Hawaii elected two of its kings before businessmen toppled its last queen
For nearly a century Hawaii was an internationally recognised kingdom with a written constitution and, twice, monarchs chosen by vote. Its end came in January 1893, when a committee of mostly American-descended residents, backed by US Marines, deposed Queen Liliʻuokalani. A century later the US Senate formally apologised.
Polynesian voyagers from the Marquesas or Tahiti settled the islands, perhaps as late as 900–1200 CE according to recent analyses, and for centuries separate chiefs ruled each island. Captain Cook arrived on his third voyage and was killed at Kealakekua Bay in 1779. From 1782 the warrior chief Kamehameha waged a 15-year campaign, aided by Western guns and advisers such as John Young, founding the kingdom in 1795. Kauaʻi resisted, helped by a storm and a plague among his troops, until its chief pledged loyalty in 1810.
The Kamehameha line brought rapid change. Missionaries and whalers arrived under Kamehameha II. Kamehameha III, the longest-reigning monarch, issued the first constitution in 1840 and the Great Mahele land reform of 1848, while imported diseases such as smallpox and measles devastated Native Hawaiians. When Kamehameha V died in 1872 without an heir, after Bernice Pauahi Bishop turned the crown down, the legislature elected William Lunalilo. He died of tuberculosis at 39, and a bitter 1874 vote made David Kalākaua king over Queen Emma; American and British troops put down riots by her supporters.
Power then drained away from the throne. In 1887 an armed group of settlers forced Kalākaua to accept what became known as the Bayonet Constitution, drafted by Lorrin Thurston. It stripped the king of most personal authority, raised property requirements for voting and excluded Asians, confining the vote largely to wealthy Hawaiians and Europeans. Liliʻuokalani inherited the crown in 1891 during an economic slump worsened by the US McKinley Tariff, and she moved to replace that constitution.
Her opponents struck first. The Committee of Safety, thirteen residents including five American nationals, seized control after the US minister John Stevens landed Marines and sailors on January 16, 1893, citing threats to American property; historians suggest business interests wanted annexation for better trade terms. Sanford Dole headed the new government, the United States annexed the islands on July 7, 1898, and in 1993 Congress acknowledged that Native Hawaiians never gave up their claim to sovereignty, a view that fuels today's sovereignty movement.
Source: Hawaiian Kingdom
