The Great Mahele Research Paper

The Great Mahele was a land division in 1848 which created a massive alteration towards Hawaiians’ society. The Mahele was enacted because King Kamehameha III, influenced by foreign advisors, wanted to prevent a brutal and hostile takeover from the foreigners. Another purpose of the Mahele was to grant Hawaiians an ample amount of land. The Mahele did not serve its full purpose. Violence between foreigners and Hawaiians was avoided, but the majority of the land was lost to foreigners (Cachola). The Mahele did not benefit the Hawaiians because only foreigners had sufficient money to purchase the land and because the land that was given to the Hawaiians had limited resources (Menton and Tamura 116).
Foreigners occasionally bought land illegally

in auctions. A law stated that the land should be auctioned off to native Hawaiians first before it could be auctioned off to foreigners. However, Hawaiians were not used to the idea of claiming land as if it was their own, since they had believed that everything belonged to the gods. Conversely, foreigners had plenty of money and was more familiar with the system of buying and selling land, most of the land was sold to the foreigners (Kuloku). This had a considerable amount of impact towards the Hawaiians because the foreigners were acquiring a considerable amount of land, and was becoming exceedingly powerful. The Hawaiians were caught in a vicious cycle of not having an adequate amount of money to buy land, and becoming further impoverished as a result of not having enough money. Thus, the Mahele was not advantageous to Hawaiians (Potter, Kasdon, Rayson 100).
Another reason the Mahele was not favorable to the Hawaiians was because the parts of land that the Hawaiians received lacked proper resources to sustain themselves. Hawaiians were starving from the hardly arable land and the restricted resources (Kuloku). For example, people did not have firewood, timber, and la’i, so they could not build houses. The children had to eat raw potatoes because of firewood was not available, and the mouths of the children was bruised from raw taro. Consequently, the Mahele was unprofitable to the Hawaiians because whatever little land they were presented with was not enough to support them (Hio).
The Mahele was not a gainful experience to the Hawaiians because the foreigners were the only one with