{"id":293831,"date":"2025-04-21T12:00:38","date_gmt":"2025-04-21T11:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=293831"},"modified":"2025-04-20T10:53:50","modified_gmt":"2025-04-20T09:53:50","slug":"historian-on-how-tariffs-played-a-role-in-the-overthrow-of-the-hawaiian-kingdom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/04\/historian-on-how-tariffs-played-a-role-in-the-overthrow-of-the-hawaiian-kingdom\/","title":{"rendered":"Historian on How Tariffs Played a Role in the Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom"},"content":{"rendered":"
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King Kal\u0101kaua and members of the Reciprocity Commission who went to Washington in 1875 to secure a Reciprocity Treaty between Hawai\u02bbi and the United States. Seated, left to right: John Owen Dominis, King Kal\u0101kaua and John M. Kapena. Standing, left to right: Henry A. Peirce and Henry W. Severance. Photograph taken in 1874.<\/p><\/div>\n

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15\u00a0Apr 2025 <\/em>–\u00a0Boeing is feeling the heat from the escalating U.S.-China trade war. The aerospace company\u2019s stock was down 2.4% today after China ordered its airlines to halt jet deliveries \u2014 another fallout from President Donald Trump\u2019s latest tariff announcement.<\/p>\n

Long before Trump began using tariffs as a bargaining strategy, the Kingdom of Hawai\u02bbi wrestled with the question of how to use tariffs. In fact, tariffs played a central role in the overthrow of the monarchy.<\/p>\n

Historian and author Ronald Williams Jr. spoke with The Conversation about the long history of tariffs in Hawai\u02bbi, which he says charted the path to annexation.<\/p>\n

In the \u02bb\u014ciwi Wale, or the native-only period, there was a system of taxes, Williams explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were ahupua\u02bba… That literally was an ahu, that was an altar, where the pua\u02bba, the pig, was given. And it was symbolic of the taxes that were given to the m\u014d\u02bb\u012b, or the king, as he circled the island every year,” Williams said. “There was a spiritual side of this also, though, it wasn’t just economic. This was the people giving taxes and giving their best fish and giving their best pig and so forth to their ali\u02bbi so that their ali\u02bbi could bargain for them with the gods. It wasn’t this kind of European style of government and taxes and so forth.”<\/p>\n

As Hawai\u02bbi moved into the Kingdom Period, trade opened up after France and England signed the Anglo-Franco Proclamation in 1843. This declaration officially recognized the Hawaiian Kingdom as an independent, sovereign nation. After this, the economy of Hawai\u02bbi takes off.<\/p>\n

“I found a broadside in the Hawai\u02bbi State Archives that was listing the currencies that were accepted as legal currency in Hawai\u02bbi,” Williams said. “This was 1848 and there were 151 currencies. I didn’t know there were 151 currencies in the world, but all of that type of economic activity is going on through Hawai\u02bbi. So they kind of have to make a decision, do we tax the people to gain revenue? Or do we tariff goods that are coming into the kingdom? And they really side on that side of tariffs, trying to keep taxes relatively low for the people, and that’s what pays for the roads and the hospitals. So we start to see the tariff as kind of a way to support the economy of the Kingdom of Hawai\u02bbi without taxing the people too heavily.”<\/p>\n

In the 1860s, protests against taxes sparked conversations about increasing tariffs even further. Meanwhile, the powerful sons and grandsons of Christian missionaries began pushing not only for tariffs on incoming goods, but to remove the tariff on Hawai\u02bbi-grown sugar going to the United States as a foreign good.<\/p>\n

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King David Kal\u0101kaua’s coronation suit on 12 Feb 1883\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 The Friends of Iolani Palace<\/p><\/div>\n

“The Treaty of Reciprocity that [King] Kal\u0101kaua signs in Washington in 1874 takes tariffs off of certain goods from the United States and certain goods from Hawai\u02bbi. So it’s really just a ‘We won’t tax your sugar and your corn and your coffee and so forth’ on both sides. So it does enrich those folks in Hawai\u02bbi, but it doesn’t yet give away Pearl Harbor. But the key is that it has an end date, and so moving into the 1880s, we start to see this nervousness by the sugar companies, ‘We really need that tariff taken off again, to renew the treaty.’ And the United States says they don’t want to renew the treaty. They say it’s not a good treaty for us. It’s unfair on our side and so forth. To renew this, we’re going to have to have Pearl Harbor.<\/p>\n

“So in 1887 they literally have a coup, and the sons of the mission and the local white businessmen get together… And they sign an oath to support the white community of Honolulu against the native monarchy. They get a small militia under their control, and they literally enact a coup on July 6, 1887, taking over the government, making the m\u014d\u02bb\u012b, the king, basically a figurehead, and they renew that Treaty of Reciprocity with the United States.”<\/p>\n

As for today, Williams said, \u201cYou look and see the news and you see this idea of using tariffs as a sword to get other countries to bend to our will, and that’s exactly what had happened here in Hawai\u02bbi. Once we put all of our desires or all of our faith in the use of tariffs, then the Kingdom was lost.”<\/p>\n

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Williams works at the Hawai\u02bbi State Archives, where many of the documents he referenced can be viewed.<\/i><\/p>\n

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Go to Original – hawaiipublicradio.org<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

15\u00a0Apr 2025 –\u00a0As for today, Williams said, \u201cYou look the news and you see using tariffs as a sword to get other countries to bend to our will, and that’s exactly what happened in Hawai\u02bbi. Once we put all of our faith in the use of tariffs, the Kingdom was lost.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":293836,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[756,393,1309,1395,3466,1190,3465,70],"class_list":["post-293831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-pacific","tag-asian-pacific-history","tag-coup","tag-hawaii","tag-hawaiian-sovereignty","tag-king-kalakaua","tag-regime-change","tag-tariffs","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293831"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":293844,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293831\/revisions\/293844"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}