More than a millennium ago, Polynesians settled in the world's most isolated archipelago, Hawai'i, having arrived from islands thousand of miles to the south.
Over the centuries, these Hawaiians formed a rigid and complex society based on a class of ali'i, or chiefs, that ruled over the common people by divine right, and whose exalted status was sanctioned by revered kahuna, or priests, who served them.
Each island had its own system of chiefs, and ali'i with the most mana, or power, governed their individual islands as kings.
By the mid-1700s, one ruler emerged with such mana that he eventually overpowered the ali'i of all the islands except Kaua'i.
After the arrival of Capt. James Cook in 1778, Kamehameha I — king of the Big Island — amassed formidable strength through knowledge he gained about Western sailing vessels, foreign weapons and modern strategies of warfare.
In 1795 Kamehameha I, The Warrior King, defeated the rulers of Maui, Lana'i, Moloka'i and O'ahu, and ascended to the position of monarch — first and greatest of Hawai'i's Kamehameha dynasty.
Few then would have believed that Hawai'i's monarchic government would have less than a century left until its abrogation in 1893.
When Kamehameha the Great died in 1819, his son, Liholiho, became King Kamehameha II, whose co-ruler was Ka'ahumanu, favorite wife of Kamehameha I.
The four-year reign of Liholiho and Ka'ahumanu was marked by the discrediting of the ancient kapu system, which had regulated all aspects of Hawaiian life until that time. Those actions, which were controversial among the ali'i, led to Ka'ahumanu ordering destruction of ancient heiau, or temples.
News of that, in turn, hastened the arrival of the first American missionaries, who moved quickly to convert to Christianity Hawaiians who were no longer bound to ancient gods and beliefs. At the same time, increased Western contact and shipping trade introduced diseases to the Islands that killed off much of the Hawaiian population.
Liholiho and his favorite wife, Kamamalu, both died of Western diseases in 1824 during a voyage to London.
