ABSTRACT
Civil conflicts involving the chiefs of the four major islands - Kaua'i, O'ahu, Maui and Hawai'i - had been going on for some time. During wartime in the Islands, there was a custom to stop battles in a manner similar to the Truce of God established by Catholic Europe in the year 1027: armed combat was disallowed during Island holidays, and one side could signal to the other to quit for a day in order to attend to the wounded. Although the Big Island had been unified in the early eighteenth century, civil war broke out in 1782, when the successor to the chief fell ill and died. George Vancouver, who sailed to Hawai'i on several occasions in the late eighteenth century, was astonished when one of the chiefs, named Kamehameha, sought an alliance with Britain so as to prevail in the civil war with rival chiefs on the various islands.
