Editor's Note
This is the fifth post in a series that uses the study of nineteenth-century Dutch immigrant settlements in Iowa, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin to pose larger questions about how the international consciousness of rural communities in the nineteenth century challenge not only our understandings of the rural Midwest, but also of conceptions of American and European imperialism, settler colonialism, and worldwide missionary efforts.
When immigrants living in rural Midwest envisioned foreign nations, they often lamented the lack of Protestant Christianity and “civilization” that they saw. Earlier posts in this series documented many of these complaints as they pertained to China, Japan, and the Arctic. These rural Midwesterners believed that most of the world lagged behind them and that it was their duty to transform the world into their own image. Throughout the late nineteenth century, writers for a local publication in the rural Michigan town of Holland acknowledged only one non-European nation as having a measure of “civilization” on par with their own development: the Kingdom of Hawai‘i.
The Kingdom of Hawai‘i caught the attention of early settlers in this rural midwestern community in the 1870s, but at that point, they focused primarily on the island chain’s volcanoes. The first discussion of Hawai‘i appeared in the fall of 1876 and focused exclusively on the islands’ geology, offering historians a glimpse at the geological interests of nineteenth-century rural Midwesterners, but giving little indication of what these men and women actually thought of the islands’ inhabitants.[1] By the end of the decade, however, men and women living in this rural Michigan community began to opine about the people who lived in the kingdom.
Hawai‘i had a recognizable and functioning government.
In their discussions of China, Japan, and the Arctic, these rural settlers quickly pointed out the failings of the governmental systems in these regions. In their view, natives of the Arctic lacked anything beyond local tribal leaders, China had an eroding bureaucracy and Japan’s fledgling democratic institutions remained underdeveloped. Hawai‘i, on the other hand, enjoyed a robust and functioning government.
Writing in the spring of 1884, Johanna Schravesande noted that a king and parliament governed the islands, not unlike the system that existed in the immigrants’ former home in the Netherlands. This government not only resembled those with which she was familiar, but in her estimation, it also functioned well. Consequently, she concluded: “civilization is rapidly advancing.”[2]
A few years later, Christina Broek offered a history of Hawai‘i’s governmental transformation. “Until the year eighteen hundred thirty-eight, the government was a despotism. In the year eighteen hundred forty, the king, Kamehameha III gave his people a constitution, recognizing the three divisions of king, legislature, and judges. Under his reign, the Christian religion became the established national religion of the Hawaiian Islands.”[3] She heralded the implementation of executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government as critical progress toward civilization and celebrated it.
Hawai‘i was a Christian nation.
Central to these rural settlers’ understanding of Hawai‘i was their belief that the kingdom shared their Christian faith. Broek made this clear when she stated that Kamehameha III had made Christianity the official religion of the islands in the mid-1840s. In her view, this went hand in hand with the kingdom’s transition away from despotism. These rural writers believed that Christianity and good governance worked in tandem and that Hawai‘i exemplified how religious and political transformations supported one another.
She recounted that prior to Kamehameha III’s declaration of Christianity as the official religion of the kingdom, his father Kamehameha II abolished idolatry throughout the kingdom. Even though this declaration took place prior to the arrival of Christian missionaries on the islands, the Christians living in the rural Midwest were happy to claim this religious change as a victory for themselves and their faith.
Broek credited the religious transformation of Hawai‘i to early Protestant missionaries to the islands. She noted that the process of converting Hawaiians to Christianity began under the watchful eye of Protestant missionaries from the United States and England as early as 1820.[4] In the interpretations offered by these rural writers, Western missionaries rather than native Hawaiians deserved the credit for the kingdom’s development.
Hawai‘i was “civilized.”
In other discussions about international communities, these rural midwestern settlers bemoaned the lack of civilization in foreign lands. Again, Hawai‘i proved to be the exception. Because they thought Hawai‘i was both Christian and properly governed, they ultimately reached the conclusion that the kingdom was “civilized.”
John Otte, a native Dutchman and prominent missionary to China from this rural Michigan community, noted the centrality of Christianity in the process of “civilizing” foreign nations and its role in transforming Hawai‘i.
“Although some of the ancient nations were civilized, yet we feel that there was something wanting and this was a pure religion. Men who are fully civilized will not think of their god as subject to the low passions of men… This want has been supplied by our Christian religion. Wherever it has come it has raised men up from barbarity to civilization. We may look at [Hawai‘i] for a good example of this; what was once of lowest class of savages is now a peaceful and civilized nation.”[5]
Christianity was an essential element of civilization. It went hand in hand with good government and peaceful living in the opinion of these rural men and women.
These writers were quick to note that native Hawaiians were of the “Malay race,” making a racial distinction between themselves and the natives of the islands.[6] They viewed themselves as the apex of civilization and held a worldview that, in theory, suggested that foreign peoples could reach such a level of development if they embraced hallmarks of their Western life. Hawai‘i was the place where they witnessed a transformation that seemed to support their international ambitions.
Within the international consciousness of this rural community, the Hawaiian islands stood out as an exemplar of what they believed was possible throughout the world. For this community, Hawai‘i was the quintessential missionary success story, and they dreamed of replicating this transformation throughout the world.
[1]“Foreign Correspondence: Milolii, Hawaii, Sandwich Islands,” The Excelsiora 7, No. 4 (September 1876).
[2]Johanna Schravesande, “Foreign Correspondence: Honolulu, Sandwich Islands,” The Excelsiora 14, No. 7 (February 1884), 294-297.
[3]Christina Broek, “Foreign Correspondence: The Hawaiian Islands,” The Excelsiora 18, No. 2 (November 1887), 171.
[5]John Abraham Otte, “Civilization,” The Excelsiora 9, No. 12 (May 1879), 547-48.
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