A Power in the World: The Hawaiian Kingdom in Oceania by Lorenz Gonschor

Abstract

Reviewed by: A Power in the World: The Hawaiian Kingdom in Oceania by Lorenz Gonschor Kealani Cook A Power in the World: The Hawaiian Kingdom in Oceania, by Lorenz Gonschor. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2019. isbn hardback: 9780824880019; isbn paper: 9780824888299, xiv+235 pages, maps, tables, photographs, glossary, notes, references, and index. Hard-back, us$68.00; paper, us$28.00. Lorenz Gonschor’s A Power in the World: The Hawaiian Kingdom in Oceania is a well-researched addition to the growing body of work reexamining how Hawaiians, and in this case the Hawaiian Kingdom, shaped and reshaped their relationships with nations and peoples beyond Hawai‘i. Merging the fields of political science and history, Gonschor argues, convincingly, that the Kingdom of Hawai‘i played a pivotal role in shaping Oceanic politics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Chapter 1 examines the development of the Hawaiian constitutional monarchy as a model for a hybrid government recognized by the great powers of the day. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 explore Hawaiian thought and action related to diplomacy in the Pacific, specifically the promotion of the Hawaiian model by kingdom diplomat Charles St Julian and, later, by King David Kalākaua and his government. Chapters 5 and 6 investigate the far-reaching impact of the Hawaiian model in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Gonschor’s research, contained within an attractive volume and complemented by a number of helpful tables and maps, draws on a diverse set of sources, threading together Hawaiian- and Tongan-language newspapers, government archives and [End Page 273] records from across Oceania, and a variety of published and archival materials from around the world. While elements of this research have been covered before, no other scholar has brought together such a wide range of materials or crafted anything approaching such a thorough examination of the kingdom’s impact on Oceanic governance. Gonschor brings considerable nuance to our understanding of ties between different parts of Oceania. More importantly, he adds considerable weight to the argument that these connections must be assigned more significance when looking at the past, present, and future of individual Oceanic peoples and of the region as a whole. Gonschor argues convincingly that the kingdom not only proved, to Islanders and outsiders alike, that a hybrid government could work but also succeeded in using that government to shield itself against the colonial aggression being suffered across the Pacific. Furthermore, the kingdom and its representatives actively promoted this model in an effort to stave off such aggressions against its neighboring states and fellow Oceanic peoples and to make the kingdom a political power in the region and, arguably, the world. While Gonschor does a solid job of analyzing the perspectives and actions of the kingdom’s government and its representatives, his final two chapters on the kingdom’s regional impact stand out as particularly engaging. Gonschor carefully traces the direct and differing impacts of the Hawaiian model in Sāmoa, Fiji, and especially Tonga. He also explores the importance of the Hawaiian kingdom in promoting pan-Oceanic institutions and, to a certain degree, sentiments in the more recent past. As one might imagine, this includes a discussion of Epeli Hau‘ofa’s seminal 1994 essay “Our Sea of Islands” and the influence of Hawai‘i on his thinking about Oceania (see The Contemporary Pacific 6 (1): 148–161). It also includes consideration of contemporary organizations, such as the Polynesian Leaders Group, that look to the pan-Oceanic elements of Kalākaua’s reign as precedent for their own work. Gonschor’s work also touches on the need to reevaluate the role of non-ethnic Hawaiians in Hawaiian history, particularly those working for and with allegiance to the kingdom government. Once given outsized importance by historians with little faith in Islanders’ ability to shape their own history, many of these individuals fell to the historical wayside as a new generation of historians set out to re-center Islanders in Island histories. As Gonschor notes, in the process, some historians, including myself, have neglected prominent actors in the history we write. While the resolution of this issue will require a broader discussion far beyond the scope of...