Title: Hawaii’s Monarchy Overthrown With U.S. Support, 120 Years Ago - HISTORY
Headings: Hawaii’s Monarchy Overthrown With U.S. Support, 120 Years Ago
Hawaii’s Monarchy Overthrown With U.S. Support, 120 Years Ago
Sugar barons and businessmen overthrew Hawaii’s longstanding monarchy 120 years ago, setting the stage for U.S. annexation.

Content: British imperialists even carried out a brief takeover in 1843 before their superiors restored the kingdom’s sovereignty. Under King Kalakaua’s reign from 1874 to 1891, Hawaii ceded away the rights to Pearl Harbor and signed a free-trade agreement with the United States that greatly benefited the islands’ sugar planters, who came to control about four-fifths of all arable land. Yet the white business class remained unsatisfied. Under the threat of force, they pushed through a so-called Bayonet Constitution that turned the monarch into little more than a figurehead. The constitution also enfranchised more whites even as it diluted the voting power of native Hawaiians and Asian immigrants. Kalakaua, meanwhile, drove the kingdom and himself deep into debt with such expenditures as the construction of a new palace. Nicknamed the “Merrie Monarch,” he once allegedly accepted $155,000 in bribes from two Chinese businessmen seeking an opium license. Kalakaua’s sister, Liliuokalani, took the throne upon his death in 1891 and soon began working on a replacement to the Bayonet Constitution that would restore the monarch’s power and give only Hawaiian subjects the right to vote. After failing to get her new constitution through the legislature, Liliuokalani planned to enact it by royal fiat on January 14, 1893. Although she ended up deferring action on the advice of her handpicked cabinet, 13 men of American, British and German descent became so concerned about their future business and political prospects that they met at a Honolulu law office and arranged to depose her.