Roman Catholicism is legalized in Hawaii, under…

Roman Catholicism is legalized in Hawaii, under a French threat of war, and the first statutory law code is established, in 1839.

Kauikeaouli had been only eleven years old when he ascended to the Hawaiian throne as King Kamehameha III on June 6, 1825, eleven months after the death of Liholiho.

He had been guided for the next seven years by his stern mother and regent Ka'ahumanu and the high chief William Pitt Kalanimoku.

From 1824 to 1832, real political power had been in the hands of Ka'ahumanu.

At her death in in 1832, she had been replaced by Kauikeaouli’s half-sister, Kina'u, who died when she was only twenty-five, and the young king now found himself consumed by the burdens of kingship.

When he came to the throne, the native population numbered about one hundred and fifty thousand, which was already less one third of the Hawaiian population at the time of Captain Cook’s arrival to Hawaii in 1778.

This number will be halved again during his reign, thanks in part to a smallpox epidemic.