Hawai‘i: a kingdom crossing oceans – a ‘thrilling’ exhibition

In 1810, the warrior chief Kamehameha I united the Hawaiian islands into a single kingdom. That same year, said Evgenia Siokos in The Telegraph, he dispatched an extraordinary cargo to the other side of the world, along with a formal appeal to King George III to make Great Britain his own island nation’s “natural ally”. “Should any of the powers which you are at war with molest me,” he wrote, “I shall expect your protection.” The letter was sent with “a gift of astonishing splendour”: a cloak...