How a Sugar-Fueled Coup Ended the Hawaiian Kingdom and Led to U.S. Annexation

History · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: In 1893, a group of American sugar planters orchestrated the overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani, ending the Hawaiian monarchy. This event, driven by economic interests and strategic military ambitions, fundamentally altered the islands' political future, leading to formal annexation by the United States just five years later during the Spanish-American War.

The roots of the 1893 coup lay in the mid-19th-century expansion of the sugar industry. American missionaries and planters, who arrived in the islands decades earlier, gradually exerted significant influence over Hawaiian political and economic life. By 1840, a constitutional monarchy had already diminished the monarch's authority, and subsequent decades saw the kingdom increasingly entangled in treaties with the United States. The 1887 constitution, which established a U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, further solidified this foreign domination, as American investors expanded their control over the islands' affairs.

When Queen Liliuokalani ascended the throne in 1891, she attempted to reclaim sovereignty by replacing the 1887 constitution with one that restored her personal authority. This move triggered a backlash from the Committee of Safety, a group of foreign-born residents and local supporters. With the backing of U.S. Minister John L. Stevens, who deployed Marines to support the new government, the monarchy was overthrown on January 17, 1893. Sanford B. Dole, a leader of the coup, refused to step down even when President Grover Cleveland attempted to restore the Queen, instead proclaiming the independent Republic of Hawaii.

The Republic's ultimate goal was annexation, which finally occurred in 1898. The strategic necessity of Pearl Harbor during the Spanish-American War convinced the U.S. Congress to approve the move. By 1900, Hawaii was organized as a formal territory, eventually becoming the 50th state in 1959. Decades later, in 1993, the U.S. Congress issued an Apology Resolution, acknowledging the role of American agents in the overthrow and the deprivation of Native Hawaiian rights to self-determination, noting that the people never directly relinquished their claims to sovereignty over their national lands.

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