A Brief History of Kamehameha
I got a handful of books at the gift shop of Iolani Place. One of these was a short book called “Kamehameha: The Warrior King of Hawai’i” by Susan Morrison. The book is a lot shorter than I thought, I was able to finish it in a single 40 minute reading.
Morrison pieced together the history of Kamehameha through various primary and secondary sources. Since his reign predates the written history of Hawai’i much of the story will never be known. The author liberally fills in the blanks with bits of fiction and narrative to keep the story moving.
The genesis of Kamehameha story reads like Exodus with a prophecy scaring the ruling king into murdering children similar to what the Pharos did in the time of Moses. From biblical overtones we move on to Disney’s the Lion King where someone tells Kamehameha that “One day all of this will be yours”. The book ends with an episode of Maury where we discover who Kamehameha’s father is.
Overall the story was interesting. My biggest complaint is that it romanticizes the carnage, death, and destruction that Kamehameha caused in order to unify the islands. Notably, performing human sacrifices in order to have good luck in battle.
Thank you for reading! Share your thoughts with me on bluesky, mastodon, or via email.
Check out some more stuff to read down below.
Most popular posts this month
- SQLite DB Migrations with PRAGMA user_version
- My Custom Miniflux CSS Theme
- 2024
- Ladybird on Debian Stable
- 2023
Recent Favorite Blog Posts
This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.
- Pluralistic: AI "journalists" prove that media bosses don't give a shit (11 Mar 2026) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
- Avi Alkalay: Uniqlo T-Shirt Bash Script Easter Egg from Fedora People
- Offline 23 hours a day from Derek Sivers blog
- Pluralistic: California can stop Larry Ellison from buying Warners (28 Feb 2026) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
- On Alliances from Smashing Frames
- Acting ethically in an imperfect world from Smashing Frames
- Diffusion of Responsibility from Smashing Frames
- My AI Adoption Journey from Mitchell Hashimoto
Articles from blogs I follow around the net
Social media reimagined
We’re all familiar with social media: the Facebooks, the Twitters, the TikToks of this silly digital world. They have invaded our lives and taken over our time and attention. We have spent the past decade posting, snapping, tweeting, reeling (?), …
via Manuel Moreale — Everything Feed March 19, 2026Pokemon Go created a 3D map of the world – but for what?
You may have seen the recent headlines about how a company called Niantic Spatial is using a database of real-world locations that was originally compiled by players of the mobile game Pokemon Go — a game that launched about a decade ago and quickly becam…
via The Torment Nexus March 19, 2026Pluralistic: Love of corporate bullshit is correlated with bad judgment (19 Mar 2026)
Today's links Love of corporate bullshit is correlated with bad judgment: Synergizing the strategic inflection points on the global data network. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: Bluetooth headsets; Fruit sticker decoder; iP…
via Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow March 19, 2026Generated by openring