Chapter Title: The Failed Annexation of Hawaii
Book Title: Pacific Strife
Book Subtitle: The Great Powers and their Political and Economic Rivalries in Asia and the
Western Pacific 1870-1914
Book Author(s): Kees van Dijk
Published by: Amsterdam University Press. (2015)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt15nmjw8.21
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18 The Failed Annexation of Hawaii
In 1842 the American President Tyler had cautioned his countrymen not to
expect too much of the opening of China: ‘[T]he cheapness of labor among
the Chinese, their ingenuity in its application, and the f ixed character
of their habits and pursuits may discourage the hope of the opening of
any great and sudden demand for the fabrics of other countries’. But, he
continued, Western products did ‘find a market to some extent among the
Chinese’ (Tyler 1842). Americans had traded with China in Guangzhou,
the country itself was among the first powers to enter into a treaty with
China, and in the 1850s the presence of Americans in Shanghai had been
significant enough for people to speak of a separate American settlement
(though in fact a formal treaty with China confirming a settlement status
did not exist) (Darwent 1905: 207).
The American Civil War from 1861 to 1865 and the loss of its merchant
ships at that time had an effect on American China trade. The role of Ameri-
can freighters was taken over by ships sailing under another flag, concealing
America’s share in the China trade (LaFeber 1998: 19). Goods exported to
China could end up being recorded as British in the statistics while in fact
they had been produced in the United States. Another consequence was a
decrease in the number of Americans travelling as merchants or sailors to
the Far East, one insignificant indication of this being that baseball was no
longer played in Shanghai (Darwent 1905: 190). Competitors, basing their
assessment on real facts or imagination, continued to be awed by American
China trade. In the 1870s an American advance figured prominently in
pleas by Dupré and Garnier for a more active French colonial policy in
Southeast Asia. The US was explicitly mentioned by Cooper (1871: 2), along
with Great Britain and France, as three countries having ‘vast trade’ with
China. In the 1880s America’s interest in China was expressed in its role in
the Ili crisis and the Shufeldt expedition to Korea. Nevertheless, around the
turn of the century American trade with China was still small, although
growing steadily.
In two regions American firms were relatively successful: Manchuria
and Korea. In Manchuria American commercial interests exceeded those
of the other powers except Japan (Millard 1906: 115; LaFeber 1998: 301). It
was estimated that around 1900 American products accounted for half of
the imports in Yingkou, one of the gateways to Manchuria and northern
China (Beresford 1899: 435). Successful American imports in Manchuria
included cottons and piece goods; a market Japanese merchants wanted
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360 Pacific Strife
to conquer, and which they tried to do so, a former American Consul
General in Manchuria complained, in an aggressive way. He even accused
the Japanese of creating ‘some hostility to American products’ by imitating
American trademarks, faithfully adding in English that the product, said to
be inferior to the American equivalent, had been manufactured in Japan,
a futile gesture as the Chinese did not read English (Lawton 1912: 1262). In
Korea American investors had won a number of important contracts. They
had constructed the first Korean railway, ran the electric tram in Seoul
and managed the city’s electricity, waterworks and telephone system. An
American concern, the Oriental Consolidated Mining Company, owned a
number of gold pits in Unsan; the only mining operation in Korea which was
successful (Hamilton 1904: 155; Putnam Weale 1908: 515). By 1904 Americans
and Japanese were said to compete for the first place among concession
holders in Korea, leaving others far behind (Hamilton 1904: 148).
Though the United States remained conspicuously absent in the race
to divide China into spheres of influence, there was much concern among
politicians and businessmen about Russia gaining a hold over Manchuria.
The taking of Port Arthur and the Bay of Jiaozhou only intensified fears
that north Asia might become ‘closed’ to American trade. As Beresford
(1899: 424) noted when he visited San Francisco in February 1899, in the city
‘[a]ll the mercantile community were intensely interested in the Eastern
question, pointing out that San Francisco would naturally be the port for
the great output of American trade when China was opened up’. Elsewhere
he had encountered a similar mood. China trade and the restraints it might
encounter ‘excited a considerable amount of interest throughout the United
States’ (ibid.: 427). Businessmen demanded ‘fullest protection’ by Wash-
ington, while newspapers hinted at action to be taken against ‘European
aggression’. Some speculated about war, if it had to be in cooperation with
Great Britain (LaFeber 1998: 381-2). Diplomats were equally worried. The
American ambassador to Great Britain, John Hay, who within months was
to become Secretary of State, informed his superiors in Washington about
rumours in Great Britain that the Far Eastern Triple Alliance might try ‘to
exclude, as far as possible, the trade of England and America from the Far
East, and to divide and reduce China to a system of tributary provinces’
(ibid.: 380). His colleague in Beijing, Colonel Charles Denby, shared Hay’s
pessimistic outlook. In January 1898, he reported home that a partition of
China ‘would tend to destroy’ America’s China trade (ibid.: 354). Confronted
with such opinions, Secretary of State John Sherman, himself an adversary
of American territorial expansion, asked the German and Russian govern-
ments for guarantees that they would respect the Open Door principle in
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The Failed Annexation of Hawaii 361
China. As had been the case with the British request the response was
affirmative (ibid.: 380).
Washington did not react, as London and Paris had done, by claiming
a concession in China. It confined itself to stressing free trade, becoming
one of the advocates, if not the major one, of the Open Door in China.
Nevertheless, the United States took its share, not in China but in the Pacific,
annexing Hawaii and the Philippines. Hawaii had already for some time
been on the American agenda; the Philippines would be an unexpected
bonus.
American interests in Hawaii
Throughout most of the nineteenth century American shipping and
commerce had been predominant in the Hawaiian or Sandwich Islands,
located some 2,000 miles from America’s west coast. American ships far
outnumbered the other foreign whalers and merchantmen which called
in at Honolulu on Oahu Island. It also served as an intermediate port of
American trade with China, and, as a British navy captain had reported
to the British Admiralty as early as 1815, a British naval station in Hawaii
could ‘effectually annihilate that trade’ (Thomas 2010: 78). In the past,
merchants and sea captains from Great Britain, France and Russia had
shown an interest in gaining a foothold, but already for over half a century
the United States had claimed a special interest in the island group, ever
since, in the 1840s, Washington had left no doubt that Hawaii fell squarely
within the American sphere of influence and that it would not tolerate a
British of French annexation or a Russian incursion.
The American claim was couched in the ‘Tyler Doctrine’. In December
1842 Tyler, in a special message to Congress, which was as much about
Hawaii as about trade with China, had pointed out that owing to ‘their local-
ity and to the course of winds which prevail in this quarter of the world, the
Sandwich Islands are the stopping place for almost all vessels passing from
continent to continent across the Pacific Ocean’. Stressing that five-sixths
of all ships that visited Hawaii annually were American, he continued by
stating that, in view of this, ‘it could not but create dissatisfaction on the part
of the United States at any attempt by another power ... to take possession of
the islands, colonize them, and subvert the native Government’ (Tyler 1842).
The following year, urged to do so by a Hawaiian delegation visiting
London, France and Great Britain, whose warships had shown the Ha-
waiians the might of the European powers, promised to respect Hawaii’s
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362 Pacific Strife
independence. In November 1843 they issued a joint declaration signed by
the British Foreign Secretary and the French ambassador vowing ‘never
to take possession, either directly or under the title of protectorate, or
under any other form’ of any part of Hawaii. The declaration also held an
assessment of Hawaii, a kingdom too weak to put up a military defence
against foreign aggression, but for the rest strong enough to function as an
independent state: Hawaii had ‘a government capable of providing for the
regularity of its relations with foreign nations’.1
Hawaii was not only important for American China trade. Though the
archipelago was located much farther away than New Guinea was from
Australia, people in the United Stated viewed a non-American acquisition
of the islands much like the Australians did that of New Guinea. A foreign
occupation was seen as a threat to America’s security, transforming the
islands into a base from which an enemy fleet could attack. At the same
time, Hawaii figured as a forward station in the defence of California and
the American Pacific coast. It was also a perfect place for an intermediate
port. In 1853 Commodore Perry singled out Hawaii as a suitable place for a
coaling station along the sea route to China. The islands were, as The New
York Herald wrote in June 1854, the ‘halfway point’ between California
and China (Dulles 1938: 159). When these opinions were expressed, Hawaii
seemed to be for the taking. In 1851, and at the request of the ruler of Hawaii,
King Kamehameha III, unable as he was to resist surprise attacks by foreign
warships, backed-up by their government or not, the first specific negotia-
tions regarding American protection took place, disregarding protests from
London and Paris. Washington was prepared to pay US$300,000 for gaining
control over Hawaii. Nothing came of it. Kamehameha died before the deal
could be concluded and his successor, Kamehameha IV, was passionately
anti-American. Equally decisive was that opposition in Congress (where
since domestic turmoil over the purchase of Alaska in 1868, a two-thirds
majority in the Senate was needed for annexations; or, when that failed,
a majority in both houses) was too strong to allow for the acquisition of
regions outside the North American continent.
Americans would continue to look at Hawaii, coupling their pleas for
protection, annexation or special prerogatives and their warnings that the
islands should not fall to France and especially to Great Britain, with the
observation about how important the islands were to the United States, for
its defence and for its shipping. Among them was William H. Seward, Sec-
retary of State between 1861 and 1869, the man who had purchased Alaska,
1 Anglo-French Declaration 28-11-1843.
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The Failed Annexation of Hawaii 363
and a fierce promoter of American mercantile expansion; he had high hopes
for the boost in ocean sailing that would result from the construction of
the American transcontinental railway. In a letter to the American ambas-
sador in London in August 1868, Seward claimed that many of his fellow
Americans wanted annexation, adding that in no way the islands should
become British or French (Brookes 1941: 280). At that moment opposition
by France and Great Britain and an anti-American king were the stumbling
blocks for any concrete American steps, but Pacific trade continued to be
a compelling argument. In the second half of the 1880s, during the first
Cleveland administration, Hawaii came to be presented as a vital hub
in America’s commercial network in the Pacific; as a ‘stepping-stone to
the growing [American] trade in the Pacific’, where other powers should
stay clear of (LaFeber 1998: 54). And, as late as March 1893, one American
admiral, George E. Belknap, warned in the Boston Herald that should Great
Britain take possession of Hawaii ‘Honolulu would soon become one of the
most important strongholds of Great Britain’s power’ (Dulles 1938: 187).
Similar to Samoa and Fiji, Hawaii had experienced an influx of foreigners.
White settlers, the most prominent among them Americans and other
‘Americanized Europeans’ (Musick 1898: 8) had the lion’s share in the islands’
main and almost sole export earner, the production of raw sugar for the
American market. A smaller segment of the white community, but at least
as influential, was formed by puritanical American clergymen. Missionaries
and church leaders and their descendants played an important role in local
politics and in the economy. To one contemporary author, Musick (1898: 8),
Hawaii was even ‘the land of missionaries’. The first of them had arrived in
1820 and four years later Protestantism had been declared the religion of
the state. Another foreign element making its mark was the Chinese and
Japanese labour force needed in the sugar industry. Arriving in increasing
numbers they would eventually turn the Hawaiians into a minority in their
own country (Coffman 2009: 64). As a migrant group they also established
themselves outside the plantation sector. After having served their contract,
Japanese labourers would stay on and try to find other employment on the
islands, competing for jobs with Hawaiians and poor whites.
In the 1870s, the dominant position of the American community in Ha-
waii, and the close economic links between the archipelago and the United
States, found their expression in the Convention for Commercial Reciprocity
(that is of the reduction or doing away with tariffs, treaties also negotiated
with other countries) concluded with King Kalakaua. The convention drew
Hawaii even more into the American orbit. In 1866 Seward had already
ventured that a reciprocity treaty would lead to a ‘quiet absorption’ of the
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364 Pacific Strife
islands (Coffman 2009: 60). His successors took a similar view. A Reciprocity
Treaty, Frederick Theodore Frelinghuysen, Secretary of State from 1881 to
1885, would explain, had ‘all the benefits which would result from annexa-
tion were that possible’ (LaFeber 1998: 49). The treaty, already considered for
more than a decade and initially opposed by American sugarcane producers
and Congress, was finally signed in 1875. It allowed for the duty-free import
of a range of products in the United States and Hawaii, of which especially
the growers of ‘Sandwich Island sugar’ and its refiners in the United States
profited. Gaining free access to the American market, sugar production
boomed, and with it also the immigration of Asian workers. From his side,
Kalakaua pledged not to lease or cede any port or land to a third nation,
or enter into a similar treaty. This time Congress consented. In doing so,
it was partly guided by anti-British sentiments and a false perception of a
British expansionist policy following the British annexation of Fiji, which
had produced hints about an insatiable British appetite for new colonial
possessions and remarks that America’s history was ‘but one history of
difficulties’ with Great Britain (Brookes 1941: 360).
That Kalakaua signed the Reciprocity Convention may well have had
much to do with the events surrounding his accession to the throne in 1874.
His becoming king had not been undisputed and he had only succeeded
because American marines had restored order and had occupied Honolulu
for about a week. Starting his reign as someone who was on good terms
with the Americans, within a decade Kalakaua distanced himself from the
United States. Domestically, using the slogan ‘Hawaii for the Hawaiians’
he aimed at the restoration of a kingdom in which Hawaiians were firmly
in control; and where the powers of the monarchy would again be as they
had been in the past, before white settlers had made their influence felt.
Internationally, he irked the Americans by visiting Japan on a trip around
the world to solicit a treaty of mutual support in 1881, but did so without
success. He tried, in vain, to interest Japan in the idea of a Pacific federation
(Coffman 2009: 188).
Kalakaua’s trip to Japan was part of a role he had taken upon himself, but
could not deliver, to prevent further annexations by the powers in Polynesia.
In 1881 he had also visited Thailand and, inspired by the position of the
Thai king, he aimed at uniting Polynesia into one kingdom, under his own
leadership (Krout 1898: 8). In pursuing these ends, Kalakaua found a close
ally in ‘an American renegade’ Walter Murray Gibson, a former Mormon
who, in 1852 had been arrested in Sumatra by the Dutch for holding out
American assistance in the struggle of one of its sultanates, Jambi, against
the Dutch. He was sentenced for high treason but escaped (Locher-Scholten
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The Failed Annexation of Hawaii 365
2004: 101-14). Three decades later, in 1882, Gibson became Kalakaua’s Prime
Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs; and he was as much opposed to
any cession to the United States of a coaling or naval station as Kalakaua
was (Hardy and Dumke 1949: 410-1; Sewall 1900: 20). Both had become
enchanted by the ideals of the Australian journalist Charles James Herbert
de Courcy St. Julian, who in the 1850s, as Commissioner to the Polynesian
islands of the Hawaii King, Kamehameha III, had already aimed at forming
a Polynesian federation made up all islands groups in the region which were
still formally independent (Day 1984: 45).
To forge closer ties with the latter, a British merchant vessel was pur-
chased and turned into a warship in 1887. Renamed the Kaimiloa (Seeker
of Knowledge) it was sent as ‘a vessel of peace and not of war’ to Samoa,
manned with ‘older boys from the Industrial Reformatory School’, a school
for children of the poor and juvenile delinquents, and some marines and
white sailors (Allen 1988: 125). A band also went along. Captain of the
Kaimiloa was George Jackson, a former British naval officer and head of
the reformatory school (Thomas 2010: 274). On board was John E. Bush, the
King’s ‘Envoy Extraordinary to the Courts of Samoa and Tonga and High
Commissioner to the High Chiefs and peoples of Polynesia’. Among his tasks
was discussing a Hawaiian-Samoan Alliance with Malietoa Laupepa, which,
as his instructions read, would give Hawaii ‘a right to speak authoritatively
to foreign powers on behalf of the independence of Samoa’ (Sewall 1900: 21).
As could be expected, nothing came out of Kalakaua’s adventure, though
a treaty with Laupepa was concluded in February 1887; if only because the
latter had included the clause that the treaty was subject to the obligations
Malietoa Laupepa had entered into with other countries (Sewall 1900: 23).
In Germany, the suspicion was that Washington was behind the Kaimiloa
expedition in order to enhance America’s own position in Samoa. German
politicians also did not take kindly to Hawaiian interference in Samoan
affairs. Consequently, Bismarck informed Washington that should Hawaii
‘try to interfere in favour of Malietoa, the King of the Sandwich Islands
would thereby enter into a state of war with us’ (Sewall 1900: 19, 25).
The white settlers take charge
In Hawaii his conduct and ideals brought Kalakaua into conflict with
the community of white settlers. In 1887 a rebellion by foreign residents
threatened. In January of that year, foreigners had formed an underground
organisation, the Hawaiian League, headed by Lorrin Andrews Thurston, a
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366 Pacific Strife
lawyer, businessman-cum-newspaper owner, and the grandson of one of the
first American missionaries who had come to Hawaii. It claimed some 400
members, all sworn to secrecy (Coffman 2009: 80). On 30 June a mass meet-
ing took place, guarded by the Honolulu Rifle Company, popularly known as
the Honolulu Rifles, a settlers’ militia dating from 1846. On the instigation
of Thurston a resolution was drawn up, in which it was observed that the
Hawaiian government had ‘ceased through incompetence and corruption
to perform the functions and afford the protection to personal and property
rights for which all governments exist’ (Krout 1898: 3). When, subsequently,
a company of armed men marched to the Palace, Kalakaua had to give in;
if he had not, a Republic would have been proclaimed (Coffman 2009: 82).
King Kalakaua had to allow for changes in the Hawaiian constitution,
which curbed his powers and increased the say of the foreign residents
in the running of the kingdom. The new ‘Bayonet Constitution’ that was
proclaimed on 6 July shifted the balance of power to community of the
white settlers. The right to vote, which had previously been denied to them,
became dependent on property. To be eligible to vote, one should ‘have paid
his taxes’ (Art. 62), while members of the House of Representatives had to
own ‘real estate within the Kingdom of a clear value’ (Art. 61). Kalakaua
also had to accept that Gibson and his cabinet had to go. Gibson, narrowly
escaping being lynched, was forced to leave Hawaii. On 1 July, a new cabinet
assumed office, headed by William Lowthian Green, a British businessman.
Thurston became Minister of the Interior.
The new cabinet gave the United States its first concrete foothold in
Hawaii, by agreeing to a drastically changed Reciprocity Treaty and having
it ratified by Kalakaua, who was, in fact against it, in October 1887. On
the instigation of the leader of the Republican Party, James G. Blaine, and
to remove domestic American opposition against its ratification, which
demanded a clear compensation for the advantages the treaty offered to
Hawaiian sugar producers, the American Senate had added a crucial clause
(Coffman 2009: 92). It allowed the United States ‘the exclusive right to
enter the harbor of Pearl River, in the Island of Oahu, and to establish and
maintain there a coaling and repair station for the use of vessels of the U.S.’
(Department 2001). Pearl Harbor, not so far from Honolulu, was a price well
worth paying. It had been on the American agenda since 1873, when an
American military commission visiting the islands, had singled out Pearl
Harbor as the only harbour in Hawaii that could be defended from the shore
in times of war (Brookes 1941: 348).
Though both sides denied that the new clause distracted from the
sovereignty of Hawaii, to many Hawaiians – to Kalakaua and certainly to
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The Failed Annexation of Hawaii 367
his sister, Lydia Kamakaeha Kaolamalii Liliuokalani, who was to succeed
him – the new amended reciprocity treaty formed the first step on the road
towards annexation (Allen 1988: 125). The reaction of the other powers was
equally negative. Great Britain and France protested, calling into mind the
joint Anglo-French Declaration of November 1843 about Hawaii’s territorial
integrity. In line with the suggestion of a joint three-power administration
for Samoa made by the United States at the Washington Conference of
1887, they called for a joint statement by the United States, Great Britain
and France guaranteeing Hawaiian independence. Washington refused.
Berlin used Pearl Harbor as an argument to justify German action in Samoa.
Washington was made to understand that up to that moment Germany had
not used its own position of preponderance in Samoa to demand special
privileges there, as America had done in Hawaii (Dulles 1938: 117).
Queen Liliuokalani ascended the throne in January 1891 after the
death of Kalakaua. In the United States, President Benjamin Harrison, a
Republican, clearly was not pleased with her becoming queen. He feared
that her reign would favour ‘schemes of those who are seeking to bring
the islands under the control of European powers’ (LaFeber 1998: 143).
From the outset, Liliuokalani ran into trouble with John Leavitt Stevens,
Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States in
Hawaii since 1889. He had arrived in Honolulu, shortly after his predeces-
sor, George W. Merill, in July of that year had requested the protection of
his legation by American marines of the USS Adams during an ill-fated
one-day coup d’état against Kalakaua (whose own role was not clear) by
dissatisfied Hawaiians, headed by Robert W. Wilcox, who wanted to restore
the old constitution. The marines had also provided the Honolulu Rifles,
with ammunition.2
Stevens was an appointee of Blaine, now Secretary of State; a close friend
of his, and like Blaine an ardent promoter of expanding America’s hold
over Hawaii. ‘Destiny and the vast future interests of the United States in
the Pacific’, he wrote to the new Secretary of State, John Watson Foster, in
November 1892 (Blaine had resigned in June for reasons of health), ‘clearly
indicate who at no distant day must be responsible for the government of
these islands’. There were two courses of action open. The first was ‘bold
and vigorous measures for annexation’. The other was a list of prerogatives:
‘a “customs union”, an ocean cable from the Californian coast to Honolulu,
Pearl Harbor perpetually ceded to the United States with implied but not
2 Testimony of William Dewitt Alexander before the Morgan Committee (morganreport.org/
mediawiki/index.php?title=Summary_of_Alexander; accessed 25-2-2011).
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368 Pacific Strife
expressly stipulated American protectorate over the island’. Stevens himself
preferred the first option. It would be better for Hawaii and ‘the cheapest
and least embarrassing in the end to the United States’.3
Queen Liliuokalani’s intention to continue the Hawaii-centred policy of
her late brother clashed with Stevens’ conviction that Hawaii should become
part of the United States. She recollected later how Stevens, who had been
‘constantly unfriendly and quarrelsome’, had given a ‘most inconsiderable
speech’, on her accession to the throne, which ‘would lead me to suppose
that he considered an American protectorate established on that day’.
‘Not one of the other representatives’, she stressed, ‘chose my coronation
day as an occasion for threats and penalties’.4
Stevens made it his job to
convince his government that should the United States not interfere, Great
Britain could well take advantage of domestic strife in Hawaii and take
possession of the islands (Dulles 1938: 171-2). He even tried to persuade
Washington to allow him to take an active role in preparing an American
3 Message of President Cleveland to American Senate and House of Representatives, New
York Herald 19-12-1893.
4 Dutch envoy in Washington to Minister of Foreign Affairs 12-3-1893 (ARA A-Dos box 223).
Figure 26 Queen Liliuokalani
Source: Musick 1898
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The Failed Annexation of Hawaii 369
annexation. In March 1892, he pleaded with Blaine to allow him and the
senior naval commander of American warships present in Hawaii ‘to devi-
ate from established international rules and precedents’ and go beyond a
simple protection of American lives and property, should unrest erupt. The
special relationship between the United States and Hawaii warranted such
a course of action.5
A few months later he saw to it that Thurston, on a visit
to the United States, could meet Blaine and other influential politicians.
Harrison, wisely, refused to meet Thurston in person, but no doubt was left
with Thurston that the American government would regard an annexation
request with sympathy (Coffman 2009: 117).
The focus of the dispute between Liliuokalani and the foreign residents
became the Bayonet Constitution, which Stevens had told her she should
not try to do away with (Coffman 2009: 124). She could draw strength from
the fact that in 1890, still under her brother, Kalakaua, an anti-American
and anti-white establishment political party, the National Reform Party, had
won the elections and Thurston and the other members of the cabinet had
been forced to resign. Her people, she used to stress, wanted the constitution
to be changed. Petitions to that effect had poured in, she could rightfully
claim. Worried by such intentions, American residents, with the backing of
Stevens, became even more intent on taking full control of the government
and on handing over Hawaii to the United States.
Annexation offered some settlers an additional advantage. In 1890, on
the initiative of the Republican Congressman William McKinley, soon to
be President, Washington had abolished all import duties on raw sugar to
become effective in two years later, and simultaneously had granted local
American producers a bounty. The new import regulations did away with
the advantages that the sugar growers in Hawaii had derived from the
Reciprocity Treaty. They now had to compete with sugar producers in Cuba
and elsewhere in the Caribbean and Latin America. The consequences were
immediately felt. The price of Hawaiian sugar plummeted, to fall below
production costs in 1892 (Castle 1999: 77) A ‘sense of panic’ set in (Coff-
man 2009: 107). Dependent as it was on the export of sugar, the Hawaiian
economy plunged into a depression. The prospects of becoming entitled
to the subsidy made it all the more attractive for the producers of sugar for
Hawaii to become part of the United States.
For Foster and Blaine the crisis was god-sent. In his November letter to
Foster, Stevens mentioned the Hawaiian sugar crisis as one of the reasons
5 Message of President Cleveland to American Senate and House of Representatives, New
York Herald 19-12-1893.
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370 Pacific Strife
for annexation. Blaine had also tried to make use of the bad prospects of
the Hawaiian sugar industry. He held out a new reciprocity treaty; offering
a subsidy on Hawaii’s sugar similar to the one American producers were
given in return for American control over Hawaiian foreign policy and the
right to land troops on the islands in the case of domestic disturbances.
Kalakaua, regarding the proposals as aiming at a virtual protectorate,
and advised to do so by the British envoy (much more outspoken than his
government in London), refused (Coffman 2009102). Liliuokalani, according
to the Americans spurred on to do so by Canadian citizens with links to
the Canadian transcontinental railroad and thus having a keen interest
in an intermediate port for trans-Pacific shipping, took a similar position
(LaFeber 1998: 143). She, moreover, found a new source of money, to ease
Hawaii’s f inancial problems: the Louisiana Lottery Company, the only
surviving legal lottery in the United States. It was in need of a new outlet
after anti-lottery legislation in the United States had gradually forced it
to seek a new base of operation abroad. In 1884 the company had already
tried to get a lottery bill accepted in Hawaii but had failed (Musick 1898
346). Liliuokalani, looking for ways to overcome a financial crisis in her
country and ignoring domestic opposition by puritan Christians, saw to it
that a lottery bill and an opium shop bill were promulgated in January 1893.
Under these dire economic circumstances, yet another pressure group
of foreigners was formed in 1892, the Annexation Club. Again, Thurston
was one of its initiators. It claimed a membership of two thousand (Krout
1898: 151). In 1893, after a period rife with rumours about serious trouble
brewing in Honolulu, and the Queen trying to undo the power the white
settlers had gained, matters came to a head. On Saturday 14 January 1893,
Liliuokalani, claiming that she was acting at the request of ‘her dear people’,
made an attempt to revoke the constitutional reform of 1887 Hawaiian
Gazette 17-1-1893). Later, in a statement widely cited in the American press,
she would defend her actions by pointing out that the Bayonet Constitution
had robbed the Hawaiians of ‘their just and inalienable rights’. She also
stated that it had not been her intention to ‘deprive one white man of one
legitimate right’, but pointed out that under the Bayonet Constitution ‘any
newly arrived white man without interests or intention of residence’ was
‘placed as a voter over the heads of thousands of my subjects, to whom
God had given these islands, and no other home’.6
In the afternoon of
14 January, the Queen dressed in a ‘magnificent morning costume, with a
sparkling coronet of diamonds’, presented her four cabinet ministers with
6 Dutch envoy in Washington to Minister of Foreign Affairs 12-3-1893 (ARA A-Dos box 223).
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The Failed Annexation of Hawaii 371
a new constitution (Hawaiian Gazette 17-1-1893). They refused to sign and
also would not step down. A crowd of Hawaiians had assembled outside.
Scared, three Cabinet Ministers fled to the seat of government, Government
Building. Having assured themselves of the support of leading members of
the settlers community, they would later return and persuade Liliuokalani
to postpone the promulgation of her new constitution. She did so ‘with bitter
reluctance’ it was reported (Hawaiian Gazette 17-1-1893).
In a next step, still on 14 January, late in the afternoon, the Annexation
Club, which at least had the sympathy of Foster and others in Washington
if not their active support, called into being a Citizens’ Committee of Public
Safety, usually referred to as the Committee of Safety. During its first meet-
ing, which took place behind closed doors, Thurston proposed forming a
provisional government as a prelude to annexation by the United States.
The conspirators turned to Stevens and asked for the assistance of American
marines from the USS Boston, anchored in the harbour of Honolulu. Stevens,
who well might have wanted to respond differently, refused, saying that he
was prepared to disembark troops for the protection of American life and
property only, not to support a rebellion.
On 16 January, the Committee staged a mass meeting, in which Ameri-
can, British and German residents, and what Krout (1898: 21), not a neutral
observer, described as ‘the best of the native element’, participated. On that
same day, Stevens acted, responding positively to a request ‘by a respectable
number of American citizens ... to protect their lives and property’ (Musick
1898: 359) against, what one of them would later call, ‘assaults and danger
from the natives’ (New York Times 15-4-1893). He ordered the Commander
of the Boston, Captain G.C. Wiltse, to do all he could ‘for the protection of
the U.S. Legation and U.S. Consulate, and to secure the safety of American
life and property’ (Musick 1898: 359). Between four and five o’clock in the
afternoon of 16 January, 160 American marines entered Honolulu and took
control of the strategic buildings in the city. If we may believe one contem-
porary witness, when the troops passed the Palace, ‘the Queen appeared
upon the balcony and the troops respectfully saluted her by presenting arms
and dipping the flag, and made no demonstration of any hostile intent’.7
On 17 January 1893, Liliuokalani informed Stevens that she would leave
the Bayonet Constitution intact. It was to no avail. Stevens, claiming that he
could not take sides, refused to come to her assistance. Still on the same day,
7 Morganreport.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=The_Rest_of_The_Rest (accessed 25-2-2011).
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372 Pacific Strife
Liliuokalani was deposed.8
A Provisional Government was formed. This
was done, a proclamation read out from the steps of Government Building
stated, for ‘the control and management of public affairs and the protection
of the public peace’.9
The Provisional Government was to be in off ice
until Hawaii had become part of the United States. An executive council
of four was formed. It was chaired by Sanford Ballard Dole, a Hawaii-born
lawyer and sugar planter and at the time a member of the Supreme Court.
Dole, the son of a missionary, also assumed the posts of President and that
of Minister of Foreign Affairs. His government had ‘good support from the
great majority of the better class of our foreign community’, the Dutch
consul in Hawaii, J.H. Paty, reported to his government.10
After the proclamation had been read, supporters of the new Republic
marched to the Palace where they ‘found no one save an indignant woman,
once a queen but now deserted by her cabinet, and her soldiers safely housed
in the police quarters making no effort to save her’ (Musick 1898: 358).
Liliuokalani blamed ‘American capitalists’ and those aiming at ‘the restora-
tion of the sugar bounty’ for the coup d’état.11 In a statement she delivered
to the Provisional Government, the queen stressed that she yielded ‘to the
superior force of the United States of America whose Minister Plenipotenti-
ary, His Excellence John L. Stevens, had caused United States troops to be
landed at Honolulu’. She had resigned, the statement continued, ‘under
protest ... until such time as the Government of the United States shall,
upon facts being presented to it, undo the action of its representative’.12 On
18 January, the new government proclaimed martial law. All liquor stores
were closed and the lottery was forbidden. Power in Hawaii had been seized
by the missionaries, a British Member of Parliament concluded, giving the
impression that he regretted the end of betting in Hawaii and the blow to
horseracing this had implied (as well as the obligation to attend church on
Sunday he said that had been instituted).13
8 After she had been deposed agents of the Louisiana Lottery Company contacted Paul
Newman (one of her confidants) and informed him that they wanted to buy the Island of Lanai
for ‘a syndicate of sporting men’ to turn it into a gambling resort (Musick 1898: 230). In return,
they were prepared to finance the Queen’s return to power. Newman reported the conspirators
to the new authorities and they ended up in jail.
9 Proclamation establishing a provisional government at the Hawaiian Islands Art 2.
10 Paty to G. van Tienhoven 18-1-1893 (ARA F.O. A-dos box 223).
11 Dutch envoy in Washington to Minister of Foreign Affairs 12-3-1893 (ARA A-Dos box 223).
12 Statement Liliuokalani cited in Gresham to Cleveland 18-10-1893 (New York Times 11-11-1893).
13 Beckett in House of Commons 19-7-1897 (hansard.millbanksystem.com/commons/1897/
jul/19/foreign-office-vote).
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The Failed Annexation of Hawaii 373
Assessments of the state of affairs Honolulu was in at that moment
by contemporaries, and in later reconstructions of the dethronement of
Queen Liliuokalani, depend on sides taken. Opponents of annexation
would maintain – as by the end of the year the new American President,
Stephen Grover Cleveland, would do – that the American marines occupied
a quiet town, where there were no signs of unrest or disorder. In Cleveland’s
words, Honolulu was ‘in its customary orderly and peaceful condition’.14 His
Secretary of State, Walter Q. Gresham, was to give a similar assessment. He
was to write that when the marines landed, the Provisional Government
‘had little other than a paper existence’ and that Liliuokalani’s government
was still in ‘full possession and control of the palace, the barracks and the
police station’.15 Those condoning the act pointed at a tense situation that
had come about in the city. Stevens would later defend his action by stating
that he had been motivated by ‘the fear of incendiarism, tumult and robbery,
and the danger of alarming panic in the night’ (New York Times 30-11-1893).
Annexation or not?
On 1 February, Stevens, who later claimed that because there was no
telegraph connection with the continent he had not been able to consult
Washington, had his own proclamation read from the steps of Govern-
ment Building by an officer of the Boston: ‘To the Hawaiian people!’ In the
statement, he announced that for the protection of life and property and
at the request of the Provisional Government he had assumed protection
of the Hawaiian Islands in the name of the United States of America. As
a kind of postscript, it was mentioned that the action had the approval of
Wiltse, the Commander of the Boston. Subsequently, the American flag
was hoisted on top of the tower of Government Building (and later also
at the Palace; Liliuokalani would stay in her mansion, Washington Place).
Marines of the Boston and volunteers of the Honolulu Rifles standing in
line in front of the building saluted the flag and shots were fired by the
Boston. Stevens’ proclamation was also to be published in the press. At
Government Building, the Hawaiian flag (still the same one as that used
under the monarchy) continued to fly, albeit considerably lower, in the
grounds. As Dole assured the Dutch consul in Honolulu, the ‘Hawaiian
14 Message of President Cleveland to American Senate and House of Representatives, New
York Herald 19-12-1893.
15 Gresham to Cleveland 18-10-1893 (New York Times 11-11-1893).
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374 Pacific Strife
flag still flies from the staff in front of Government Building and will be
displayed in all the Government offices on customary occasions’.16 Still on
the same day, Stevens sent a letter to the State Department in Washington
explaining his action. ‘The Hawaiian pear is now fully ripe and this is the
golden hour for the United States to pluck it’, he wrote to try to convince
his superiors of the wisdom of his action.17 He must have been busy. Also on
1 February, letters went out to the foreign consuls, informing them that at
‘the official request of the Provisional Government’, he, ‘aided by the United
States Naval Force in the Harbor of Honolulu’, had assumed ‘temporary
protectorate of the Hawaiian Islands’ and that the status of Hawaii would
be decided by negotiations in Washington.18
Stevens justif ied his move by pointing at the evil intention of other
powers, claiming that had he not raised the American flag, the British or
Japanese might have taken advantage of the situation (Dulles 1938: 176).
We have said in effect, if not in words, to other nations: “You may, if you
will, take possession of many islands in the Pacific, subdue and improve
them at your will, but in these islands, standing at our gates and fronting
our coasts, American rights and interests are before all foreign claimants,
the natives shall be protected and civilized, and American interests
defended”,
he would explain later in a speech. Hawaii had become American and
‘all dangers of dual or tripartite arrangements’ were avoided. At the same
occasion, Stevens would use a similar argument to the one he had used to
justify the landing of American marines. The Provisional Government had
insufficient security forces to maintain order. ‘Fear and panic began to make
headway in the city. A riot was feared. Millions of American property and
life and order were in peril’ (New York Times 30-6-1893).
Stevens and Dole almost got their way. In Washington Harrison and Foster
shared Stevens’ fear that the British and the Japanese might advance their
interests should the coup d’état fail. Great Britain took centre stage in such
doom scenarios and, ostensibly to forestall any British action, Harrison had
seen to it in 1891 that an American warship would frequent Honolulu (Coff-
man 2009: 112, 123). Foster would write in retrospect that he was convinced
16 Dole to Paty 1-2-1893 (ARA F.O. A-Dos box 223).
17 Message of President Cleveland to American Senate and House of Representatives, New
York Herald 19-12-1893.
18 Stevens to Paty 1-2-1893 (ARA A-Dos box 223).
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The Failed Annexation of Hawaii 375
that if the Hawaiian islands did ‘not soon become American territory, they
would inevitably pass under the control of Great Britain or Japan’ (LaFeber
1998: 146). Such anxieties, if they were sincere, had little to do with reality.
London had no intention of annexing Hawaii. Japan lacked the military
capacity to contemplate such a step and was much more concerned with
its conflict with China over Korea and the threat Russia might pose to its
own security. In line with this, Tokyo had informed Washington that it had
no intention at all of annexing Hawaii. As The New York Times (15-4-1893)
wrote, there was reason to believe that rumours about Japan’s evil intention
originated from those in Hawaii (and in the United States) seeking annexa-
tion. Japan did send a warship, the Naniwa, to Hawaii to show – as other
powers were also in the habit of doing – that it was not indifferent to the
fate of its citizens abroad when local unrest threatened. Its arrival caused
a brief panic. As Stevens was to relate, he feared a collaboration between
the Japanese and the ‘fallen queen, the lottery ring, and the palace gang’ to
restore Liliuokalani to the throne (New York Times 30-11-1893). In London
the British government saw no reason to take a similar step. British lives
and property were ‘safe under American protection’.19 The presence of the
Naniwa and the expected arrival of a British warship figured prominently
in Stevens’ defence of his action. He knew about London’s position, but
also knew, as he would state, that the British representative in Hawaii was
of a different opinion (New York Times 30-6-1893). The consul’s opposition
to the Provisional Government, was probably shared by part of the British
residents, according to one contemporary, who attributed this to their
‘jealousy of the Americans’, even by a majority of them.20
Washington instructed Stevens to cooperate with the new administra-
tion and on 15 February 1893, almost at the end of Harrison’s term of office,
a draft annexation treaty was transmitted to the Senate. Here, Republican
members tended to be in favour, while the Democrats who opposed it
were not inclined to make haste, awaiting Cleveland’s inauguration. The
Senate was given the impression that the Committee of Safety had acted
independently of any American support. To underline this, a number
of letters were supplemented to the draft of the treaty. One was from
Harrison, who vowed that his government in no way had promoted the
overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy. Another was a copy of a message
from Foster to Harrison, which incorrectly stated that the proclamation of
19 Grey in House of Commons (hansard.millbanksystem.com/commons/1893/feb/02/the-
sandwich -islands-1).
20 Morganreport.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Summary_of_Alexander (accessed 25-2-2011).
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376 Pacific Strife
the Provisional Government of Hawaii had been read before the American
mariners had disembarked. The new government had been recognised,
it claimed, only after the Queen had abdicated and after the rebels were
‘in effective possession of the government buildings, the archives, the
treasury, the barracks, the police station, and all the potential machinery
of the government’.21 As an additional argument to convince the Senate,
Harrison stressed the danger of other nations intervening: ‘It is essential
that none of the other great powers shall secure the islands. Such posses-
sion would not consist with our safety and the peace of the world’ (Dulles
1938: 177).
It seemed that within less than a month after the reading of the proc-
lamation, the plotters had achieved their aim. Change in government in
Washington, and the anti-annexation mood strengthened by the devel-
opments in Hawaii, put a spoke in the wheels. The opposition against
the United States becoming a colonial power drew upon an mixture of
idealistic, economic and racial considerations. Some took their inspiration
from American history. To them, acquiring territory outside the North
American continent violated American democratic principles and was a
betrayal of the own history as a former colony. Others preferred to make a
cost-benefit analysis; coming out in favour of free trade as an alternative to
colonial aggrandisement of which the financial burdens of conquest and
rule might well exceed the profits. Yet a third objection was a racial one.
The United States had closed its borders to Asians. Since 1882 a Chinese
Exclusion Act was in force. Incorporation of Hawaii and the Philippines
might open the door again to Asians. Or, as Henry Johnson, vice-president
of the Anti-Imperialist League (founded in June 1899) rhetorically asked:
‘Are you ready to grant citizenship to those your laws exclude from coming
into this country?’ (Miller 1982: 125). In the case of Hawaii, ‘alien, inferior,
and mongrel races’ had to be kept out (Miller 1982: 124). With respect to the
Philippines, and with an evident lack of knowledge of the ethnic map of
Asia, worry was expressed about the ‘Malays, Chinese Mestizos’ and people
of ‘other inferior race’ brought into the American system (Miller 1982: 15).
Even the spectre of Filipino Senators, who would ‘destroy’ the American
Constitution, was held out (Miller 1982: 125).
On 4 March 1893, Cleveland, a Democrat, took office. In contrast to his
predecessor, Cleveland – a man averse to Jingoism in all things, as The New
York Times (15-4-1893) described him – was not convinced that annexation
21 Message of President Cleveland to American Senate and House of Representatives, New
York Herald 19-12-1893.
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The Failed Annexation of Hawaii 377
was the right way to proceed. Within days, Cleveland, stating that a re-
examination was in order, withdrew the draft annexation treaty from
consideration in Congress and sent James Henderson Blount, chairman
of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, as special commissioner to
Hawaii with paramount powers to investigate.
From the outset Blount, who arrived in Hawaii on 29 March, may well
have been averse to annexation. He was accused of having an open ear to
the opinion of Hawaiians, but hardly making time for representatives of
the Provisional Government and other white settlers (Krout 1898: 208).
Stevens even criticised Blount’s choice of hotel. It was owned by a former
chamberlain of Kalakaua, and the owner of a firm that primarily wanted
to do business with Great Britain; in short, a venue supporters of the Pro-
visional Government were hesitant to enter (New York Times 30-11-1893).
One of Blount’s first deeds, on 1 April, was to order the withdrawal of the
American marines from the city. On the same day, in the presence of a
large crowd and a bugle sounding the notes of the retreat the American
flags were lowered and replaced by the old Hawaiian flag; creating, The
New York Times (14-4-1893) reported, ‘among the American party a feeling of
consternation not altogether unmixed with indignation’. At the Palace, the
flag-lowering ceremony was witnessed by many. As elsewhere in the Pacific
the scene was quite telling for racial relations. ‘The native and Oriental
Figure 27 The proclamation of the Republic of Hawaii on 4-7-1894
Source: Musick 1898
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378 Pacific Strife
population crowded the side-walk across the road in front of the Palace,
the Americans and Europeans were collected in the grounds or upon the
pavement adjoining’ (Krout 1898: 159).
Stevens was dismissed. Blount reported to Cleveland that Stevens must
have had prior knowledge of the coup d’état and that the majority of Hawai-
ians did not support the new government (which they indeed did not, as
was well known at that time). As he wrote to Secretary of State Gresham:
The present Government can only rest on the use of military force, pos-
sessed of most of the arms in the islands, with a small white population
to draw from to strengthen it. Ultimately it will fall without fail. It may
preserve its existence a year of two, but no longer (Musick 1898: 369-70).
Naturally Stevens had no good word for Blount. He called Blount and those
who backed him ‘extremely un-American’, ‘unpatriotic’, and acting ‘in direct
opposition to the civilizing and Christianizing influence on the Hawaiian
Islands’ and suggested that Blount ‘was aiding ultra-British interests’ (The
New York Times 30-11-1893).
Blount’s report, completed in July 1893, made Cleveland order the restora-
tion of Liliuokalani to the throne in November. Similar to the situation in
Great Britain and London’s reluctance to acquire new territory, American
expansionists branded such restraint a big mistake. For the Republican
Senator, Henry Cabot Lodge, typified in a recent study of American impe-
rialism by Immerman (2010: 130), as ‘a pivotal force in driving America’s rise
to global dominance’, the refusal to annex Hawaii was a reason to entitle
one of his articles Our Blundering Foreign Policy. Among the reasons for
him – and for Mahan – to do so was the importance Hawaii would acquire
once ships could sail the Panama Canal. Hawaii was, as Lodge would put
it, the Gibraltar of the Pacific (Immerman 2010: 140, LaFeber 1963: 409).
The person who had to guide the restoration to power of Liliuokalani
was Albert Shelby Willis, the new American envoy to Hawaii. Willis arrived
in Honolulu in November 1893. He needed all his powers of persuasion to
accomplish his task. For one, he had to convince Liliuokalani that Dole and
his associates should be pardoned. She should, as Willis said to her, ‘show
forgiveness and magnanimity’ and show that she wished to be ‘the queen
of all the people, both native and foreign born’ (Musick 1898: 376). He also
asked her to include some of her opponents in her cabinet. Initially, Lili-
uokalani refused. Law demanded that traitors should be beheaded and that
their property should fall to the state. Later, after Cleveland had impressed
upon her that she should show lenience, she agreed to an amnesty.
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The Failed Annexation of Hawaii 379
Dole, whom Cleveland addressed as his ‘great and good friend’, also stood
his ground and refused to agree to a restoration of the monarchy; indeed, he
threatened armed resistance. Cleveland was unable to force the Provisional
Government to resign and decided to leave the matter to the American
Congress. In defiance of all who had stressed the strategic importance of
Hawaii, he left no doubt that, in his opinion, Harrison had been wrong. On
18 December, referring to the ideals of America’s own history, Cleveland
wrote a lengthy message to Congress, denouncing Stevens’ action. The
annexation of islands ‘more than two thousand miles removed from our
nearest coast’ departed from an ‘unbroken American tradition’.22 Explaining
his position, he compared the statements of the previous administration
about the non-involvement of American troops in the coup d’état with
other information that ran counter to it. Cleveland concluded rather dip-
lomatically that Harrison and Congress had been ‘misled’. In strong words,
he condemned what had happened in January in Hawaii. The occupation of
Honolulu had been ‘wholly without justification’, while, according to him, it
did not appear that the Provisional Government had ‘the sanction of either
popular revolution or suffrage’. Stevens was disavowed. Citing from Stevens’
correspondence with the State Department, Cleveland depicted Stevens as
a man who had ‘zealously promoted’ an annexation of Hawaii. Stevens had
‘an ardent desire that it should become a fact accomplished by his agency
and during his ministry, and was not inconveniently scrupulous as to the
means employed to that end’.
Congress, for the time being, put an end to any annexation ambitions.
On February 1894, the House of Representatives in a resolution denounced
‘interference with the domestic affairs of an independent nation’ as ‘contrary
to the spirit of American institutions’ and spoke out against annexation or
establishing a protectorate as being ‘uncalled for and inexpedient’.23 The
Senate followed. In the Turpie Resolution of 31 May 1894, it declared that
domestic affairs in Hawaii were a matter of the Hawaiian people themselves
and that the United States should in no way interfere (adding the warning
that intervention by other powers would be ‘regarded as an act unfriendly
to the United States’).24 Congress, having decided against American rule,
also rejected American military assistance to restore Liliuokalani to the
22 Message of President Cleveland to American Senate and House of Representatives, New
York Herald 19-12-1893.
23 Resolution as cited in en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Hawaii (accessed 25-2-2011).
24 Resolution as cited in morganreport.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=The_Rest_of_The_Rest
(accessed 25-2-2011).
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380 Pacific Strife
throne; which, in view of opposition by the white settlers in Hawaii, might
not have be an easy matter.25 With incorporation into the United States
out of the question, in a show of pro-American feelings on 4 July 1894 (the
Fourth of July was enthusiastically celebrated by the white community in
Hawaii, as was Thanksgiving, complete with the consumption of turkeys),
the Provisional Government proclaimed the Republic of Hawaii.
When, in 1894, under the provisions of the Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act
a high import tariffs for sugar was instituted, Hawaii remained exempt
due to its reciprocity treaty with the United States, a circumstance highly
advantageous to the new Republic. To quell any doubt about America’s
position, Great Britain, Japan and Russia were warned for the umpteenth
time not to interfere in domestic Hawaiian affairs. Just how much the United
States cared about Hawaii became clear in January 1895 when royalists tried
to stage a coup d’état and Washington directed a naval squadron to the
islands. The event sealed the fate of Liliuokalani. After weapons had been
found in her garden she was arrested on 16 January 1895 and abdicated on
the 24 January. Liliuokalani was imprisoned in Iolani Palace, now the seat
of the republican administration, tried, found guilty of not informing the
authorities about plans to stage an insurrection involved, and was pardoned
a few months later.
25 In reaction to Cleveland’s message the Senate Foreign Relation Committee chaired by John
Tyler Morgan started an investigation into what had happened earlier that year in Hawaii. The
Morgan report, which was completed in February 1894, questioned many of the conclusions
Blount had drawn. It denounced the plans of Liliuokalani to change the Bayonet Constitu-
tion, condoned the landing of American troops, as, it concluded, at that moment there was no
government in Honolulu capable of maintaining law and order, but rejected the proclamation
of a protectorate by Stevens.
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*******************************
Note:
The Dutch played a part in helping to dethrone Queen Liliuokalani in 1893.
The above article found on JUSTOR gives evidence to Paty being part of the usurpers.
Note: The Paty's on Oahu have their name on one of the oldest Heiau's on Oahu, and the promotion of naming ancient lands after usurpers is Not O.K. Opposition to renaming ancient places to usurpers names is hereby maintained.
Other names includes Daniel Inouye, Patsy Mink, etc.
The following Book Review also written by Kees van Dijk shows the opposite of what was written above and he speaks about the Annexation of Hawaii.
Both The Failed Annexation of Hawaii was written in 2015, and the
PACIFIC STRIFE: The Great Powers and their Political and Economic Rivalries in Asia and the Western Pacific 1870–1914 | By Kees van Dijk
There was no Annexation, and because of the article appearing next, it appears that Dijk did not proofread his writings, or he's engaged in Psyops projects intending to divert information to the public.
Research incomplete.
Something stinks and I know it's Not Me...…...
aloha.
Reference:
Reference: https://pacificaffairs.ubc.ca/book-reviews/pacific-strife-the-great-powers-and-their-political-and-economic-rivalries-in-asia-and-the-western-pacific-1870-1914-by-kees-van-dijk/
https://pacificaffairs.ubc.ca/book-reviews/pacific-strife-the-great-powers-and-their-political-and-economic-rivalries-in-asia-and-the-western-pacific-1870-1914-by-kees-van-dijk/
*****************
facebook:
PACIFIC STRIFE: The Great Powers and their Political and Economic Rivalries in Asia and the Western Pacific 1870–1914 | By Kees van Dijk ---check this out...one article says there was No Annexation, then the .other one...by the same author says there was an Annexation ….Questionable, Williamson Chang Williamson Chang check this out!? 
reposted this:
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