jan 1, 1892 - U.S.-backed planters overthrow Hawaii's Queen Liliuokalani

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Hawaiian queen Liliuokalani (1838–1917) was the great-granddaughter of Keaweaheulu, founder of the Kamehameha dynasty that had ruled the islands since the late 1700s. Liliuokalani assumed the throne after her brother’s death in 1891. As an outspoken critic, however, of treaties ceding power to U.S. economic interests, she was deposed three years later by a cabal of sugar planters who established a republic. When secret plans to revolt and restore the monarchy were discovered, the queen was imprisoned for a year in Iolani Palace. She lived the remainder of her life in Hawaii but never regained power. Fluent in English and influenced from childhood by Congregational missionaries, she used this background to advocate for her people; in her book Hawaii’s Story by Hawaii’s Queen (1898), she appealed for justice from fellow Christians.

Dewey’s victory directed attention to Hawaii, where a horde of resident American sugar planters had forcibly laid the groundwork for annexation. Nominally independent, the Hawaiian islands had long been subject to U.S. influence. An 1876 treaty between the United States and the island’s monarch allowed Hawaiian-produced sugar to enter the U.S. market without tariff payments, and Hawaii pledged to sign no such agreement with any other power. When this treaty was renewed in 1887, Hawaii also granted a long-coveted lease for a U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor. Four years later, succeeding her brother as Hawaii’s monarch, Queen Liliuokalani made known her frustration with these treaties. In response, an Annexation Club led by U.S.-backed planters organized secretly and in 1892, with the help of U.S. Marines, overthrew the queen. They then negotiated a treaty of annexation, but Grover Cleveland rejected it when he entered office in 1893. Cleveland declared that it would violate America’s “unbroken tradition” against acquiring territory overseas.

Dewey’s victory in Manila delivered what the planters wanted: Hawaii acquired strategic value as a halfway station to the Philippines. In July 1898, Congress voted for annexation, over the protests of Hawaii’s deposed queen. “Oh, honest Americans,” she pleaded, “as Christians hear me for my down-trodden people! Their form of government is as dear to them as yours is precious to you. Quite as warmly as you love your country, so they love theirs.” But to the great powers, Hawaii was not a country. One congressman dismissed Hawaii’s monarchy as “absurd, grotesque, tottering” and declared that the “Aryan race” would “rescue” the islands.

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