Hawaiian by birth : missionary children, bicultural identity, and u.s. colonialism in the pacific / / Joy Schulz.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

2018 Sally and Ken Owens Award from the Western History Association



Twelve companies of American missionaries were sent to the Hawaiian Islands between 1819 and 1848 with the goal of spreading American Christianity and New England values. By the 1850s American missionary families in the islands had birthed more than 250 white children, considered Hawaiian subjects by the indigenous monarchy and U.S. citizens by missionary parents. In Hawaiian by Birth Joy Schulz explores the tensions among the competing parental, cultural, and educational interests affecting these children and, in turn, the impact the children had on nineteenth-century U.S. foreign policy.



These children of white missionaries would eventually alienate themselves from the Hawaiian monarchy and indigenous population by securing disproportionate economic and political power. Their childhoods--complicated by both Hawaiian and American influences--led to significant political and international ramifications once the children reached adulthood. Almost none chose to follow their parents into the missionary profession, and many rejected the Christian faith. Almost all supported the annexation of Hawai'i despite their parents' hope that the islands would remain independent.



Whether the missionary children moved to the U.S. mainland, stayed in the islands, or traveled the world, they took with them a sense of racial privilege and cultural superiority. Schulz adds children's voices to the historical record with this first comprehensive study of the white children born in the Hawaiian Islands between 1820 and 1850 and their path toward political revolution.

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CHOICE Review

Although it is well known how the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) started their missionary enterprise in Hawai'i, historian Schulz (Metropolitan Community College in Omaha) provides a new perspective by focusing on how the children of the missionaries raised there formed their worldviews and became agents for US expansionism. The native Hawaiian elite accepted the missionaries, believing that their efforts would lead to progress and moral life in the islands. However, while the missionary children benefited from the financial favors the elite bestowed on their parents, the elite was also part of a colonial project that led to the US annexation of Hawai'i in 1898. Neglected by their parents and culturally separated from the local Hawaiians, the children who attended Punahou School saw flaws and contradictions in the lives of their parents and that of the native Hawaiians. While the children, such as Samuel Armstrong, John Gulick, and Sanford Dole, identified with Hawai'i and preferred its life to that in the US, they opposed Hawaiian leaders and overthrew their queen in 1893. A thoughtful treatment fusing the study of childhood with imperialism. Suitable for all readership levels. Summing Up: Recommended. All public and academic libraries. --Franklin Ng, California State University, Fresno