Island Queens and Mission Wives: How Gender and Empire Remade Hawai i s Pacific World"

In the late eighteenth century, Hawai'i's ruling elite employed sophisticated methods for resisting foreign intrusion. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, American missionaries had gained a foothold in the islands. Jennifer Thigpen explains this shift by focusing on two groups of women: missionary wives and high-ranking Hawaiian women. Thigpen argues that women's relationships became vital to building and maintaining the diplomatic and political alliances that ultimately shaped the islands' political future.