Overthrow ch1 notes

Timeline

1778 Jan 18 British sailor Captain James Cook arrives. Violent conflict → Brits leave. Epidemic of venereal disease.

1820 – 1850 Presbyterians and Congregationalists from New England try to convert this island of hethans. Some missionaries and children of missionaries wanted to buy land to grow sugar. How do you buy land that is communally owned?

1840s – King Kamehameha III divides communal land into parcels and sell it to missionaries and sons of missionaries.

How do you sell sugar to America when they impose high sugar tariffs?

1850s – planters ask the US to annex Hawaii. US says no. Planters ask for reciprocity treaty aka a free-trade agreement. US says no.

1854 – John Leavitt Stevens, future minister to Hawaii, purchases the newspaper “The Kennebec Journal” with future Secretary of State, James G. Blaine. They are close friends.

1876 – King Kalakaua goes to Washington and offers exclusive military bases in Hawaii in exchange for reciprocity treaty. President Ulysses S. Grant says yes.

“It is agreed, on the part of His Hawaiian Majesty, that so long as this treaty shall remain in force, he will not lease or otherwise dispose of or create any lien upon any port, harbor, or other territory in his dominions, or grant any special privliges or rights of use therin, to any other power, stat, or government, nor make any treaty by which any other nation shall obtain the same privliges, relative to the admission of articles free of duty, hereby secured to the United States”

Hawaii is now an American protectorate. Hawaiians protested the treaty. The US offered the king 150 marines as bodyguards for the king.

Who will do the labor of growing the sugar? The white men? The Hawaiians? No. The planters import Japanese and Chinese laborers. The planters, now a minority, vehemently oppose democracy.

1887 January – the US begins leasing Pearl Harbor.

1887 June – rebellion is followed by the Bayonet Constitution, which imposed a wealth requirement to vote and otherwise secured the planters’ power.

1889 – President Harrison appoints James G. Blaine as Secretary of State

1890 – McKinley Tariff allowed sugar from all countries to enter the US duty-free and compensated domestic producers with a “bounty” of 2 cents per pound.

1891 January – puppet king Kalakaua dies, long live Queen Lili’uokalani.

1892 – Lorrin Thurston founded the Annexation club and secretly visited Washing to search for support for Annexation. He talked to the Secretary of State, James G. Blaine, who tells him to call on the secretary of the navy, Benjamin Tracy. Tracy takes Thurston to the White House and then leaves Thurston to speak privately with President Harrison. Tracy returns and tells Thurston “I have explained fully to the President what you have said to me, and have this to say to you: the President does not think he should see you, but he authorizes me to say to you that, if conditions in Hawai’i compel you to act as you have indicated, and you come to Washington with an annexation proposition, you will find an exceedingly sympathetic administration here.”

Felix McCurley, American navel commander at honolulu, promised to “fully cooperate and sustain him in any action he may take.”

1893 – Queen Lili’uokalani’s cabinet members told her to draft a new constitution.

1893 January 14 – she proposed a new constitution, one that reduced property requirements to vote and disenfranchised Americans and Europeans. The cabinet informs her political enemies. Late afternoon, Thurston and comrades create a “Committee of Safety” to decide how to deal with the situation. The Committee of Safety decides that annexation is the solution. That evening, Thurston and William Smith visit American minister John Stevens to ask for his help. He agrees.

1893 January 16 Thurston and co ask Stevens to call in American troops. The troops land that afternoon.

Queen Lili’uokalani abdicated. Sanford Dole became the new leader of Hawai’i. The next president, Grover Cleaveland, would denounce the actions of Minister Stevens and the Committee of Safety as an "act of war, committed with the participation of a diplomatic representative of the United States and without authority of Congress."

Thurston had overthrown the Hawaiian monarchy with a core group of fewer than 30 men. They might not have succeeded, let alone attempted the coup, if not for minister Stevens. And white it is true that Stevens acted without explicit orders from Washington, he was doing what the president and the secretary of state wanted.

Sources:

Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq by Stephen Kinzer

The Indigenous Experience: Global Perspectives edited by Roger cA Maaka and Chris Andersen

Wikipedia: