Great Mahele
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The mahele was the Hawaiian land redistribution act proposed by King Kamehameha III in the 1830s and enacted in 1848. This was part of a sweeping set of modernizing social changes following the death of Kamehameha the Great, including the drafting of a constitution and a bill of rights. Although not directly redistributing land, it called for the establishment of an arbitration committee to iron out disputes.
The mahele abolished the practice of ahupua‘a. This was an informal division of the islands into sectors, controlled by chiefs extending from the mountain to the ocean. Boundaries of sectors were usually undemarcated determined by geographical features such as ridgelines; each sector was agriculturally self-sufficient due to the varied ecosystems contained within.
About 3 million acres (12,000 km²) of land went to the crown, and one million acres (4,000 km²) to chiefs and the government.
The most noted provision of the great mahele was the kuleana act (1850); under this provision, about 30,000 acres (120 km²) of land were set aside for distribution by the committee to 10,000 commoners. Eventually most of this land found its way into the hands of foreigners.[1]
