When women ruled the Pacific : power and politics in nineteenth-century Tahiti and Hawai'i / Joy Schulz.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Schulz, Joy, author.

Series:

Studies in Pacific Worlds Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Queens--French Polynesia--Tahiti (Island)--Biography.

Queens.

Queens--Hawaii--Biography.

Hawaii--Kings and rulers--Biography.

Hawaii.

Hawaii--Politics and government--To 1893.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (167 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

2023.

Lincoln, Nebraska : University of Nebraska Press, [2023]

Summary:

"Throughout the nineteenth century British and American imperialists advanced into the Pacific, with catastrophic effects for Polynesian peoples and cultures. In both Tahiti and Hawai'i, women rulers attempted to mitigate the effects of these encounters, utilizing their power amid the destabilizing influence of the English and Americans. However, as the century progressed, foreign diseases devastated the Tahitian and Hawaiian populations, and powerful European militaries jockeyed for more formal imperial control over Polynesian waystations, causing Tahiti to cede rule to France in 1847 and Hawai'i to relinquish power to the United States in 1893. In When Women Ruled the Pacific Joy Schulz highlights four Polynesian women rulers who held enormous domestic and foreign power and expertly governed their people amid shifting loyalties, outright betrayals, and the ascendancy of imperial racism. Like their European counterparts, these Polynesian rulers fought arguments of lineage, as well as battles for territorial control, yet the freedom of Polynesian women in general and women rulers in particular was unlike anything Europeans and Americans had ever seen. Consequently, white chroniclers of contact had difficulty explaining their encounters, initially praising yet ultimately condemning Polynesian gender systems, resulting in the loss of women's autonomy. The queens' successes have been lost in the archives as imperial histories and missionary accounts chose to tell different stories. In this first book to consider queenship and women's political sovereignty in the Pacific, Schulz recenters the lives of the women rulers in the history of nineteenth-century international relations"-- Provided by publisher.

""When Women Ruled the Pacific" explores the female Polynesian rulers of the nineteenth century, women who held enormous domestic and foreign power and expertly governed their people amid shifting loyalties, outright betrayals, and the ascendancy of imperial racism"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction : woman in red

Purea

'Aimata

Ka'ahumanu

Lili'uokalani

Conclusion : to all the queens.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Print version: Schulz, Joy When Women Ruled the Pacific

ISBN:

9781496236715

1496236718

9781496236708

149623670X

OCLC:

1390966703