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| Queen Liliuokalani |
Queen Liliuokalani had a history of annoying the Sugar
Barons of Hawaii. After joining the international community in the late 18th
century, Hawaii was initially an important fueling station for whaling ships,
but eventually, once some entrepreneurial Americans figured out how to grow
sugar cane on the island, a plantation economy developed. Like all plantation
economies, the sugar crop in Hawaii relied on a cheap labor supply, and since
both global and American slave trades were now illegal, that cheap labor came
from immigrants: mostly Chinese, Japanese, and Portuguese. These immigrants brought
with them diseases that ravaged the island: such as smallpox.
In 1881,
King Kalakaua of Hawaii (Liliuokalani’s older brother) left Hawaii to go on a
world tour, leaving his sister and heir in charge while he was gone. During the
king’s trip, one of the aforementioned smallpox epidemics broke out and in an
attempt to limit its spread and protect her vulnerable people who had no
natural immunity, Liliuokalani temporarily closed the ports of Hawaii.
The Sugar
Barons were not amused.
The Kingdom
of Hawaii by this point was a constitutional monarchy, but much of the
legislature was composed of White American ex-pats (or their children) whose
interests rested in either missionary activity or the sugar crop. A
particularly revolutionary group, who called themselves the Hawaiian League or
The Committee of Safety (beware any group that calls itself that) favored an
overthrow of the monarchy all together and annexation by the United States. To
these men, Kalakaua’s extravagant and expensive lifestyle (which earned him the
nickname “the Merrie King”) was antithetical to their values and goals, and so
in 1887, they clapped a new, more restrictive constitution on the hands of the
Hawaiian government, now infamously known as the Bayonet Constitution.
Liliuokalani
insisted later that Kalakaua signed the constitution under duress (hence the
name) and it significantly limited not only his
power, but also the power of the non-White residents of Hawaii, by severely
curtailing voter eligibility. As power shifted away from the monarchy and
native Hawaiians, it fell increasingly upon the shoulders of White male
inhabitants of the island. (Those poor White guys.)
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| King Kalakaua |
A few years later, in 1891, Kalakaua died, and Liliuokalani
ascended the throne, but there were some events outside her control that were
already starting to cause trouble. A year earlier, in 1890, a Representative to
Congress from Ohio by the name of William McKinley, championed a tariff (the
creatively-named McKinley Tariff) that placed a heavy importation tax on foreign
goods, among them, sugar. The intention was to protect American business, but
it was a disaster for the sugar plantations of Hawaii, since the U.S. had been
the prime destination for the kingdom’s sugar. The tariff made annexation by
the United States seem much more attractive to sugar growers since being an
American territory would exempt Hawaiian sugar from the importation duty.
While the business leaders of the kingdom
suffered the ruinous effects of the tariff, the new queen did nothing to ingratiate
herself with them, and instead, had designed and planned to implement a new
constitution in 1893 that would reinstate monarchial supremacy over the
legislature and extensively expand voting rights on the island, shifting the
balance of power further away from the White guys.
They
couldn’t allow that.
Couching
Liliuokalani’s attempts to subvert the Bayonet Constitution as tyrannical, the
Committee of Safety, led by Lorrin Thurston, launched a coup, establishing a
provisional government with Sanford Dole as president. The U.S. Minister to
Hawaii and previously given the coup his blessing, sending American troops to
protect American property and recognized the new government. Liliuokalani, for
her part, cleverly surrendered to the U.S. government – not the provisional government – with the caveat that she fully
expected the U.S. government to review the situation and give her the kingdom
back.
She got her wish – sort of.
When Thurston and his cronies had
first cooked up the scheme of overthrowing the queen, they had found a
sympathetic administration under Benjamin Harrison, and Harrison duly submitted
the provisional government’s treaty of annexation to the Senate once he
received it. But, by March 1893, there was a new sheriff in town: Grover
Cleveland, back for his second term as president.
Since
congress had not yet ratified the treaty, Cleveland withdrew it and launched an
investigation. Upon discovering that the majority of Hawaiians opposed
annexation, Cleveland refused to resubmit the treaty of annexation to congress
and asked Dole’s government nicely to please re-instate Liliuokalani. To which
Dole’s government said: Make us. Cleveland asked congress what they thought and
congress replied: no thanks. So, the U.S. did not – for the time being – annex Hawaii,
but nor did they restore the monarchy to power.
Once it
became apparent that the U.S. was not going to step in to end the farce,
Liliuokalani’s supporters launched a counter revolution against the Dole
government, which failed, leading to Liliuokalani’s imprisonment in Iolani
Palace in 1895, where she stitched together her quilt and wrote notable works
of music, such as Aloha 'Oe:
She was released and pardoned a year later, and Liliuokalani
used her restored freedom to take a trip to Washington, DC and appeal to the
senate, with her niece and heir, Princess Kaiulani. The Republican candidate
for president in 1896, William McKinley (of McKinley Tariff fame) had won on a
platform that included annexation of Hawaii. After assuming office in 1897
(Liliuokalani was present for his inauguration), McKinley resubmitted the
annexation treaty that had been collecting dust during the Cleveland
administration to the Senate for their consideration. Liliuokalani and her
people protested vociferously, presenting arguments to the senate that painted
a picture of what a great injustice annexation would be to the Hawaiian people.
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| Princess Kaiulani |
The protests were successful, and the senate voted against
the treaty.
But
McKinley and his people still really, really
wanted to annex Hawaii and the Dole government still really, really wanted to be annexed, and so,
like doomed adolescent love, they found a way.
In 1898, the U.S. had become conveniently
embroiled in the Spanish-American War – which was not fought on American or
Spanish soil, but between Spanish and Americans in Cuba, Guam, and the Philippines.
American naval activities in the
Pacific, vis-Ã -vis the “Splendid Little War” gave McKinley impetus to introduce
a joint resolution for the annexation of Hawaii: you know, because we really
needed Pearl Harbor, like, a lot.
The joint resolution passed where the
annexation treaty had failed and the United States acquired Hawaii just as
Spain was surrendering. (Aw, nuts. I guess we didn’t need Pearl Harbor after all.)
Liliuokalani continued to protest
her overthrow for more than a decade, even taking her case to the Supreme
Court. (Spoiler alert, she lost.) In 1911, the Territory of Hawaii granted her
a monthly pension so that she could retire to Washington Place in Hawaii, where
she died in 1917 at the age of 79, Hawaii’s first – and last – queen.
Sources:
Unfamiliar Fishes, by Sarah Vowell
– I highly recommend this book. It formed the basis of my research for this
blog. I inserted a video clip in the beginning of the blog of Vowell reading
the opening of the book.
Excerpts
from Hawaii’s Story by Hawaii’s Queen – as the title suggests, written by
Liliuokalani
A timeline of
Liliuokalani’s life, from PBS
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