The Conquest of Hawaii

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The Conquest of Hawaii
Julius Debuschewitz explores how Hawaii became dominated by outsiders.
THEY CAME WITH modern weapons,
strange diseases, a new religion and
greed. The white newcomers in Hawaii
used all of these to subdue the native
Hawaiians and to take the goods and
land they coveted. In the process, they
also destroyed Hawaiian royalty,
indepenndence and civilization - and it
took them less than 130 years to do so.

Bounty, and Midshipman George
Vancouver. Although Cook's men killed
the first Hawaiian they made physical
contact with, the natives were
hospitable. A number of coincidences
led Hawaiian priests on the island of
Hawaii to believe that Cook was the
god Lono, and they deified him. Several
times, Hawaiians visited the ships.
Among them was Kamehameha (“the

Cook was killed on the beach.
Nonetheless, in later years, Vancouver,
by then a captain, made several return
visits to Hawaii and became a close
friend to Kamehameha.

Unification of Hawaii
Shortly after Cook's death, a succession
struggle ended with Kamehameha
becoming chief of northwestern Hawaii.
From 1794 until 1810,
Original Settlers
Kamehameha set out to unite all
Hawaii was probably settled
the Hawaiian Islands under his
around 350AD by ocean
rule. To ensure success, he
travelers from Tahiti and the
Marquesa Islands. They
employed the help of Isaac Davis
and John Young, two Englishmen
developed an intricate social
who had been stranded on Hawaii
system, and as society
in 1790, and 14 other white men.
expanded, each domain came
under the rule of its own high
European weapons, including
cannons, supplemented his native
chief or king (ali'i 'ai-moku),
armament.
who also enforced taboo
In brutal wars, Kamehameha
(kapu), a system of "thoughshall-nots." Trade with Tahiti
conquered one island after the
other. By 181 0, Kamehameha I,
and the Marquesas continued
also known as Kamehameha the
until about 1200AD. lt was
Great, controlled all the Hawaiian
then that a powerful priest
(kahuna) named Paao led an
Islands except Kauai, which paid
him tribute. In an astute move,
expedition from Samoa and
The Death of Captain James Cook, 14 February 1779, an
Tahiti to Hawaii. Before long, unfinished painting by Johann Zoffany, circa 1795. Cook's Kamehameha also installed the
he had driven priests from
arrival in the region he dubbed the Sandwich Islands led to other defeated chiefs of the
his own death and ultimately to the death of independent
rival orders into hiding,
various islands as their respective
islands' governors. Under
established a tight relationship Hawaii.
Kamehameha's rule, Hawaiians
between chiefs and priests,
lonely one"), a chief who towered above
regained some of the peace and
introduced human sacrifice and cut off
all trade with areas outside Hawaii,
all others (he was nearly seven feet tall
tranquility they had almost forgotten in
and weighed about 300 pounds).
the many years of warfare that preceded
thereby isolating the islands for nearly
Kamehameha was most interested in the
unification.
600 years. Soon, too, war between the
English weapons and struck a friendship
different Hawaiian Islands became
common.
with Vancouver.
Sandalwood
Shortly after the re-provisioned
Meanwhile, white fur traders had made
English ships left, they encountered a
Hawaii a stop for provisioning on their
First Contact
storm on their way to Maui, and the
voyages to China. Slowly, trade began
Although there are some who claim that
the Portuguese or Spanish had
Resolution was dismasted. Cook limped
to develop. In 1812, three Bostonians
back to Hawaii. This time, the welcome
talked Kamehameha into signing a 10discovered Hawaii before Captain
was frosty. By now the natives had
year monopoly agreement on the export
James Cook's visit, most historians
figured out that Cook was no god, and
of sandalwood, which had become very
dismiss that assertion. Cook first arrived
in the Hawaiian Islands on 19 January
their provisions were low. When Cook
popular in the Orient. Until 1829,
decided to take Kalani'opu'u, the ruling
sandalwood was the most prized
1778. He was in command of two ships,
chief of the island of Hawaii, hostage to
Hawaiian commodity. And although
the Resolution and the Discovery. In his
force the return of a stolen tender, an
Kamehameha tried to remain in control
company were Master's Mate William
Bligh, who later became captain of the
already tense situation resulted in battle.

of the trade, white traders found ways to
deal directly with various chiefs.
As a result, thousands of
commoners spent their lives cutting and
hauling sandalwood to the beaches.
Food production suffered, and
starvation followed in many locales.
The heavy work actually deformed
numerous natives, and many died
miserable deaths. In addition, several
chiefs engaged in the illicit trade
became indebted to the white traders.
When Kamehameha left his court
in Oahu to tour the islands, he began to
realize the destruction caused by royal
greed. Attempting to minimize the
suffering, he worked his own taro
patches and ordered his court followers
to grow their own food.
The sandalwood trade continued
unchecked after Kamehameha's death in
1819, until the bottom dropped out of
the market in 1829.
Missionaries
After Kamehameha the Great died, his
son Liholiho succeeded him, calling
himself Kamehameha II. However,
before Liholiho took the throne, his
stepmother Ka’ahumanu browbeat him
into agreeing to appoint her as prime
minister (Kuhina Nui). Ka'ahumanu
thus became the kingdom's chief
administrator and Liholiho nothing
more than the ceremonial ruler.
Ka'ahumanu had never liked the taboos
placed on women in Hawaiian society
(such as women not being allowed to
eat with men, being segregated during
menstruation, etc.). Her first official act
was to destroy those parts of the "taboo"
system offensive to her. On 5
November 1819, Liholiho, under
pressure from Ka'ahumanu, ordered the
destruction of all the kingdom's temples
and religious images. Although some
practices and beliefs survived, this
action ended all official rituals and
taboos.
The Pioneer Missionary Company
from New England arrived in March
1820, led by Hiram Bingham and Asa
Thurston. They feared that they would
land on hostile shores filled with
heathen gods. When they heard upon
their arrival that Kamehameha was
dead, Liholiho king and the taboo
broken, they celebrated on deck of their
ship. Young, who expected trouble and
had waited in vain for Vancouver to

send English missionaries, convinced
Ka'ahumanu to let the missionaries stay
for one year only, provided they split
their group between Oahu and the Big
Island. In the long run, this proved to be
a futile effort to control the spread of
Bingham's astringent puritan religious
convictions.
In the beginning, royalty and white
businessmen were opposed to the
missionaries. However, royal opposition
ended when Ka'ahumanu became a
Christian in 1825. Ka'ahumanu had
been an island-hopping "follower" of
the new faith for some time by then, but
that did not prevent her from taking the
king of Kauai and his son as lovers and
showing up at Bingham's church with
both of them in tow. Eventually,
though, she passed a code of law based
on the Ten Commandments, and the
missionaries were well on their way to
becoming a strong influence in
Hawaiian politics. Their idea was to
educate Hawaiians (that is, teach them
to read and write with the Bible as the
textbook), transform Hawaii into a
constitutional monarchy while acting as
"advisors" to the monarchy along the
way and get rich in the process.
Ka'ahumanu died in 1832. Within a
year of her death, the king abolished all
puritan laws except those dealing with
theft and murder. The missionaries were
not impressed, particularly when the
king revived some of the ancient sports
and the sinful dance (hula) that had
been banned previously at the urging of
the missionaries.
But it was too late to turn the
missionary tide. Bingham and company
were not fond of keeping state and
church separate and ignored the ideals
expressed in the Bill of Rights in their
native country. They pushed for laws
based purely on religious beliefs and
even succeeded in making the wearing
of the flowered lei a crime.
Kamehameha III, the 10-year-old
son of Kamehameha II, was the first
Hawaiian king to be solely educated by
missionaries. Caught between two
worlds, he became miserable, vacillated
and spent most of his time inebriated.
After having been previously pressured
by Bingham and friends to forbid the
spread of Catholicism, in 1837 he
succumbed to French gunboat
diplomacy that demanded that Roman
Catholic worship be permitted in

Hawaii. In an effort to thwart the
takeover of Hawaii by a power other
than the US, Kamehameha III signed a
64-page constitution on 8 October 1840.
It had been drafted by missionary doctor
Gerrit P. Judd and Reverend William
Richards.
Among other items, the document
specified freedom of religion, defined
the authority of various government
officials and assigned all land
ownership directly to the king. With
that, the white Hawaiian-speaking
advisors of Kamehameha III took their
first legal step to gain control of
Hawaiian land. Some Hawaiians
expressed concern about foreign land
ownership, but to no avail. In April
1846, Kamehameha III announced his
new cabinet appointments. They
included Judd, Richards and a number
of other "naturalized foreigners," all of
whom were working hard to gain
control over Hawaiian land. From that
day onward, Hawaiians concerned
about foreign land ownership called
Kamehameha III "The Little King."
Whaling
The first whalers arrived in Hawaii at
about the same time the missionaries
did. Their home base was New England,
and they used Hawaii for provisioning
and also for off-loading their catch so
they could continue whaling before
returning home. By 1843, Hawaii had
become the center of the whaling
industry, with as many as 400 ships
anchored off Lahaina that year.
While Hawaiian merchants and
chiefs got richer from the whaling
industry, most native Hawaiians
suffered greatly. Hawaiians were
excellent mariners, and young men were
hired as sailors (or shanghaied to fill in
for white deserters); they often left their
families behind. Large numbers of
native sailors did not return. Prostitution
flourished, and many native women
were left barren by the very diseases
they spread to others. Although some
laws were enacted to curb prostitution
and the sale of liquor while "great
numbers of ships" were in port,
Kamehameha III did nothing to respond
to the concerns raised by many
Hawaiians. Whaling thus contributed to
the steady decline of the native
Hawaiian population. In 1778, when
Cook arrived in the Islands, the native

population numbered between 200,000
and 300,000. A census conducted by
missionaries in 1843 counted 100,273
natives. By 1853, after the smallpox
that had arrived on the ship Charles
Mallory had taken its toll (and Judd had
refused to sign an order for the
immunization of the dying native
population), fewer than 60,000 native
Hawaiians remained.
Land Ownership
Pressure from Judd and other missionary-rnerchants led Kamehameha III
to proclaim the 1848 Great Mahele, a
land reform that made it possible for
foreigners to own Hawaiian land
outright and took land away from the
chiefs. Commoners could obtain title to
a three-acre parcel of land by filling out
a number of forms and paying a tax
called "responsibility" (kuleana). The
idea was to establish a large number of
small farms, since the soil was very
fertile and the growing season long. The
concept of land ownership, however,
was alien to Hawaiian commoners.
They utilized the land to grow the
things they needed, but they had never
been in a position to own land and did
not understand the need to do so now.
Consequently, a large number of
commoners failed to fill out the forms
to register their titles. Of those who did,
many did not have the necessary money
to pay the tax.
Not surprisingly, Judd managed to
"buy" a 7.61-acre parcel of choice land
10 months before land could be
acquired legally. The Mahele also
allowed those foreigners who had
acquired land through intermarriage
with native families to greatly expand
their land holdings. In less than four
years, 16 well-known members of the
Congressional Mission had bought
7,888 acres of prime land on Oahu
alone. Judd ended up with 5,295 acres,
and several missionaries became real
estate agents in their spare time. The
Great Mahele resulted in a return to
feudalism for the Hawaiian commoner,
whose life and land would soon be
controlled by the whites.
Sugar
Kamehameha V (Lot) was the last of
the Kamehameha bloodline. He created
a business-friendly climate, and during
his reign Hawaii experienced a

favorable trade balance for the first time
in history.
In this period, the demand for
Hawaiian sugar, commercially produced
since 1835, increased sharply due to the
destruction of sugar plantations during
the US Civil War. Sugar growing had
replaced whaling as the main source of
income after whaling began to decline
due to the discovery of oil in
Pennsylvania, which lessened the
demand for whale oil. Because the
native population had shrunk so
drastically, Chinese "Coolies" were
imported to work the cane fields. This
set a trend for the importation of foreign
workers, which soon included other
Asians as well as Europeans. Lot
recognized the potential problems of
growing immigration, but he could not
stop it.
King Lunalilo, cousin of
Kamehameha V, became the first
elected Hawaiian monarch and
ascended the throne on 8 January 1873.
Within six months he became very ill,
which didn't stop the white businessmen
--mostly descendants from missionaries
with an interest in the sugar trade--from
pushing for a reciprocity treaty with the
US that would see Pearl Harbor ceded
to the US. Lunalilo agreed at first, but
withdrew his support when native
opposition increased. His popularity
with his own people took another
nosedive when he signed a bill to
segregate Hawaiian victims of leprosy,
a disease introduced by Asian cane field
workers. Lunalilo died on 3 February
1874 at age 39.
Again the legislature met to choose
a monarch, namely King Kalakaua.
Although anti-American prior to his
election, Kalakaua had made a secret
deal with the sugar planters: he would
negotiate a reciprocity agreement with
the US if they supported his election.
They held up their end of the deal, and
Kalakaua went to Washington to
negotiate the Reciprocity Treaty that
went into effect on 9 September 1876.
The treaty closely bonded the "sugar
kings" to the US government. When
news of Kalakaua's sell-out to the
whites became known in Honolulu,
native outrage was such that he needed
a detachment of 150 US marines to act
as the royal bodyguard.
Kalakaua soon realized that he had
to change the political mood of his

native subjects. He sought--and found -help from an interesting duo: industrial
baron Claus Spreckels (who had arrived
in Hawaii to buy land to start his own
sugar plantation) and Mormon
missionary-turned-politician Walter
Murray Gibson. These men helped
Kalakaua to strengthen his hold on a
rather shaky throne, and became
wealthier and more influential
themselves.
Spreckels, in particular, soon became a
thorn in the side of established local
businessmen. A newcomer to Hawaii,
he had a knack for playing their game
on their turf and beating them at every
turn. After arriving in Hawaii on 20
August 1876, he bought up all the raw
sugar he could get his hands on and sent
it to his refinery in San Francisco for
processing. By the end of that year, he
had struck a friendship with Kalakaua
and taken possession of--or signed longterm leases for--more than 30,000 acres
of land on Maui. He spent $500,000 to
build the first irrigation ditch on Maui,
and his mill was the first structure with
electrical light in the kingdom. And
while other plantation owners
condemned the natives for being too
lazy to work in the cane fields, those
toiling for Spreckels did so productively
and without complaints.
Spreckels took big business risks,
built wharves and railroads, and
imported expertise from the US and
Europe. He also started his own
steamship company, which allowed him
to export his sugar to any port in the
world. As his business empire and
influence grew, so did the dislike the
other "sugar kings" (by 1880 there were
63 plantations in Hawaii) and
missionary-businessmen had for him.
Kalakaua's new friends were
actively engaged in politics on his side,
though they could not keep trouble at
bay forever. The king traveled all over
the world at inopportune times and
decided to lavishly "rebuild" 101ani
Palace. His extravagancies gave more
ammunition to his detractors, as did his
plan to become the sovereign ruler of
the entire Pacific. Spreckels, who was
able to control parliament for some time
because both king and prime minister
owed him large sums of money, had a
falling-out with Kalakaua and left
Hawaii on 23 October 1886. Kalakaua

lost a friend; Hawaii lost one of its
finest and most humane businessmen.
End of an Era
Spreckels' absence resulted in financial
chaos for the government. The
American missionary-businessmen
formed a clandestine group called the
Hawaiian League. Its purpose was to
force the king to cease to rule and
become a mere figurehead, or take the
consequences. They drafted a new
constitution, and when they failed to
reach their goal politically, they joined
with other pro-annexationists and
formed the Honolulu Rifles, a militia
group.
In June 1887, amid rumors that
Kalakaua was fortifying the palace, the
group made its move. Backed by armed
force, it presented the king with the new
constitution that became known as the
Bayonet Constitution. It removed most
powers from the king, disenfranchised
most native Hawaiians, permitted white
foreigners to vote in elections and
ensured that Japanese, Chinese and
other Asian residents of Hawaii could
not vote.
In 1890, the US Congress passed
the McKinley Tariff Act, which
removed the tariff on raw sugar entering
the US and essentially negated the
reciprocity agreement, causing financial
panic in Hawaii. Kalakaua went to San
Francisco as the guest of the US
Government to discuss the possibility of
another reciprocity agreement. Amid
rumors that he had come to sell his
kingdom or sign an annexation
agreement, he suffered a stroke and
consequently died on 20 January 1891.
Queen Lili'uokalani succeeded her
brother Kalakaua and was the last of the
Hawaiian monarchs. She ignored the
advice of her long-time friend Bishop to
leave the responsibilities of government
to the Cabinet. When the Legislature of
1892 passed bills licensing the sale of
opium and granting a franchise to
establish a lottery, Lili'uokalani's fate
was sealed.
After the end of the final session of
the Legislature of 1892, the queen
assembled her ministers at Iolani Palace
and asked for their assent to introduce a
new constitution. It favored Hawaiians
and would restore much of the
monarchy's power, and had been

demanded in a petition signed by more
than two-thirds of Hawaii's registered
voters. The ministers, having promised
to support her three days earlier, asked
for two weeks to study the issue. The
threat of the new constitution, coupled
with the prevailing financial panic and
the signing of the lottery and opium
bills, was too much for the missionarybusinessmen. The time to overthrow the
monarchy had arrived. The queen's old
friend Bishop--who controlled nearly 11
percent of the major Hawaiian Islands'
land mass--quickly turned on her,
calling her "deceitful and treacherous."
Two days after the meeting
between the queen and her ministers,
the Citizen's Committee of Safety--in
reality the old Hawaiian League under a
fancy new name--called on John L.
Stevens, US Minister to the Hawaiian
Islands, for armed help to quell a
rebellion, a rebellion that did not exist.
Conspiring with the Committee,
Stevens ordered US troops to land at
15:00 hours on 16 January 1893. While
his troops surrounded Iolani Palace and
Ali'iolani, the Committee's militia took
over the police station, Royal Palace
and the government building with its
archives and cabinet offices.
Lili'uokalani temporarily surrendered
her throne under protest.
White Government
A provisional government took over in
Hawaii. Sanford Dole, head of the
Supreme Court, became its president.
US Minister Stevens officially
recognized the new government. Lorrin
Thurston led a group of annexationists
to Washington to ask for territorial
status but was rebuffed by President
Cleveland, who demanded that the
monarchy be restored. The group
ignored Cleveland's demands, and the
provisional government created the
Republic of Hawaii.
Spreckels, whose life had been
threatened, had fled Hawaii and was in
Washington fighting to have
Lili'uokalani restored to the throne. At
the same time, Bishop was there, busily
trying to negotiate Hawaii's annexation.
It did not bother him in the least that he
thereby violated the oath he had taken
when he swore to support the
Constitution and the laws of the
Hawaiian Islands.

The new Republic brought in a
constitution that would place the whites
firmly in control. Not surprisingly, over
two-thirds of the new government's
ministers were descendants of the
Congregational ministers who had
arrived in Hawaii some 70 years earlier.
However, native Hawaiians still felt
loyalty to the monarchy, and in 1895
Robert Wilcox led a counter-revolution.
The effort was short-lived. Some shots
were fired, but the police prevailed. A
small cache of weapons was found in
Lili'uokalani's garden, and on 16
January 1895 the queen was arrested,
charged with misprision of treason and
confined to Iolani Palace. Chief Justice
Albert Francis Judd stole all of her
papers, including the signed petition for
a new constitution. The Hawaiian
monarchy was no more.
Lili'uokalani was tried and
convicted by military tribunal. She was
sentenced to a $5,000 fine and five
years of hard labor. The sentence was
never carried out, and she was released
in 1897.
In 1898, US President McKinley
signed the resolution that annexed
Hawaii to the US. Hawaii became a
territory of the US in 1900. According
to the US Bureau of Census, there were
only 29,799 native Hawaiians left in the
Islands at that time. Both the Hawaiian
native population and its culture were
near extinction. The annexationists,
good missionary-businessmen all, had
finally reached their goal. In 1959,
Hawaii became the 50th American
State.
- History Magazine June/July 2003
Further Reading
•Barnes, Phil. A Concise History of the
Hawaiian Islands (Hilo, Hawaii:
Petroglyph Press, Ltd.,1999).
•Daws, Gavan. Shoal of Time
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,
1968).
•Dougherty, Michael. To Steal a
Kingdom (Waimanalo, Hawaii: Island
Style Press, 1992).
•Joesting, Edward. Kauai: The Separate
Kingdom (Honolulu: Uniiversity of
Hawaii Press, 1984).

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you the most about what you read? Do NOT merely restate or summarize parts of the article. How does the
topic of this article relate to your life? What challenges have you or someone you know faced that are
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