the 50th state in the Union.

Hawai’i was originally an independent nation.  It eventually came to be ruled by a monarchy that had united all of the islands in the chain.  Beginning in the 1820s, Americans started to come to the islands, largely as missionaries.  Eventually, Americans became very involved in the Hawai’ian economy and were some of the biggest landowners in the country.  These Americans built a massive sugar industry on the islands.

In 1887, Americans in Hawai’i forced King Kalakaua to sign the “Bayonet Constitution,” taking many of the powers away from the monarchy.  They wanted more control over the islands for themselves.  In 1893, when Queen Liliuokalani tried to restore some of these powers, they deposed her with help from American military forces.  The islands remained independent, but under the rule of the American elites, for a few years.  Then, in 1898, the US government agreed to annex Hawai’i during the Spanish-American War.  The islands continued to be a US territory until 1959, when they achieved statehood. 

It is this history that makes many native Hawai’ians feel that their land was taken from them and that they should be given sovereignty over it once again.

U.S. involvement with the Hawaiian islands dates to Captain James Cook’s “discovery” of the island chain in 1778, during his search for a sea passage between Alaska and Asia.  Cook, of course, was a British naval officer and explorer who operated out of British territories in North America, and his discovery of the Hawaiian islands is considered more an American event than a British one.

Over the ensuing half-century, Hawaiian history became replete with imperialist objectives on the part of outsiders, including the United States, Britain, France and Russia, political intrigue and open warfare among competing clans and factions of indigenous peoples.  The islands were ruled by the Kamehameha dynasty, which established a monarchy following King Kamehameha I’s unification of the islands under his rule.  The death in 1872 of the last of the Kamehameha’s, V, and the usurpation of the monarchy by the Kalakaua presaged greater involvement in Hawaiian affairs by the United States, which sought control over Hawaii’s sugar industry – a development codified with the Reciprocity Treaty of 1875.  In the meantime, U.S. foreign policy objectives in the vast  Asia-Pacific region necessitated the establishment of military installations that would provide logistical support to the growing U.S. Navy’s expanding reach. 

While native Hawaiians continued to resist U.S. encroachment, internal disputes that flared into violence weakened Hawaiian self-rule and made it more difficult to fend off American entreaties or demands for access to Pearl Harbor.  Finally, in 1893, amid continued political instability regarding the nature of Hawaii’s government and the islands’ relationship to the United States – and prodded by American citizens who had taken up residence there – local representatives of the U.S. Government became more militarily active in interfering in internal Hawaiian politics, actions that succeeded in overthrowing the reigning monarch, Queen Lili’uokalani. 

Much political intrigue continued through the remainder of the 19th Century and into the 20th Century, with American involvement reflective of the back-and-forth nature of U.S. elective politics (President Cleveland opposed U.S. annexation of Hawaii; his successor, William McKinley, support it).  Finally, with the signing of the Newland Resolution in 1898 by President McKinley, the United States formally annexed the islands.  The U.S. Navy established its base at Pearl Harbor, the attack on which triggered the U.S. declaration of war against Japan, and Hawaii would formally ascend to statehood in 1959, becoming the 50th state.  A footnote to the history is the 1993 resolution passed by Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton officially apologizing to the native Hawaiians for U.S. actions in the islands in the decades leading up to annexation and statehood.

The United States started down the road to annexing Hawaii in 1820, when the first missionaries arrived in the islands from New England and set up shop on Maui, Oahu and the big island. At the same time, whaling ships from Massachusetts began stopping at the ports of Honolulu and Lahaina to stock up on provisions.

Their arrival coincided with the erosion of traditional Hawaiian customs and beliefs following the death of the great king Kamehameha the previous year. The power struggle between the new king and the dead king's favorite wife precipitated crises that hastened the abandonment of centuries-old traditions.

As the Hawaiian islands opened to the West, the native peoples enjoyed trading with the newcomers. This trade was boosted by the opening of large commercial sugar and pineapple plantations in the 1830s and 1840s, and the California Gold Rush made Hawaii an attractive trading partner due to its proximity to the West Coast compared to the US Eastern Seaboard. Western influence increased with the 1840 Constitution and an 1848 land act that allowed foreigners to gobble up lands previously owned by nobles and commoners alike.

Hawaii signed a most favored nation treaty with the US in 1849 that provided generous terms to Hawaiian sugar producers -- a situation that lasted until 1890, when tariff rates on foreign sugar imports hurt the Hawaiian economy greatly. The growers, mostly wealthy Americans, saw annexation as a way to make the tariff problem disappear. They started an uprising in 1893 that forced Queen Liliuokalani to abdicate, and an annexation treaty was quickly drawn up, but before it could be approved, newly inaugurated US President Grover Cleveland withdrew the treaty from Senate consideration.

President Cleveland believed the US had acted wrongly in Hawaii and was determined to place the queen back on her throne, but his attempts to do so were thwarted at every turn. Sanford Dole, who'd led the uprising that overthrew the queen, refused to step aside and declared Hawaii an independent republic. When William McKinley became president in 1897, he negotiated a treaty with the Republic of Hawaii, and when war with Spain broke out a year later, the naval base at Pearl Harbor and its strategic location for the war effort sealed Hawaii's fate. Congress quickly approved formal annexation of the islands, and by 1900, Hawaii was organized as a U.S. territory, which it remained until statehood in 1959.