2018 Sally and Ken Owens Award from the Western History
Association Twelve companies of American missionaries were sent to
the Hawaiian Islands between 1819 and 1848 with the goal of
spreading American Christianity and New England values. By the
1850s American missionary families in the islands had birthed more
than 250 white children, considered Hawaiian subjects by the
indigenous monarchy and U.S. citizens by missionary parents. In
Hawaiian by Birth Joy Schulz explores the
tensions among the competing parental, cultural, and
educational interests affecting these children and, in turn, the
impact the children had on nineteenth-century U.S. foreign policy.
These children of white missionaries would eventually alienate
themselves from the Hawaiian monarchy and indigenous population by
securing disproportionate economic and political power. Their
childhoods—complicated by both Hawaiian and American influences—led
to significant political and international ramifications once the
children reached adulthood. Almost none chose to follow their
parents into the missionary profession, and many rejected the
Christian faith. Almost all supported the annexation of
Hawai'i despite their parents' hope that the islands would remain
independent. Whether the missionary children moved to the U.S.
mainland, stayed in the islands, or traveled the world, they took
with them a sense of racial privilege and cultural superiority.
Schulz adds children's voices to the historical record with this
first comprehensive study of the white children born in the
Hawaiian Islands between 1820 and 1850 and their path toward
political revolution.