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Kamehameha I died in 1819, leaving the monarchy to his son Liholiho and a regency in Liholiho’s behalf to his favorite wife, Kaahumanu. Liholiho was an amiable, weak-willed alcoholic. Kaahumanu was strong-willed, intelligent, capable, and ambitious. She believed that the old Hawaiian kapu system was obsolete: No gods struck down the Westerners, who daily did things that were kapu for Hawaiians. Six months after Kamehameha I’s death, she persuaded Liholiho to join her in breaking several ancient kapu. The kapu system, having been discredited, crumbled; the old order was dead.

The missionaries arrive

Congregationalist missionaries from New England reached Hawaii in 1820; Liholiho grudgingly gave them a year’s trial. The end of the kapu system had left a religious vacuum into which the missionaries moved remarkably easily. To their credit, they came with a sincere desire to commit their lives to bettering those of the people of Hawaii. Liholiho’s mother converted to Christianity and made it acceptable for other alii to follow her example. Kaahumanu became a convert, too, and set about remodeling Hawaii socially and politically, based on the Ten Commandments.