In this book Phil Corr provides a tour de force by writing for both the biography reader and the scholar. In this hybrid work he vividly portrays the life of Titus Coan, “the pen painter,” while also filling gaps in the scholarship. These gaps include: the volume itself (no full-length published book has previously been written on Titus Coan) and the following chapters—“Patagonia,” “Peace,” and “Other Religions.” Using the unpublished thesis by Margaret Ehlke and many other primary and secondary sources, he significantly deepens the understanding of Coan in many areas. This book is presented to the future reader for the purposes of edification and increasing the scholarship of this man who lived an incredible life during incredible times.

In Word Across the Water, Tom Smith brings the histories of Hawai'i and the Philippines together to argue that US imperial ambitions towards these Pacific archipelagos were deeply intertwined with the work of American Protestant missionaries. As self-styled interpreters of history, missionaries produced narratives to stoke interest in their cause, locating US imperial interventions and their own evangelistic projects within divinely ordained historical trajectories. As missionaries worked in the shadow of their nation's empire, however, their religiously inflected historical narratives came to serve an alternative purpose. They emerged as a way for missionaries to negotiate their own status between the imperial and the local and to come to terms with the diverse spaces, peoples, and traditions of historical narration that they encountered across different island groups. Word Across the Water encourages scholars of empire and religion alike to acknowledge both the pernicious nature of imperial claims over oceanic space underpinned by religious and historical arguments, and the fragility of those claims on the ground.

Twenty-three-year-old Laura Fish Judd left rural Massachusetts in 1827 for the Hawaiian islands, one of eighty young American women who enlisted in the effort to Christianize the islands between 1819 and 1850. Only a month before, after receiving a marriage proposal from a young physician in need of a wife to qualify for mission service, she had written in her diary: "'The die is cast.' I have in the strength of the Lord, consented Rebecca-like--I WILL GO, yes, I will leave friends, native land, everything for Jesus." Laura Judd and other ambitious young women consented to hasty marriages with virtual strangers to achieve their goal of carrying Christ's message to the heathen. As Patricia Grimshaw's compelling study makes clear, these women were driven by a desire for important, independent life-work that went well beyond their expected roles as dutiful wives. The ambitions, hopes, and fears of those eighty pioneer women make a poignant and fascinating story. But Paths of Duty does more than recount the experiences of a group of individuals. Grimshaw shows how the mission women reflected the larger society of which they were part, and through their story shed new light on the role of American Protestant mission in Hawaii. Although the women's public role in mission work was limited, they were highly influential in their daily and seemingly mundane interactions with Hawaiian women. The American women's ethnocentricity made them quite incapable of appreciating Hawaiian culture on its own terms, but their notions of proper femininity and female behavior were effectively transmitted to Hawaiian girls and women. Paths of Duty provides a deeper understanding of this neglected process of acculturation in the islands and its eventual implications for Hawaii's entry into the American sphere of influence.

Here finally is a readable, thoroughly researched, and generously illustrated history of the island of Kauai. Edward Joesting tells for the first time the story of one of the most intriguing and least known of the Hawaiian Islands. His account begins with the prehistoric origins of the island and concludes with the annexation of Hawaii in 1898. Kauai describes the early emergence of Kauai as an island separate and distinctive from the other islands of Hawaii. It recounts the coming of Western man, the failure of King Kamehameha to conquer the island, and the ultimate incorporation of the island into the Hawaiian kingdom. Joesting also includes in his story the destructive impact of the sandalwood and whaling trades, and the subsequent rise of an economy based on sugar cultivation. His story comes to an end with the demise of the Hawaiian monarchy and the quiet revolution that occurred when Hawaii became a territory of the United States. Historical documents not previously used bring new information and fresh perspectives to this book. The result is a level-headed, engaging look at Kauai. Kauai: The Separate Kingdom is certain to become the authoritative history of the island long regarded by many as the most beautiful in the Hawaiian archipelago.

Chronicling the career of Beriah Green (1795-1874), theologian, educator, reformer, and one of New York's most important abolitionists, this book is the first published history of Green and his attempt to create a model biracial society.

A doctor presents a lively account of nineteenth-century New Englanders who sailed upon a six-months voyage around the Horn as medical missionaries to the inhabitants of subtropical Hawaii. With them they took brides who had been strangers to them only weeks before. Stubbornly clinging to temperate-zone clothing, food, and traditions, these “parlor-raised Priscillas” faced mountainous household tasks. Meantime their husbands crossed treacherous channels and threaded perilous mountain trails to deliver missionary babies, to fight leprosy and smallpox, and to try to save the natives from the common cold and other newly introduced disease against which they had had no opportunity to build up a resistance. The resentment of sailors and whaling captains at introduction of the Decalogue, the distrust of kings and chiefs, the jealousy of native medical practitioners—these were some of the obstacles which beset the missionary doctors. Relying upon bleedings, blisterings, purges, and emetics, they practiced in a day when anesthetics, antisepsis, and abdominal surgery were unknown. Theirs was a record of gallant dedication in the face of almost insuperable odds. But this book is far more than a record of the hardships and triumphs of missionary physicians. It is an account of a critical era of rapid change within an island community struggling to survive the sudden impact of Western civilization. 9 Doctors and God is based largely upon the personal letters and private journals of the doctors and their wives—relatively obscure and highly fruitful sources of first-hand information. The result is a rare combination of scholarly research and spirited presentation—a splendid contribution to the annals of an eventful period of transition in Hawaii and America.

With historical sketches of some 165 churches that were known to exist in Hawai‘i during the nineteenth century, Nā Hale Pule: Portraits of Native Hawaiian Churches, 1820–1900 is the first comprehensive survey of the Congregational and Presbyterian Churches of Hawai‘i as established by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and later operated by Ka ‘Ahahui ‘Euanelio o Hawai‘i (The Hawaiian Evangelical Association). While many of these churches were first led by missionary pastors, the ali‘i (hereditary chiefs) founders of the churches together with their membership and congregational leaders were predominately Native Hawaiian. Worship services were soon led by Native Hawaiian pastors and were conducted in ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i (Hawaiian language). This study draws upon the official archives of the churches, English-language newspaper articles, missionary and pastoral correspondence, and a twentieth-century architectural survey. The body of this work includes an island-by-island listing of the names and locations of the Native Hawaiian churches, the pastors who served the congregations, and brief histories of the churches themselves. These portraits tell the stories of the founding of the churches, Christianity’s rise in the islands through the Great Revival years of the 1840s, the devastating impact of foreign diseases that swept through Hawai‘i during the mid-nineteenth century, and the efforts of the churches to maintain their properties and congregations. The book's introduction describes the founding of mother and branch churches, the importance of the lands on which the churches resided, church construction and builders, the struggle for self-support and self-governance, demographic changes that led to the churches’ decline, and a resurgence of Native Hawaiian culture and polytheism that caused understandings of faith and the future to further evolve. Also included are a chronology of Native Hawaiian churches, a robust glossary of Hawaiian theological vocabulary, and meticulous citations. This volume is a companion to Nā Kahu: Portraits of Native Hawaiian Pastors at Home and Abroad, 1820–1900, by Nancy J. Morris and Robert Benedetto, which tells the stories of the lives of Native Hawaiian pastors.

Hawaii has been referred to as the crossroads of the Pacific. This book illustrates how many world cultures and customs meet in the Hawaiian Islands, providing a chronological overview highlighted by extracts from important works that express Hawaii's unique history. This work starts with chronological chapters on general and ancient Hawaiian history and continues through early Western contact, the 19th century, and Hawaii's annexation to the United States. Topics include politics, religion, social issues, business, ethnic groups, and race relations.