![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/hawaii-poka-troops-usa2.jpg\")
<\/a>U.S. troops from USS Boston across the street from \u2018Iolani Palace January 17, 1893<\/p><\/div>\n
As a result, the U.S. \u201cself-defense\u201d perimeter expanded to include Hawaii, then menaced by what the white planter class called a ninety percent \u201cignorant majority.\u201d The dilemma for the oligarchs was that their plantations required abundant cheap labor, performed by Asian immigrants and Hawaiians, but the political system had to be in the hands of the white planter minority in order to avoid wealth redistribution via the ballot box. So Washington took up the white man\u2019s burden of guiding and assisting the Hawaiians \u2013 so \u201clow in mental culture\u201d \u2013 on their journey from grass-hut backwardness to civilized existence.<\/p>\n
Native Hawaiians, who shrank from about 350,000 when Captain Cook arrived to about 35,000 by 1893, were conspicuously ungrateful for the unsolicited favors. In 1886, Planters Monthly<\/em> editorialized that the na\u00efve Hawaiian \u201cdoes not yet realize\u201d the \u201cbounds and limits fixed\u201d and the \u201cmoral and personal obligations attending\u201d the gift their imperial benefactors were bestowing on them: \u201cThe white man has organized for the native a Government, placed the ballot in his hands, and set him up as a lawmaker and a ruler; but the placing of these powers in his hands before he knows how to use them, is like placing sharp knives, pointed instruments and dangerous tools in the hands of infants.\u201d Naturally, the children had to be put to bed if the \u201cmen of best quality\u201d were to get their imperial work done.<\/p>\n Naval Station Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (Jan. 31, 2003) — USS Carl Vinson pulls past the Arizona Memorial and the battleship USS Missouri as she enters Pearl Harbor. U.S. Navy Photo by Photographer’s Mate 2nd Class Carol Warden. (RELEASED)<\/p><\/div>\n In 1873, just thirty years after President Tyler had loudly endorsed Hawaiian independence, the Marines landed to support the colonists. When the plantation oligarchs failed to take power in the elections of 1886, they launched a coup d\u2019\u00e9tat<\/em> the following year, assisted by their military arm the Hawaiian Rifles. The \u201cBayonet Constitution\u201d imposed on the king awarded U.S. citizens the vote while banning Asians as aliens and excluding a large part of the native population with property qualifications. The Pearl River estuary became a site for a U.S. naval base.<\/p>\n The increasing numbers of Asians populating the islands inflamed \u201cyellow peril\u201d paranoia. (In 1890, Asians represented 32% of the population; three decades later they were 62%). The Hawaiian Gazette<\/em> editorialized that \u201cthe asiaticizing of the Hawaiian Islands is proceeding at such a rapid rate that those citizens who know what such a course must lead to, may well stand appalled before such a prospect.\u201d The Honolulu Advertiser<\/em> was more succinct: \u201cIt is the white race against the yellow. Nothing but annexation can save these islands.\u201d Maui lawyer Lorrin Thurston outlined the so-called demographic threat to the plantation oligarchs: \u201cFour-fifths of the property of the country is owned by foreigners, while out of an electorate of 15,000 but 4,000 are foreigners \u2013 thus placing the natives in overwhelming majority.\u201d So increasing numbers of white plantation owners favored annexation as a way of eliminating the dominant Hawaiian-Asian majority as a political force, while keeping cheap immigrant labor flowing.<\/p>\n In 1891, the U.S.S. Pensacola<\/em> arrived in Hawaii \u201cto guard American interests,\u201d which included over two-thirds of the investment capital in the dominant sugar industry. The following year an Annexationist League<\/em> was formed and laid plans for a coup d\u2019etat<\/em>, quickly supported by Washington. In January 1893, Queen Liliuokalani made a final effort to preserve Hawaiian independence, eliminating wealth qualifications and granting the right to vote exclusively to Hawaiians. On order of U.S. Minister John Stevens, a staunch annexationist known for his \u201cpartiality for white folks,\u201d U.S.\u00a0 troops landed and imposed martial law, in support of \u201cthe best citizens and nine-tenths of the property owners of the country,\u201d in the words of the expedition\u2019s commanding officer. Minister Stevens informed the U.S. Secretary of State that \u201cthe Hawaiian pear is now fully ripe and this is the golden hour to pluck it.\u201d<\/p>\n US troops in Honululu, Hawaii, 1893<\/p><\/div>\n Speaking for the \u201coverwhelming majority of conservative and responsible members of the community\u201d \u2013 at most, a few hundred wealthy men – U.S. planters and their Hawaiian collaborators declared \u201cthat independent, constitutional, representative and responsible government, able to protect itself from revolutionary uprisings and royal aggression, is no longer possible in Hawaii under the existing system of government.\u201d Queen Liliuokalani surrendered under protest to the \u201csuperior force of the United States of America\u201d and its troops, abdicating in hopes of sparing her followers the death penalty. She herself was fined $5000 and sentenced to five years at hard labor, though the sentence was commuted in 1896.<\/p>\n An annexation treaty presented by President Harrison to the U.S. Congress expired under President Cleveland after an investigation of the coup<\/em> revealed popular backing for Queen Liliuokalani rather than the provisional government of the planter class. With the continuing rapid influx of Asians to the islands portending a loss of white political control Teddy Roosevelt warned of a “crime against white civilization.” Only one remedy stood out: diluting the local Hawaiian-Asian majority by annexing the islands to the white-dominated mainland.<\/p>\n In 1898, President William McKinley confided to his secretary that \u201cWe need Hawaii, just as much and a good deal more than we did California. It is Manifest Destiny.\u201d The Missionary Record<\/em> agreed, explaining that annexation was what Jesus would have wanted. \u201cHas it ever occurred to you that Jesus was the most imperial of the imperialists?\u201d The Reverend Wallace Radcliffe gushed that the ends justified the means, that U.S. imperialism was \u201centhusiastic, optimistic and beneficial republicanism,\u201d and \u201cnot for domination but for civilization, not for absolutism but for self-government.\u201d<\/p>\n McKinley\u2019s anti-imperialist opponents sounded little better, recoiling in horror from the prospect of annexing \u201ca country an overwhelming majority of whose population consists of kanakas<\/em>, Chinese, Japanese, and Portuguese.” Nebraska Senator William Allen warned that so-called steak-and-potato Americans had been thrust into \u201cdeadly competition with those who live on a bowl of rice and a rat a day.\u201d A California representative fanned the flames of racist hysteria speaking of \u201cthe immoralities unmentionable\u201d and the \u201cnameless contagions\u201d created by \u201cAsiatics.” He read an article entitled \u201cShall We Annex Leprosy?\u201d into the Congressional Record.<\/p>\n In the more sedate senior chamber, Massachusetts Senator George Frisbie Hoar dismissed the wishes of Hawaiian natives on grounds of absurdity: \u201cIt would be as reasonable to take the vote of children in an orphan asylum or an idiot school.\u201d The sovereign Hawaiian government and its \u201cdusky Queen\u201d he declared, were \u201cthings of the past.\u201d<\/p>\n In the grip of white plantation owners and swarming with Christian missionaries, Hawaii was annexed by joint resolution of Congress.<\/p>\n Islanders wept and investors cheered.<\/p>\n Queen Liliuokalani, the last Hawaiian queen, deposed by US marines.<\/p><\/div>\n 1898: Honolulu <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Queen Liliuokalani\u2019s Lament<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIt had not entered into our hearts that these friends and allies from the United States, even with all their foreign affinities, would ever go so far as to absolutely overthrow our form of government, seize our nation by the throat, and pass it over to an alien power…\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n \u201cPerhaps there is a kind of right, depending upon the precedents of all ages, and known as the \u2018Right of Conquest,\u2019 under which robbers and marauders may establish themselves in possession of whatsoever they are strong enough to ravish from their fellows…. we have known for many years that our Island monarchy has relied upon the protection always extended to us by the policy and the assured friendship of the great American republic. \u201c <\/em><\/p>\n \u201cIf we have nourished in our bosom those who have sought our ruin, it has been because they were of the people whom we believed to be our dearest friends and allies…\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThe conspirators, having actually gained possession of the machinery of government, and the recognition of foreign ministers, refused to surrender their conquest. So it happens that, overawed by the power of the United States to the extent that they can neither themselves throw off the usurpers, nor obtain assistance from other friendly states, the people of the Islands have no voice in determining their future, but are virtually relegated to the condition of the aborigines of the American continent.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Sources:<\/strong><\/p>\n Kent, Noel J., Hawaii: Islands Under The Influence<\/em>, (Monthly Review, 1983)<\/p>\n Millis, Walter, The Martial Spirit<\/em>, (Literary Guild of America, 1931)<\/p>\n Zinn, Howard, A People’s History of the United States<\/em>, (Harper, 1995)<\/p>\n Schirmer, Daniel B., Republic or Empire: American Resistance to the Philippine War<\/em>, (Schenken Publishing, 1972)<\/p>\n Chomsky, Noam, Year 501 – The Conquest Continues<\/em>, (South End, 1993)<\/p>\n Gatewood, Willard B., “Smoked Yankees” and the Struggle For Empire<\/em>, (University of Illinois, 1971)<\/p>\n Miller, Stuart Creighton, Benevolent Assimilation – The American Conquest of the Philippines<\/em>, 1899-1903, (Yale, 1982)<\/p>\n Landau Saul (with Paul Jacobs and Eve Pell), To Serve The Devil: Colonials and Sojourners<\/em>, (Vintage, 1971)<\/p>\n Williams, William Appleman, The Roots of the Modern American Empire – A Study of the Growth and Shaping of Social Consciousness in a Marketplace Society<\/em>, (Random House, 1969)<\/p>\n Takaki, Ronald, Strangers From a Different Shore – A History of Asian Americans<\/em>, (Penguin 1989)<\/p>\n Loewen, James, Lies Across America – What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong<\/em>, (New Press, 1999)<\/p>\n _________________________________________________<\/p>\n Michael K. Smith is a political writer who co-blogs with Frank Scott at <\/em>legalienate.blogspot.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a>