Keeping a long story as short as possible... Over the course of about 100 years, Christian missionaries and U.S. businessmen came to the islands, loved the beauty and spirit there and then didn’t want to leave. Many were clever businessmen who gained favor with the kings, then power and then control.

In the early 1800s, foreign commodities merchants dealing primarily in sugar began exerting greater and greater economic power over a relatively poor Hawaiian economy run by monarchs. Many arrangements favorable to the United States and other countries had been put in place in exchange for opening up trade routes. Favors granted by King Kalakaua to the United States included preferential economic deals and the granting of a military base, Pearl Harbor. Some of these deals, however, were made under duress. And then it got even worse.

In 1877, a group of 400 American businessmen banded together to form "The Hawaii League" with the intention of severely curtailing, if not overthrowing the monarchy. They forced King Kalakaua to sign a revised Hawaiian constitution which sharply cut his powers. This document is known as "The Bayonet Constitution" -- a document never put to a vote before the 400,000 Hawaiian people, who were said to strongly oppose its principles.

When Queen Liliuokalani was crowned in 1891 after the death of King Kalakaua, she intended to proclaim a new constitution which she had written herself, rescinding the Bayonet Constitution and restoring power to the throne and rights to the native Hawaiian people. But American missionary Lorrin Thurston and his Annexation Club were behind the scenes, plotting the overthrow of the queen and Hawai'i's annexation to the United States. In January, 1893, he and his cohorts succeeded, with the good-will wishes of President Benjamin Harrison and 163 strategically-placed American troops.

 Sanford B. Dole was appointed as president of the republic's government in 1894. Although President Grover Cleveland denounced the coup in the mid 1890s and tried to have the decision reversed, Congress overruled him and signed the annexation agreement in 1898.

There is another side to this story. The Americans asserted all along that they were working in the best economic interests of the Hawaiian people; that the trade agreements they brought to their country allowed the Hawaiians to become more stable and prosperous. The Americans felt that the dissembling Hawaiian monarchs were incapable of ruling a country by then-modern standards and leading it into the 20th century. Missionary Lorrin Thurston felt he was doing the right thing by pushing to raise the standards of people he considered, by his estimation, to be uneducated heathens. In all their arrogance and focus on their own self interests, they didn't bother to consider that these decisions were not legally theirs to make.

The Hawaiian people are lobbying hard to get their land back, which is now almost wholly owned by the Japanese and non-Hawaiian Americans. Native Hawaiians are finally coming to grips with the negative cumulative impact that colonization, World War II and commercial exploitation has had on their country and culture.

One hundred years after the over-throw and take-over, President Clinton made a formal apology to the Hawai’ians in 1993 for the shameful events of 1893 and 1898. But we doubt that America will ever concede the state back to its people.

Prior to the Bayonet Constitution, no one in Hawai’i “owned” land. Basically, all the land belonged to the Hawai’ian kingdom & people. After the laws were passed and the kingdom was over-thrown, foreigners ended up owning over 70% of the Hawai’ian Islands (the state was given 30%), leaving the native Hawai’ian people with less than 1% of their own land. Many became too poor to support themselves. Today 70% of the land in Hawaii is still owned by only 50 individuals or entities.

The natural resources that blessed Hawai'i were ultimately her downfall. But fortunately for everyone, her cultural riches are just as great. Although the country may no longer be their own, the wonderful Hawaiian culture cannot be taken away from its native people, who still are gracious enough to share it with the rest of the world.

Taken from "How The Hawaiians Lost Their Country" by Rusty DeSoto

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