Neither Missionaries Nor Sailors: How Maritime Women Shaped US Imperialism in Nineteenth-Century Hawai‘i

In the 1830s and 1840s, maritime wives from New Bedford, Massachusetts, Mystic, Connecticut, and other New England ports went to sea with their husbands in increasing numbers. They traveled in often challenging conditions on merchant and whaling ships all over the world, and many of them spent time in the Hawaiian Islands. This article explores the role and impact of maritime women on Hawai‘i in the mid-nineteenth century by arguing that they contributed in significant ways to the emerging tourism industry. It offers a reexamination of the experiences of captains’ wives who went to sea by placing them in the broader context of US imperialism in the Pacific. It builds on the intersecting historiographies of maritime history, histories of empire, and women’s history, and demonstrates that maritime women perpetuated imperialist attitudes, participated in exploitative economies that changed the Hawaiian landscape, and helped lay the groundwork for an industry that would have a long and painful history for Native Hawaiian people.