more interest in the Christian religion. By the end of 1825, the king and chiefs hand made Christianity and literacy two cornerstones of the Hawaiian Kingdom. The harmony of Christian hymns soon entranced Hawaiians, and hymns became integral to the evolution of Hawaiian music. To fend off increasing threats to the Kingdoms sovereignty, the chiefs requested that the missionaries help them develop law and a constitution acceptable to the Western powers. Their combined efforts to protect the Kingdom transformed the traditional chiefdom into a constitutional monarchy in 1840. The Hawaiian population had been decimated for at least two generations with infectious Western disease, and witnessing a continuing onslaught of disease, some missionaries sought to help by providing inoculations, while also researching traditional Hawaiian herbal medicine and, in at least two situations, pragmatically training a few Hawaiians to assist in their practice. The mission officially ended in 1863, yet these missionaries of the Sandwich Islands Mission remain controversial today. Were they colonialists, just fortune seekers looking to feather their own nests? Did they have political motives to extend American hegemony through the Pacific? If not colonialists, were they cultural imperialists, dismissing Hawaiian culture as inferior to their own? Were they unselfish, benevolent individuals willing to give their lives to extend the Christian religion? Did their motives change over time? Or is the missionary legacy filled with so many complex stories that it evades simple generalizations? The authors of these essays explore some of these questions while focusing on five topics: Christianity, literacy, constitutional government, Western and Native medicine, and the introduction of harmony in music during the first several decades of the ABCFM mission to Hawaii" -- From publisher.