This is the first definitive biography of King Kamehameha III, the founder of the constitutional Kingdom of the Hawaiian Islands. Taking his father Kamehameha the Great's conquests and unifying his government, he was primarily responsible for easing Hawai'i from an absolute monarchy to a nation under the rule of law. For this, his country was recognized by the Great Powers of Europe as an independent, sovereign state.

Born a living god, Kauikeaouli, Kamehameha III, was the son of Keopuolani, the highest kapu chiefess of the time and a scion of the old Maui royal family. His coming to the throne helped unify the island chain that his father had won in conquest. Thus, as a "legitimate" hereditary ruler, he was able to develop institutions and enact moderizations that his father's generation had only dreamed of. Literacy, religious tolerance, the awarding of allodial land titles, and the development of a constitutional government system were some of his many accomplishments.

However, life was not easy for Kauikeaouli. The islands at the time were dominated by Calvinist Protestant missionaries from Boston, Puritans in fact, whose strict codes of social and personal behavior conflicted with Hawaiian morés. Despite all the modernisms, Kamehameha III was at heart a traditional Hawaiian monarch, whose position as representing the fertility god Lono was symbolized by a great degree of sexual and commensal indulgence. The king's fondess for good food and drink, parties, dancing, and sexual adventures with both men and women was heresy to the dour missionaries. Fortunately, we have thousands of letters written by these pious religious to their families and superiors back home that attest to the king's "bad" behavior. Being dated, they supply a wonderfully tight chronology to the life of the king, however biased they may be.

Worn about by age 40, Kauikeaouli nevertheless provided for one of the first native polities to be recognized by the outside world as a modern nation state. Although the kingdom would be overthrown fifty years later, the Hawaiian Kingdom was perhaps the most modern and dynamic in the Pacific World of the nineteenth century. This was the legacy of Kamehameha III.