Space, culture and change in nineteenth-century Hawaii

Abstract

Many historians characterise early nineteenth-century Hawaiian architecture as binary: either purely indigenous, such as the hale pili [grass house] and unmortared rock heiau [temple], or completely westernized, such as plastered stone houses or pre-cut wooden houses in Euro-American architectural styles. A persistent thesis proposes that Hawaii became passively colonised without the indigenous people substantially influencing the architectural transformations involved. This assimilation argument draws heavily on the drawings of artists on European exploring expeditions and books published by missionaries. Such visual and written descriptions are important representations of early contact Hawaii, but they document primarily the shell or the exterior rather than the activities happening within the spaces. A broader spectrum of primary source materials, particularly contemporaneous journals, supports a new argument and conclusion regarding architecture and space in early nineteenth century Hawaii. I reject the assimilation theory and argue instead that the Kamehameha monarchy (1810-1872), particularly during the reign of Kamehameha III, Kauikeaouli (1825-1854), actively shaped an expanding worldview while it maintained cultural rituals of place. The methodology adopted to reach this conclusion is the evaluation of social space by textual, pictorial and on-site analysis. My thesis argues that space can be used to mark subtle transitions when spatial activities are analysed for basic cultural values. Space is both objective, the measured dimension of certain places, and subjective, what those sizes mean to an individual or group. Buildings influence the functions that occur within them, but they are only the container. Subtle changes influenced by culture do not always make an obvious impact or change to the architecture. Cultural stasis or change can be discerned in the activities inside the building. I investigate social space to understand how the chiefs of the Kamehameha monarchy responded in pivotal ways to three distinct groups of foreigners. Profit motivated the first two groups: the captains of voyaging ships who stopped in Hawai?i to provision, and the merchants who remained to trade. The third and most cohesive group of foreigners, the American missionaries, had a specific agenda with two intertwined goals: to civilize and to Christianise. All foreigners met another force: the expanding worldview of a very intricate indigenous society. My research shows that the kings of the Kamehameha monarchy maintained indigenous space and cultural identity based on ritualising the body, repeating traditional patterns from stories, maintaining the collective group, respecting the land and sea, and orientating to the gods in the cosmos. The space of the public domain changed to adjust to the new interface with foreigners while the other scales of space remained relatively constant. The monarchy's goal was to maintain independence as a modern Hawaiian nation. The result was an architecture that maintained a distinct indigenous space and identity.