Hawaiʻi is one of two states that were widely recognized independent nations prior to joining the United States. The Kingdom of Hawaiʻi was sovereign from 1810 until 1893 when the monarchy was overthrown by resident American and European capitalists and landholders. Hawaiʻi was an independent republic from 1894 until August 12, 1898, when it officially became a territory of the United States. Hawaiʻi was admitted as a U.S. state on August 21, 1959.
Based on archaeological evidence, the earliest habitation of the Hawaiian Islands dates to around 1000–1200 CE, probably by Polynesian settlers from the Marquesas Islands.[dubious – discuss] A second wave of migration from Raiatea and Bora Bora took place in the 11th century. The date of the human discovery and habitation of the Hawaiian Islands is the subject of academic debate. Some archaeologists and historians think it was a later wave of immigrants from Tahiti around 1000 CE who introduced a new line of high chiefs, the kapu system, the practice of human sacrifice, and the building of heiau. This later immigration is detailed in Hawaiian mythology (moʻolelo) about Paʻao. Other authors say there is no archaeological or linguistic evidence for a later influx of Tahitian settlers and that Paʻao must be regarded as a myth.
The history of the islands is marked by a slow, steady growth in population and the size of the chiefdoms, which grew to encompass whole islands. Local chiefs, called aliʻi, ruled their settlements, and launched wars to extend their influence and defend their communities from predatory rivals. Ancient Hawaiʻi was a caste-based society, much like that of Hindus in India. Population growth was facilitated by ecological and agricultural practices that combined upland agriculture (manuka), ocean fishing (makai), fishponds and gardening systems. These systems were upheld by spiritual and religious beliefs, like the lokahi, that linked cultural continuity with the health of the natural world. According to Hawaiian scholar Mililani Trask, the lokahi symbolizes the “greatest of the traditions, values, and practices of our people…There are three points in the triangle—the Creator, Akua; the peoples of the earth, Kanaka Maoli; and the land, the ‘aina. These three things all have a reciprocal relationship.”
The 1778 arrival of British explorer Captain James Cook marked the first documented contact by a European explorer with Hawaiʻi; early British influence can be seen in the design of the flag of Hawaiʻi, which bears the Union Jack in the top-left corner. Cook named the archipelago “the Sandwich Islands” in honor of his sponsor John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, publishing the islands’ location and rendering the native name as Owyhee. The form ‘Owyhee’ or ‘Owhyhee’ is preserved in the names of certain locations in the American part of the Pacific Northwest, among them Owyhee County and Owyhee Mountains in Idaho, named after three native Hawaiian members of a trapping party who went missing in the area.
It is very possible that Spanish explorers arrived in the Hawaiian Islands in the 16th century, two hundred years before Cook’s first documented visit in 1778. Ruy López de Villalobos commanded a fleet of six ships that left Acapulco in 1542 bound for the Philippines, with a Spanish sailor named Juan Gaetano aboard as pilot. Depending on the interpretation, Gaetano’s reports describe an encounter with either Hawaiʻi or the Marshall Islands. If López de Villalobos’ crew spotted Hawaiʻi, Gaetano would thus be considered the first European to see the islands. Some scholars have dismissed these claims due to a lack of credibility.
Nonetheless, Spanish archives contain a chart that depicts islands at the same latitude as Hawaiʻi, but with a longitude ten degrees east of the islands. In this manuscript, the island of Maui is named La Desgraciada (The Unfortunate Island), and what appears to be Hawaiʻi Island is named La Mesa (The Table). Islands resembling Kahoʻolawe’, Lānaʻi, and Molokaʻi are named Los Monjes (The Monks). For two-and-a-half centuries, Spanish galleons crossed the Pacific from Mexico along a route that passed south of Hawaiʻi on their way to Manila. The exact route was kept secret to protect the Spanish trade monopoly against competing powers. Hawaiʻi thus maintained independence, despite being situated on a sea route east–west between nations that were subjects of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, an empire that exercised jurisdiction over many subject civilizations and kingdoms on both sides of the Pacific.
Despite such contested claims, Cook is generally credited as being the first European to land at Hawaiʻi, having visited the Hawaiian Islands twice. As he prepared for departure after his second visit in 1779, a quarrel ensued as Cook took temple idols and fencing as “firewood”, and a minor chief and his men stole a boat from his ship. Cook abducted the King of Hawaiʻi Island, Kalaniʻōpuʻu, and held him for ransom aboard his ship to gain return of Cook’s boat, as this tactic had previously worked in Tahiti and other islands. Instead, the supporters of Kalaniʻōpuʻu attacked, killing Cook and four sailors as Cook’s party retreated along the beach to their ship. The ship departed without retrieving the stolen boat.
After Cook’s visit and the publication of several books relating his voyages, the Hawaiian Islands attracted many European and American visitors: explorers, traders, and eventually whalers, who found the islands to be a convenient harbor and source of supplies. These visitors introduced diseases to the once-isolated islands, causing the Hawaiian population to drop precipitously. Native Hawaiians had no resistance to Eurasian diseases, such as influenza, smallpox and measles. By 1820, disease, famine and wars between the chiefs killed more than half of the Native Hawaiian population. During the 1850s, measles killed a fifth of Hawaiʻi’s people.
Historical records indicated the earliest Chinese immigrants to Hawaiʻi originated from Guangdong Province; a few sailors had arrived in 1778 with Captain Cook’s journey, and more arrived in 1789 with an American trader who settled in Hawaiʻi in the late 18th century. It is said that leprosy was introduced by Chinese workers by 1830, and as with the other new infectious diseases, it proved damaging to the Hawaiians.
During the 1780s, and 1790s, chiefs often fought for power. After a series of battles that ended in 1795, all inhabited islands were subjugated under a single ruler, who became known as King Kamehameha the Great. He established the House of Kamehameha, a dynasty that ruled the kingdom until 1872.
After Kamehameha II inherited the throne in 1819, American Protestant missionaries to Hawaiʻi converted many Hawaiians to Christianity. Scholars have argued that one function of missionary work was to “civilize” and “purify” perceived heathenism in the New World. This carried into Hawai’i. According to research by historical archaeologist James L. Flexner, “missionaries provided the moral means to rationalize conquest and wholesale conversion to Christianity.” However, rather than abandoning traditional beliefs entirely, most native Hawaiians merged their Indigenous religion with Christianity. Missionaries used their influence to end many traditional practices of the people, including the kapu system, the prevailing legal system before European contact, and heiau, or ‘temples’ to religious figures.Kapu, which typically translates to “the sacred”, refers to social regulations (like gender and class restrictions) that were based upon spiritual beliefs. Under the guidance of missionaries, laws against gambling, consuming alcohol, dancing the hula, breaking the Sabbath, and polygamy were enacted. Without the kapu system, many temples and priestly statuses were jeopardized, idols were burned, and participation in Christianity increased. When King Kamehameha III inherited the throne at twelve years old, he was pressured by his advisors to merge Christianity with traditional Hawaiian ways. Under the guidance of his kuhina nui (his mother and coregent Elizabeth Ka’ahumanu) and British allies, Hawaiʻi turned into a Christian monarchy with the signing of the 1840 Constitution.Hiram Bingham I, a prominent Protestant missionary, was a trusted adviser to the monarchy during this period. Other missionaries and their descendants became active in commercial and political affairs, leading to conflicts between the monarchy and its restive American subjects. Catholic and Mormon missionaries were also active in the kingdom, but they converted a minority of the Native Hawaiian population. Missionaries from each major group administered to the leper colony at Kalaupapa on Molokaʻi, which was established in 1866 and operated well into the 20th century. The best known were Father Damien and Mother Marianne Cope, both of whom were canonized in the early 21st century as Roman Catholic saints.
The death of the bachelor King Kamehameha V—who did not name an heir—resulted in the popular election of Lunalilo over Kalākaua. Lunalilo died the next year, also without naming an heir. In 1874, the election was contested within the legislature between Kalākaua and Emma, Queen Consort of Kamehameha IV. After riots broke out, the United States and Britain landed troops on the islands to restore order. King Kalākaua was chosen as monarch by the Legislative Assembly by a vote of 39 to 6 on February 12, 1874.
In 1887, Kalākaua was forced to sign the 1887 Constitution of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi. Drafted by white businessmen and lawyers, the document stripped the king of much of his authority. It established a property qualification for voting that effectively disenfranchised most Hawaiians and immigrant laborers and favored the wealthier, white elite. Resident whites were allowed to vote but resident Asians were not. As the 1887 Constitution was signed under threat of violence, it is known as the Bayonet Constitution. King Kalākaua, reduced to a figurehead, reigned until his death in 1891. His sister, Queen Liliʻuokalani, succeeded him; she was the last monarch of Hawaiʻi.
In 1893, Queen Liliʻuokalani announced plans for a new constitution to proclaim herself an absolute monarch. On January 14, 1893, a group of mostly Euro-American business leaders and residents formed the Committee of Safety to stage a coup d’état against the kingdom and seek annexation by the United States. United States Government Minister John L. Stevens, responding to a request from the Committee of Safety, summoned a company of U.S. Marines. The Queen’s soldiers did not resist. According to historian William Russ, the monarchy was unable to protect itself. In Hawaiian Autonomy, Queen Liliʻuokalani states:
In a message to Sanford B. Dole, Queen Liliʻuokalani states:
The treason trials of 1892 brought together the main players in the 1893 overthrow. American Minister John L. Stevens voiced support for Native Hawaiian revolutionaries, William R. Castle, a Committee of Safety member, served as a defense counsel in the treason trials, Alfred Stedman Hartwell, the 1893 annexation commissioner, led the defense effort, and Sanford B. Dole ruled as a supreme court justice against acts of conspiracy and treason.
On January 17, 1893, a small group of sugar and pineapple-growing businessmen, aided by the American minister to Hawaii and backed by heavily armed U.S. soldiers and marines, deposed Queen Liliʻuokalani and was replaced by a provisional government composed of members of the Committee of Safety. According to scholar Lydia Kualapai and Hawaii State Representative Roy Takumi, this was a committee formed against the will of Indigenous Hawaiian voters, who constituted the majority of voters at the time and consisted of “thirteen white men” according to scholar J Kehaulani Kauanui. The United States Minister to the Kingdom of Hawaii (John L. Stevens) conspired with U.S. citizens to overthrow the monarchy. After the overthrow, Lawyer Sanford B. Dole, a citizen of Hawaii and cousin to James Dole, owner of Hawaiian Fruit Company, a company that benefited from the annexation of Hawaii, became President of the Republic when the Provisional Government of Hawaiʻi ended on July 4, 1894.
Controversy ensued in the following years as the Queen tried to regain her throne. Scholar Lydia Kualapai writes that Queen Lili’uokalani had “yielded under protest not to the counterfeit Provisional Government of Hawaii but to the superior force of the United States of America” and wrote letters of protest to the President requesting a recognizance of allyship and a reinstatement of her sovereignty against the recent actions of the Provisional Government of Hawaii. Following the January 1893 coup that deposed Queen Liliʻuokalani, a significant number of royalists were preparing to overthrow the white-led Republic of Hawai’i oligarchy. Hundreds of rifles were covertly shipped to Hawaii and hidden in caves nearby. As armed men were coming and going, the rebel group was discovered by a Republic of Hawai’i patrol. On January 6, 1895, gunfire began on both sides and later the rebels were surrounded and captured. Throughout the following 10 days several skirmishes occurred, until the last armed opposition surrendered or were captured. The Republic of Hawai’i took 123 men into custody as Prisoners of War. The mass arrest of nearly 300 more men and women as political prisoners including Queen Liliʻuokalani was intended to incapacitate the political resistance against the ruling oligarchy. In March 1895, a military tribunal convicted 170 prisoners with treason and 6 men to be “hung by the neck” until dead, according to historian Ronald Williams Jr. The other prisoners were sentenced from 5–35 years imprisonment at hard labor, while those convicted of lesser charges received sentences from 6 months to 6 years imprisonment at hard labor. The queen was sentenced to 5 years in prison, but she spent 8 months under house arrest until she was released on parole. The total number of arrests related to the 1895 Kaua Kūloko was 406 people on a summary list of statistics, published by the government of the Republic of Hawai’i.
The administration of President Grover Cleveland commissioned the Blount Report, which concluded that the removal of Liliʻuokalani had been illegal. Commissioner Blount found the United States and its Minister guilty on all counts including the overthrow, the landing of the marines, and the recognition of the provisional government. In a message to Congress, President Grover Cleveland wrote:
The U.S. government first demanded that Queen Liliʻuokalani be reinstated, but the Provisional Government refused. On December 23, 1893, the response from the Provisional Government of Hawaii, authored by President Sanford B. Dole, was received by President Grover Cleveland’s representative -Minister Albert S. Willis- and emphasized that the Provisional Government of Hawaii “unhesitatingly” rejected the demand from the Cleveland Administration.
Congress conducted an independent investigation, and on February 26, 1894, submitted the Morgan Report, which found all parties, including Minister Stevens—with the exception of the Queen—”not guilty” and not responsible for the coup. Partisans on both sides of the debate questioned the accuracy and impartiality of both the Blount and Morgan reports over the events of 1893.
In 1993, the US Congress passed a joint Apology Resolution regarding the overthrow; it was signed by President Bill Clinton. The resolution apologized and said that the overthrow was illegal in the following phrase: “The Congress—on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the illegal overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi on January 17, 1893, acknowledges the historical significance of this event which resulted in the suppression of the inherent sovereignty of the Native Hawaiian people.” The Apology Resolution also “acknowledges that the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi occurred with the active participation of agents and citizens of the United States and further acknowledges that the Native Hawaiian people never directly relinquished to the United States their claims to their inherent sovereignty as a people over their national lands, either through the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi or through a plebiscite or referendum”.
After William McKinley won the 1896 U.S. presidential election, advocates pressed to annex the Republic of Hawaiʻi. The previous president, Grover Cleveland, was a friend of Queen Liliʻuokalani. McKinley was open to persuasion by U.S. expansionists and by annexationists from Hawaiʻi. He met with three non-native annexationists: Lorrin A. Thurston, Francis March Hatch and William Ansel Kinney. After negotiations in June 1897, Secretary of State John Sherman agreed to a treaty of annexation with these representatives of the Republic of Hawaiʻi. The U.S. Senate never ratified the treaty. Despite the opposition of most native Hawaiians, the Newlands Resolution was used to annex the Republic to the U.S.; it became the Territory of Hawaiʻi. The Newlands Resolution was passed by the House on June 15, 1898, by 209 votes in favor to 91 against, and by the Senate on July 6, 1898, by a vote of 42 to 21.
A majority of Native Hawaiians opposed annexation, voiced chiefly by Queen Lili’uokalani, who Hawaiian Haunani-Kay Trask described as beloved and respected by her people. Lili’uokalani wrote that “it had not entered into our hearts to believe that these friends and allies from the United States… 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” in her retelling of the overthrow of her government. According to Trask, newspapers at the time argued Hawaiians would suffer “virtual enslavement under annexation”, including further loss of lands and liberties, in particular to sugar plantation owners. These plantations were protected by the U.S. Navy as economic interests, justifying a continued military presence in the islands.
In 1900, Hawaiʻi was granted self-governance and retained ʻIolani Palace as the territorial capitol building. Despite several attempts to become a state, Hawaii remained a territory for 60 years. Plantation owners and capitalists, who maintained control through financial institutions such as the Big Five, found territorial status convenient because they remained able to import cheap, foreign labor. Such immigration and labor practices were prohibited in many states.
Puerto Rican immigration to Hawaiʻi began in 1899, when Puerto Rico’s sugar industry was devastated by a hurricane, causing a worldwide shortage of sugar and a huge demand for sugar from Hawaiʻi. Hawaiian sugarcane plantation owners began to recruit experienced, unemployed laborers in Puerto Rico. Two waves of Korean immigration to Hawaiʻi occurred in the 20th century. The first wave arrived between 1903 and 1924; the second wave began in 1965 after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which removed racial and national barriers and resulted in significantly altering the demographic mix in the U.S.
Oʻahu was the target of a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor by Imperial Japan on December 7, 1941. The attack on Pearl Harbor and other military and naval installations, carried out by aircraft and by midget submarines, brought the United States into World War II.
In the 1950s, the power of the plantation owners was broken by the descendants of immigrant laborers, who were born in Hawaiʻi and were U.S. citizens. They voted against the Hawaiʻi Republican Party, strongly supported by plantation owners. The new majority voted for the Democratic Party of Hawaiʻi, which dominated territorial and state politics for more than 40 years. Eager to gain full representation in Congress and the Electoral College, residents actively campaigned for statehood. In Washington there was talk that Hawaiʻi would be a Republican Party stronghold so it was matched with the admission of Alaska, seen as a Democratic Party stronghold. These predictions turned out to be inaccurate; today, Hawaiʻi votes Democratic predominantly, while Alaska votes Republican.
In March 1959, Congress passed the Hawaiʻi Admissions Act, which U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law. The act excluded Palmyra Atoll from statehood; it had been part of the Kingdom and Territory of Hawaiʻi. On June 27, 1959, a referendum asked residents of Hawaiʻi to vote on the statehood bill; 94.3% voted in favor of statehood and 5.7% opposed it. The referendum asked voters to choose between accepting the Act and remaining a U.S. territory. The United Nations’ Special Committee on Decolonization later removed Hawaiʻi from its list of non-self-governing territories.
After attaining statehood, Hawaiʻi quickly modernized through construction and a rapidly growing tourism economy. Later, state programs promoted Hawaiian culture. The Hawaiʻi State Constitutional Convention of 1978 created institutions such as the Office of Hawaiian Affairs to promote indigenous language and culture.
In 1897, over 21,000 Natives, representing the overwhelming majority of adult Hawaiians, signed anti-annexation petitions in one of the first examples of protest against the overthrow of Queen Lili’uokalani’s government. Nearly 100 years later, in 1993, 17,000 Hawaiians marched to demand access and control over Hawaiian trust lands and as part of the modern Hawaiian sovereignty movement. Hawaiian trust land ownership and use is still widely contested as a consequence of annexation. According to scholar Winona LaDuke, as of 2015, 95% of Hawai’i’s land was owned or controlled by just 82 landholders, including over 50% by federal and state governments, as well as the established sugar and pineapple companies.The Thirty Meter Telescope is planned to be built on Hawaiian trust land, but has faced resistance as the project interferes with Kanaka indigeneity.
