| Summary/Abstract |
Between 1820 and 1848, one hundred and forty-eight American Protestant missionaries arrived in the Hawaiian Islands. How did these Americans, eschewing private property and their U.S. homeland, move from devotion to the Hawaiian monarchy to support for U.S. annexation? It is a dramatic story best told from within the confines of household economics: The problems of parenthood and costs associated with raising children. This essay examines the U.S. role in the world through the influence of American families living abroad. In the case of the Hawaiian Islands, the transition of idealistic evangelists to harried parents had intense political ramifications for both the United States and Hawaiian Kingdom, and missionary children would reap the economic fruits of their parents’ labors.
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