On July 4, 1894, the Republic of Hawaii was proclaimed after the overthrow of Queen Lili’uokalani in a coup perpetrated by the white population of American origin, who sought future annexation to the United States. Indeed, that process was carried out four years later, accelerated by the imminent war against Spain, in which the US Navy could use a naval base in the archipelago very well to seize the Philippines. Of course, no one consulted the Hawaiians and thus reproduced what had happened before in Texas, for example.
Lili’uokalani was the name chosen to reign by Lydia Kamakaʻeha, fourth daughter of Caesar Kapaʻakea and Analea Keohokālole, great chiefs of Kauai. She was born in Honolulu in 1838 and received a Christian education at a missionary boarding school, later serving as a lady-in-waiting to Queen Emma, the mixed-race wife (her father was English and her mother Hawaiian) of King Kamehemeha IV. . Ella lili’uokalani had several suitors but she married in 1862 the American merchant John Owen Dominis, whom she had known since childhood and who was part of her royal staff. Dominis was repeatedly unfaithful to him and even had an illegitimate child.
In 1872 Kamehemeha V died without an heir, which, according to the Hawaiian constitution (it was a constitutional monarchy), implied the proclamation of a successor by suffrage. The chosen one was William Charles Lunalilo, first cousin of the deceased, but in turn he expired two years later and in the following elections David Kalākaua, brother of Liliʻuokalani, won.
However, the new king did not have the unanimous support that his predecessor did and an opposition movement arose that caused unrest in the archipelago. Its organizer, Queen Emeritus Emma, favored the landing of British and American troops. The situation calmed down but the great powers had already made clear their willingness to intervene if necessary, as decades before a German adventurer had tried for the Russian Empire.
Kalākaua named his brother, William Pitt Leleiohoku, as his heir, but he died in 1877 and, in order to prevent the return of the Kamehemeha dynasty to the throne, he then appointed Liliʻuokalani. In fact, she assumed the regency during 1881, the year in which the monarch made a world tour, having to face a smallpox epidemic that was probably introduced by Chinese workers.
That made her turn to philanthropy, creating various charitable institutions. But the politics were there and in 1887, shortly after returning from Queen Victoria’s Jubilee, some representatives of the Reform Party (originally the Missionary Party, having been founded by Protestant missionaries) suggested replacing Kalākaua after the corresponding blow. The thing did not materialize but the episode has gone down in history as the Wilcox Rebellionalluding to the Hawaiian officer who hatched the plan.
In 1890, Liliʻuokalani was left as regent again while the king made another trip, this time to the USA, to negotiate the reciprocity treaty signed in 1871, a free trade agreement that had now been nullified by the Tariff Law of President McKinley, which eliminated the privileges that Hawaiian sugar had until then.
However, there was another reason for visiting America: medical consultation, since Kalākaua was seriously ill, to the point that while in California he suffered a stroke that ended his life. It was January 1891, and his sister thus became the first and only queen of Hawaii.
Unfortunately for her, she was left a widow after seven months, thus losing not only a husband but also a valuable and experienced political adviser at a time when the situation in the country was going through a period of instability, in which none of the four parties was able to achieve a majority and governments fell one after another, lacking support.
In 1893, determined to change things, the queen promoted a constitutional process to assume full powers, abolish the vote (to which only whites had the right) and establish tariffs on imported sugar to try to get out of the economic crisis in which the country was plunged. kingdom.
Until then, the Hawaiian political system was an exact replica of the American one due to the influence of the US missionaries, who favored the establishment of companies from their country and took over three quarters of the land, in addition to monopolizing trade.
Moreover, the current constitution was known as Bayonet Constitution because it was imposed on Kalākaua by his ministers, all of Anglo-Saxon descent, threatening to incite against him the Patriotic League, a lobby made up of non-indigenous citizens. So the idea of a new constitutional text did not please the politicians, although the Hawaiian people did.
It did not take long for a Security Committee to be organized, an opposition movement initially called Annexation Club and led by attorney Lorrin A. Thurston, author of the aforementioned Bayonet Constitution. Its members were disaffected Americans, British and Hawaiians, and they dedicated themselves to promoting demonstrations and protests. The queen relented and renounced her unilateral project, but the same day she did, a conspiracy to overthrow her led by the Washington ambassador was discovered. To avoid tightening the rope, she didn’t stop him, opting instead to wait for him to make an overtly criminal move. She and she did but, by then, it was too late.
John S. Stevens, the diplomat in question, ordered the troops from the cruiser to disembark. USS Boston with the usual euphemistic excuse of protecting American citizens and their property. It had the support of businessmen and paramilitary organizations, such as the self-appointed Honolulu Rifles, fifteen hundred armed Anglo-Saxon men; in fact, events were precipitated when a conspirator killed a policeman who had discovered an illegal shipment of weapons for them. A company of marines plus one hundred and sixty-two sailors from the aforementioned ship took up positions in strategic places on January 16, 1893. They did not need to fire a single shot, since the crown barely had half a thousand troops to protect itself, which led it to try to avoid confrontation by ordering their own not to resist.
The next day, the chairman of the Committee of Safety, Henry E. Cooper, publicly read a proclamation dismissing Liliʻuokalani, abolishing the monarchy, and appointing the jurist Sanford B. Dole as president of a provisional government. The queen was allowed to stay in the palace and, while she issued an official protest, US President Grover Cleveland opened an investigation to clarify the situation. After a report from James Blount, his special commissioner, he explained to Congress that the intervention was illegitimate and against a friendly country -an act of war, as he defined it-, that the soldiers only had to protect American interests and that his ambassador had exceeded, which is why it would be replaced. In addition, he requested Dole to restore the sovereign to the throne, which was evidently rejected.
And so, although Cleveland assured that there was going to be no annexation, the fait accompli led him to end up recognizing the new executive, as did all the countries that had diplomatic representation on the islands -Spain included-, which also gave their approval to the proclamation of the Republic of Hawaii that summer. The exception was the United Kingdom, which would not accept until November. Despite everything, there was an attempted counterattack between January 6 and 9, 1895 that caused skirmishes between monarchists and republicans. The discovery of a cache of weapons in the palace gardens led the queen to prosecute her and sentence her to five years hard labour, although she was commuted to house arrest. On the 24th she abdicated in exchange for a pardon for six of her own who had been sentenced to death (one of those involved with a lesser sentence was Prince Kūhiō, to whom we dedicated an article).
On October 13, 1896, when the general spirits had calmed down, Liliʻuokalani obtained a complete pardon and her civil rights were restored, a moment that she took advantage of to travel, living between Hawaii and the United States. In that country he was negotiating compensation for his properties when, in June 1897, President William McKinley presented to the Senate a proposal for the annexation of Hawaii. Faced with the submission of thousands of protest signatures by indigenous Hawaiians, only forty-six of the ninety senators voted in favor and it was rejected. But only for now because, the following year, it was approved through the so-called Newlands Resolution, a national law of Congress that only required a simple majority in both chambers. And it is that things had changed, since in April 1898 the USA had entered the war with Spain and Pearl Harbor constituted a strategic base to dominate the Pacific.
On August 12, a ceremony was held on the steps of Honolulu’s ʻIolani Palace to transfer sovereignty to the United States, whose government assumed Hawaii’s $4 million debt. Almost all of the attendees were white; the native Hawaiians did not attend the event and the few who did wore their hats adorned with ilima flowers, a monarchical symbol. But there was no turning back. The US won the war and not only snatched Cuba and Puerto Rico from Spain, but also the Philippines and Guam, redrawing the geostrategic map.
Liliʻuokalani died of apoplexy in 1917, in her hometown, where she spent her time writing and composing music, authoring the book Hawaii’s story by Hawaii’s queen and of the anthem Aloha ‘Oe, among other works . In 1993, on the occasion of the centenary of his overthrow, the US Congress approved the Apology Resolutiona resolution that President Bill Clinton signed into law, apologizing to native Hawaiians for US involvement in the coup.
Sources
The Hawaiian kingdom (Ralph Simpson Kuykendall)/From a native daughter: Colonialism and sovereignty in Hawaii (Haunani-Kay Trask)/Lostkingdom. Hawaii’s last queen, the Sugar Kings, and America’s first imperial adventure (Julia Flynn Siler)/Islands of destiny. A history of Hawaii (Olive Wyndette)/The United States in the Pacific. Private interests and public policies, 1784-1899 (Donald Johnson and Gary Dean Best)/Wikipedia
