The Mahele was a land division enacted by King Kamehameha III in 1848 which divided land into sections for foreign purchase, the Hawaiian government, and for the maka’ainana or commoners (Menton and Tamura 112). There were several underlying reasons for the Mahele, but the main reasons were foreign and economic pressure on the Hawaiian government. Foreigners wanted to own land in fee simple and proposed that the dwindling Hawaiian population would be revived if the Hawaiians were more responsible for their land and worked harder. There were also concerns that Hawaiian land would be taken by force if the government refused to let foreigners buy land, which contributed to the pressure on the government to appease the foreigners by allowing them to own part of Hawaiian land (Borreca). However, The Mahele ultimately failed to be beneficial to the Hawaiians because the surveying of Hawaiian land was unfair and resources could not be shared across ahupua’as, leading to starvation and malnutrition among the …show more content…
For example, in Kaneohe, Hio had said “we who live on lands which have no forests, we are in trouble.” According to Hio, the konohiki had prevented trading between the two ahupua’as, forcing the people in Kaneohe to live without firewood or timber. As a result of this ban, the people of Kaneohe were in danger of starvation, with no firewood to cook poisonous raw vegetables such as taro (Hio). This is a social impact because the village in Kaneohe must have been in a serious crisis, and the tension of the people must have been heightened, with animosity towards the nobles possibly being very common. Judging from the circumstances of the people in Kaneohe, one could possibly infer that similar things would be happening elsewhere around Hawaii, with people who could not obtain other resources such as crops or