YANKEES IN PARADISE -THE NEW ENGLAND IMPACT ON HAWAII-

In 1820 a little group of New England missionaries made a five-month voyage around the Horn to found a perfect Christian community in the paradise of the Pacific.But they didn't reckon with the pleasure-loving nature of the natives, the intrigues of the island chiefs, the encroachment of the English and French, the disconcerting effects of the traders and beachcombers who were accepting the easy favors of the natives, or the conflicting personalities in their own group.
The natives were on the whole gentle, trusting creatures, and in some ways were too ready to embrace the overtures of the religious brethren, that is, they embraced the forms without having any notion of the substance.
But the missionaries persisted. They built churches and schools. They helped the native chiefs set up laws and government. Some, resigning from the mission, went into politics to give practical help. The influential Binghams,the Whitneys, the Richards, King Liholiho, the Regent Kaahumanu are just a few of the personalities portrayed with color and reality From private diaries, mission journals and other original sources, Bradford Smith has reconstructed the story of American beginnings in Hawaii with absorbing completeness.
Here is the impact of religion on sex and vice versa. The impact of civilized on primitive life and vice versa. It is a realistic early history of Hawaii, full of humor and drama, heroes and villains, cupidity and idealism - a Yankee conquest, not by force but by cultural and spiritual example.