The Mahele's Impact On The Hawaiians

The Mahele is a land revolution that occurred in 1848, where land was divided into four parts. Some land belonging to the king, land belonging to ali’i, land worked by maka’ainana, and land purchased by foreigners (Borecca). It has made many impacts to the Hawaiians in economical and social ways. In the first place, the Mahele came about because the foreigners living on the island, wanted to own land and utilize it as their property. The ali’i were concerned that Hawaii and it’s people would lose everything without a plan to meet the foreigners (Borecca). The chiefs had no one to work with and no source of money, with commoners leaving the farms and moving to the port areas. The foreigners were the only ones that actually had money. From what happened with the French and the Tahiti, Kamehameha the third was concerned that the foreigners would take over by force and violence. With these reasons, the ali’i decided to create the mahele. However, the mahele was unbeneficial for the Hawaiians, as owning land was a new concept for them They lost access to important food locations and families were broken up.

Hawaiians lost access to food locations, such as beaches, fertile soil, and forests. The locations were very important for the Hawaiians because their daily foods and resources were brought from there. Some of the important products they didn’t have were firewood, la’i, which is a type of leave, and timber (Hio). This was a major problem because Hawaiians were unable to build shelters, such as houses and ships. This meant less houses and more homeless people, and less people traveling on ships. Hawaiians were also unable to cook food because they couldn’t make fire. Children’s mouths were swollen from eating raw potatoes. People’s lives were counted on these locations and