PLANTER CONSPIRATORS JAILED HAWAIʻI’S QUEEN AND SEIZED HER SOVEREIGN KINGDOM
By Sasha Alex Lessin, Ph.D. (Anthropology, UCLA)
Two class-stratified cultures—U.S. & Hawaiian– collided—but Hawaiian kinship preserved paths toward cooperation.
Hawaiʻi consists of eight principal islands in the central Pacific. Polynesian navigators sailed enormous distances to reach them from Kahiki—the Hawaiian name for distant ancestral lands associated with Tahiti, the Marquesas, and other parts of Polynesia.
Marquesan settlers sailed to Hawaii from their homeland 3,500 km southeast of Hawaii, around 300 CE. The peaceful Marquesan population already established in Hawaii welcomed armed Tahitians who sailed to Hawaii in the 9th Century, as a result of the clemency of their enemies, who had defeated them in Tahiti and allowed them to sail into exile rather than kill them. Hawaiian settlers, first from the Marquesas Islands, then navigated using stars, ocean swells, winds, clouds, birds, and marine life as navigation cues. Two-way voyages connected Hawaiʻi with other Polynesian societies for centuries to come.
The integrated Hawaiian society, with its Tahitian chiefs and Marquesan commoners, developed productive farms, fishponds, irrigation systems, religious institutions, interconnected chiefly governments, and extensive networks of cooperation and reciprocal obligation.
HAWAIIAN SOCIETY COMBINED HIERARCHY WITH RECIPROCITY
Hawaiian society became increasingly stratified. Aliʻi, or chiefs, controlled districts and received tribute from the makaʻāinana—the people who cultivated the land, harvested the sea, built irrigation works, and sustained the community. Rank, sacred authority, and inherited privilege gave chiefs substantial power over commoners.
Ambilateral kinship allowed people to recognize relationships through either their mother’s or father’s side of the family. Kinship ties connected people across several districts and gave them alternatives when a particular chief ruled unfairly.
A Hawaiian—noble or commoner–dissatisfied with one chief could move to land governed by another chief to which he could connect through either his mother or his father. Chiefs therefore needed to redistribute resources and retain the loyalty of their people. Hierarchy existed, but it operated alongside reciprocity, mobility, and communal responsibility.
KAMEHAMEHA UNITED THE ISLAND KINGDOMS
Hawaiʻi, Maui, Oʻahu, and Kauaʻi had separate ruling dynasties until Kamehameha I combined military force, diplomacy, foreign weapons, alliances, and political skill to unite the islands. By 1810, Kauaʻi had joined his kingdom through negotiation, completing the unification of the Hawaiian archipelago.
The new kingdom remained stratified, but it created a single Hawaiian government capable of negotiating with increasingly powerful foreign nations.
FOREIGN CONTACT BROUGHT TRADE, DISEASE, AND PRESSURE
Foreign ships brought metal tools, firearms, international trade, missionaries, merchants, and new political opportunities. They also brought devastating diseases to which Hawaiians had little immunity.
As the Native Hawaiian population declined, American and European settlers acquired growing influence over land, trade, law, religion, and government. Hawaiian monarchs nevertheless developed a constitutional government, established schools, promoted extraordinary levels of Hawaiian-language literacy, dispatched diplomats abroad, and negotiated treaties with other nations.
On November 28, 1843, Great Britain and France formally recognized the Hawaiian Kingdom as an independent state. Hawaiʻi maintained diplomatic and treaty relations with numerous countries and participated in the international community as a sovereign nation.
SUGAR PLANTERS TURNED WEALTH INTO POLITICAL POWER
American settlers and missionary descendants established plantations and gained control over much of Hawaiʻi’s sugar industry. Their profits depended heavily upon access to the United States market. Plantation owners therefore wanted a Hawaiian government that protected their land, businesses, trade privileges, and political dominance.
In 1887, an armed organization associated with the planter-business elite forced King KALĀKAUA to accept what became known as the Bayonet Constitution. It weakened the monarchy, privileged wealthy property owners, and disfranchised many Native Hawaiians and Asian residents.
The planter elite had created its own system of domination within the Hawaiian Kingdom.
When Queen Liliʻuokalani succeeded her brother in 1891, many of her subjects asked her to replace the imposed constitution and restore political authority to the Hawaiian people. Her proposed constitution sought to restore voting rights to Hawaiian Kingdom citizens and limit the political power that foreign residents had acquired without becoming citizens.
>
13 AMERICAN BUSINESSMEN CONSPIRED AGAINST THE QUEEN
Queen Liliʻuokalani’s constitutional proposal threatened the political and economic dominance of the plantation oligarchy. Thirteen businessmen formed a Committee of Safety. Working with U.S. Minister John L. Stevens, they prepared to overthrow the lawful government and seek annexation to the United States. On January 16, 1893, Stevens ordered sailors and Marines from the USS Boston ashore. He claimed they would protect American lives and property, although American citizens faced no documented general danger.
The troops intimidated the royal government and gave the small revolutionary group decisive protection. On January 17, the conspirators proclaimed a provisional government. Queen Liliʻuokalani surrendered her authority under protest to avoid bloodshed. She yielded to the superior force of the United States and demanded that the American government investigate the actions of its representatives.
President Grover Cleveland’s investigator, James Blount, concluded that U.S. diplomatic and military intervention had helped overthrow the Queen. Cleveland sought restoration of the monarchy, but Sanford B. Dole’s provisional government refused to relinquish power.
THE QUEEN WAS ARRESTED 2 YEARS LATER
The planter-controlled provisional government had declared itself the Republic of Hawaiʻi in 1894. Native Hawaiians had not voted to establish that republic.
Following an unsuccessful royalist uprising in January 1895, the Republic of Hawaiʻi arrested her, imprisoned her in ʻIolani Palace, and pressured her to sign a formal abdication. The planter-controlled provisional government had declared itself the Republic of Hawaiʻi in 1894. Native Hawaiians had not voted to establish that republic.
HAWAIIANS ORGANIZED AGAINST ANNEXATION
Hui Aloha ʻĀina and other Hawaiian political organizations conducted mass petition campaigns against annexation. In 1897, the Hui Aloha ʻĀina petition collected 21,269 signatures. A related petition organized by Hui Kālaiʻāina added thousands more, producing the often-cited combined total of approximately 38,000 signatures. These petitions helped prevent ratification of an annexation treaty in the U.S. Senate.
Nevertheless, the United States annexed Hawaiʻi through the 1898 NEWLANDS RESOLUTION—a congressional joint resolution—rather than through a treaty approved by two sovereign nations. On August 12, 1898, the Hawaiian Kingdom flag was lowered at ʻIolani Palace and the American flag raised in its place.
AMERICANIZATION ATTACKED LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY
Political conquest was followed by cultural domination. In 1896, the Republic of Hawaiʻi enacted ACT 57, which made English the required language of instruction in schools, dropping Hawaiian as an educational language and punishing kids for speaking it.
The policy helped separate younger generations from their ancestral language and the cultural knowledge that language carried.
The U.S. imposed blood-quantum definitions that attempted to determine who legally qualified as “Native Hawaiian.” These classifications replaced Hawaiian ideas of ancestry and belonging with American racial categories.
THE U.S. DOMINATED HAWAII
Ancient Hawaiian society contained hierarchy and class divisions. So did the American plantation society that expanded within it.
The Hawaiian ambilateral kinship, reciprocal obligations, communal production, and the ability to seek a fairer chief placed restraints on political authority. In contrast, American-imposed plantation capitalism concentrated land, wealth, weapons, and government power in the hands of a small oligarchy.
The U.S. used its economic position, armed force, and support from representatives of the United States to overthrow the legal Hawaiian sovereign government. The conspirators ended the Queen’s authority, seized the government, suppressed the language, and tried to redefine Hawaiian identity. But they did not erase the Hawaiian people, their genealogy, their language, or their continuing claim to historical truth.
I say we must apologize, make amends, and provide reparations to the Hawaiian people.
Please share this post.
