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The Kingdom of Hawaii
An island monarchy that held treaties with the great powers until its overthrow in 1893
For most of the 19th century, the islands at the center of the North Pacific were governed not by a colonial power but by their own monarchs. The Hawaiian Kingdom signed treaties with the United States, Britain, France, and Japan, kept envoys abroad, adopted a written constitution in 1840, and ran schools and newspapers in the Hawaiian language. Its end came in January 1893, when a committee of mostly American and European residents deposed Queen Liliʻuokalani with the support of US Marines landed from a warship in Honolulu harbor. A century later, in 1993, the US Congress formally apologized for the overthrow, and Native Hawaiians still debate what that history means for sovereignty today.
The kingdom covered the eight main volcanic islands of the Hawaiian chain, Hawaiʻi, Maui, Oʻahu, Kauaʻi, Molokaʻi, Lānaʻi, Niʻihau, and Kahoʻolawe, plus small islets to the northwest, about 16,600 square kilometers of land in all. The archipelago lies roughly 3,800 kilometers from California, among the most isolated island groups on Earth. Trade winds soak the windward slopes in rainforest while leeward coasts stay dry, and the Big Island's Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa rise above 4,100 meters, with Kīlauea still erupting at their flank. Sandalwood, then whaling, then sugar plantations drove the economy and drew laborers from China, Japan, and Portugal. Every part of the former kingdom now lies within the US state of Hawaii.
Kamehameha I conquered most of the islands by 1795, and Kauaʻi and Niʻihau accepted his rule in 1810. The court moved from Lāhainā to Honolulu in 1845. Introduced diseases devastated the Native population, and the total count fell from an estimated 250,000 or more around 1800 to about 90,000 in the 1890 census. Sugar tied the economy to the United States through an 1875 reciprocity treaty, and in 1887 armed planters and businessmen forced King Kalākaua to accept a constitution that curbed royal power. After the 1893 overthrow, the Republic of Hawaii was proclaimed in 1894, and Congress annexed the islands by the Newlands Resolution in 1898 despite petitions of protest signed by tens of thousands of Native Hawaiians. Statehood followed in 1959.