Connecting the Kingdom: Sailing Vessels in the Early Hawaiian Monarchy by Peter Mills

CONNECTING THE KINGDOM: SAILING VESSELS IN THE EARLY HAWAIIAN MONARCHY, 1790–1840 In this groundbreaking work, Peter Mills reveals a wealth of insight into the emergence of the Hawaiian nation-state from sources mostly ignored by colonial and post-colonial historians alike. By examining how early Hawaiian chiefs appropriated Western sailing technology to help build their island nation, Mills presents the fascinating history of sixty Hawaiian-owned schooners, brigs, barks, and peleleu canoes. While these vessels have often been dismissed as examples of chiefly folly, Mills highlights their significance in Hawaiʻi’s rapidly evolving monarchy, and aptly demonstrates how the monarchy’s own nineteenth-century sailing fleet facilitated fundamental transformations of interisland tributary systems, alliance building, exchange systems, and emergent forms of Indigenous capitalism. Part One covers broad trends in Hawaiʻi’s changing maritime traditions, beginning with the evolution of Hawaiian arc