Читать книгу Empire in Waves. A Political History of Surfing онлайн
29 страница из 91
No, it was not necessary for the missionaries to prohibit surfing. It was tightly enough “hemmed in by ‘blue laws’ against gambling and nudity, both of which had been nearly as important to the sport as riding itself,” concluded historian Matt Warshaw.29 When this assault on Hawaiian customs is combined with the Protestant emphasis on industriousness and the physical devastation of the Hawaiian population, it is little wonder that surfing entered a period of decline. As early as the second half of the 1830s, the transformation was already apparent. William S. W. Ruschenberger, a surgeon on a round-the-world voyage, commented at that time on the “change [that] has taken place in certain customs, which must have influenced the physical development of the islanders. I allude to the variety of athletic exercises, such as swimming, with or without the surf-board, dancing, wrestling, throwing the javalin [sic], &c., all of which games, being in opposition to the severe tenets of Calvinism, have been suppressed, without the substitution of other pursuits to fill up the time.” Ruschenberger was dubious of the missionaries’ denials of responsibility. “Would these games have been suppressed had the missionaries never arrived at the islands?” he asked.