Читать книгу Empire in Waves. A Political History of Surfing онлайн

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In this the Hawaiian people shared experiences similar to those of American Indians. This is hardly surprising. Most of the Protestant missionaries who arrived in Hawai‘i in 1820 came from the United States, a polity occupying a considerable landmass whose indigenous population required decades of military pacification. Accompanying this imperial expansion was, more oft en than not, Christian proselytization. Indian peoples were assumed by the white invaders to be racial inferiors. The Americans thus set out to racially uplift the savages in their midst. This meant an effort to eradicate those cultural traditions that were a presumed mark of indigenous barbarism and replace them with Christianity. When Indian people were not simply killed outright, the invaders, nearly always projecting an image of unquestioned benevolence, sought to eliminate the use of native languages, the practices of native spirituality, and many of the basic structures of native society. Frivolity was frowned upon while industriousness was expected. These pious white Christians were, they insisted, only doing God’s work. It was true that the settler population found itself greatly enriched as Indian peoples were dispossessed of most of their native lands.¹⁴ But this was just a coincidence. Or so the story goes.