Colonizing Hawai'i: The Cultural Power of LawHow does law transform family, sexuality, and community in the fractured social world characteristic of the colonizing process? The law was a cornerstone of the so-called civilizing process of nineteenth-century colonialism. It was simultaneously a means of transformation and a marker of the seductive idea of civilization. Sally Engle Merry reveals how, in Hawai'i, indigenous Hawaiian law was displaced by a transplanted Anglo-American law as global movements of capitalism, Christianity, and imperialism swept across the islands. The new law brought novel systems of courts, prisons, and conceptions of discipline and dramatically changed the marriage patterns, work lives, and sexual conduct of the indigenous people of Hawai'i. |
Contents
Introduction | 3 |
| 33 | |
The Process of Legal Transformation | 35 |
The First Transition Religious Law | 63 |
The Second Transition Secular Law | 86 |
LOCAL PRACTICES OF POLICING AND JUDGING IN HILO HAWAII | 115 |
The Social History of a Plantation Town | 117 |
Judges and Caseloads in Hilo | 145 |
Protest and the Law on the Hilo Sugar Plantations | 207 |
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Common terms and phrases
adultery ali'i American assault attorney Beechert boss bottles of liquor caseload chapter chiefs Chinese Christian Circuit Court civilization Coan colonial Comaroff criminal Cross examine cultural D. H. Hitchcock Daniela defendants deft dollars elites European foreigners gambling gender guilty haole Hapai hard labor Hawaiian kinship Hilo District Court Honolulu House Memorial Museum husband immigrants islands Japanese judges Ka'ahumanu Kamakau Kamehameha Kamehameha III Kanaka Maoli kapu king Kingdom of Hawai'i knife Kuykendall 1938 Lāhainā land legal system Linnekin live luna Luther Severance Lyman House Memorial Macy makaʻāinana Malo marriage married Mau Chong merchants mission missionaries nation Native Hawaiians nineteenth century offenses Ohara Oʻahu Papaikou percent Pitman plantation planters police political population Portuguese practices prison prosecution prostitution punishment rank Sahlins sexual social sugar sworn Tasaka tion transformation Type of Crime violence Wainaku wife William Little Lee woman women Wong Gau workers Yamanaka