Hawaii Takeover by U.S. Pages

¶ … Hawaii Takeover by U.S.

Pages 4-5 Merze Tate's Explanations Regarding Mahele

Page 6 Norman Meller / Ann Feder Lee Research

Pages 7-10 Motivation for Overthrow of Hawaii

Page 11 Kamehamela III Dies / U.S. & Pearl Harbor

Page 12 McKinley Tariff Impact on Hawaii

How the Big Bad United States Dug Its Claws into the Hawaiian Islands

Background on Hawaiian Takeover by the U.S.

The United States among other countries was busy claiming and sizing up and then seizing new territories in the 19th Century. Among the territories the U.S. had its eye on in particular was the Sandwich Islands. Stuart Banner writes in Law & Society that while the Germans were grabbing New Guinea and Samoa, while the French were taking over in Polynesia, while the British were setting up shop in New Zealand and elsewhere, the Americans were making plans to add the Sandwich Islands to their list of territories. The style of colonial governments in most of these cases was to move in with power, wipe out "complex indigenous property systems" and craft new European-style real estate markets.

These strategies of doing away with the property systems of native people were "disastrous" in most cases, Banner writes. Indeed, the very first one of these land grab schemes was carried out in the Kingdom of Hawaii as the U.S. instituted "The Mahele of 1845-1855" that effectively moved land decisions into the hands of the Anglo-American system (Banner 274). Banner sees this movement away from the indigenous peoples style of property administration to American style as "remarkable" simply because the Hawaiians themselves undertook the transition. Many Americans were living in Hawaii at that time; many in fact were active in "significant positions" in the government of Kamehamela III, Banner continues, noting that albeit the Americans wanted the reform, many in the "indigenous Hawaiian governing class" supported the Mahele.

The Literature on the Hawaiian Takeover by the U.S.

What were the motivations for the Hawaiian natives going along with reform of their long-standing land policy? It is important to review this part of the American overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii because what happened as the land reform was pushed through was that in fact the door was now open for a political takeover of these beautiful, strategically important Islands.

There are three explanations that Banner offers as to why the Hawaiian people for the most part accepted the new Anglo-American influence vis-a-vis land reform. The first explanation Banner gives is that the Mahele seemed to reflect progress (Banner 275); Kamehamela III was a bright monarch who hoped to move his people into the modern world. Interacting with seemingly honest white immigrants appeared to be the best bet, so this explanation goes.

Sanford Dole was a judge under Kamehamela III in 1892 -- which is about a year before Dole became president of the Hawaiian Republic -- and according to Banner (276) Dole wrote a treatise on Hawaiian law. In that treatise he explained that the Mahele was an effort to "climb the difficult path from a selfish feudalism to equal rights, from royal control…to peasant proprietorship" (Banner 276). It is interesting that Dole talked about "equal rights" because back on the American mainland the Civil War was over but blacks still didn't have many rights in the U.S. society and women could not vote until 1920. Dole also said that the "spirit of Christian civilization" had helped educate the Hawaiian people and on that score he was correct. Dole, by the way, was the U.S. representative who officially "tendered the sovereignty of the islands to the United States" (Tate, 307).

Indeed, in a book on the U.S. And Hawaii Merze Tate writes that there were so many influential Christian missionaries (Puritans, Congregationalists, Presbyterians and others) that they had a "personal ascendancy over the Hawaiian mind"

(Merze 1965 p. 4). The original purpose of the missionaries was to convert the natives to Christianity, Merze explains. But the missionaries gained major access to the thoughts and beliefs of the natives through the use of printed textbooks (the first printed materials the Hawaiians had ever used), the development of schools and nice school buildings (to replace the grass huts Hawaiians had used), and the teaching of skills for work projects. On page 10 Merze states that "major" credit is given to the American missionaries for being the "predominating political influence" in Hawaii, leading to the U.S. takeover of the Islands.

The second explanation that Banner offers (276) is more of a negative explanation; through the enormous influence of the white missionaries the dynamics leading up to the Mahele were in a way forced on the Hawaiians. That is, the initial several decades that missionaries were establishing their influence over very primitive natives "shattered much of traditional…cultural practice" in addition to shattering old and long-held religious beliefs (Banner 276).

With those ancient cultural and religious practices now a thing of the past, the "elites" of Hawaii let the white missionaries and other white settlers "fill the void" that was created by the "destruction of crucial aspects" of Hawaiian life before the white missionaries and settlers arrived. In other words, when old values and rituals are removed from an ancient society that is not very sophisticated in the modern world, something has to come along to replace those lost values and rituals, and in this particular case, that replacement was Mahele, for starters.

The third explanation as to why Hawaii was the only indigenous society to take on major land tenure reform -- when it wasn't really forced to do it -- has to do with taxes. On page 277, Banner suggests that King Kamehamela III had traditionally received his revenue from "in kind" (donations) from his subjects. Those donations usually came in the form of doing a certain number of days' work per year in agricultural efforts. A person paid his dues so to speak by putting in time to raise a certain portion of produce for the commoners (Banner 277). That said, when the white missionaries and other Americans extended their cultural and religious influence, it produced "two shocks" to the Hawaiian system of doing things, Banner explained. One, the population in Hawaii (of natives) declined "sharply" due to the diseases brought by the white culture (for which the Hawaiians had no resistance). The second shock was that many natives in Hawaii shifted from their traditional work of farming over to "trade-related" kinds of work like whaling and cutting sandalwood.

As a result of both shocks (changes), tax revenue went down. And so the idea of selling property for revenue (part of the Mahele concept) and then taxing those parcels of property in the long run for continuing revenue, made sense at that time. At least, this is the third explanation for why the Hawaiians pushed through a system before a colonial power (the U.S. In this case) literally forced them to do it. And as was stated earlier, the Mahele movement certainly opened the door further towards overthrow than the tremendously powerful influence of the white missionaries had earlier done by opening it a crack (Banner 277).

Banner explains on page 278 that there was a fairly long period of time between Mahele land reform and the actually annexation; this window of time meant that by the time the Hawaiians actually lost their sovereignty that had already sold "much" of their land to people from foreign lands, the U.S. And Britain in particular. Banner goes on to suggest that the elites in Hawaii, who had welcomed Mahele, actually were trying to maintain their elite positions more than they were trying to modernize or to set up systems for more tax revenue.

Writing in Publius: The Journal of Federalism, Norman Meller and Anne Feder Lee add some information to what is a complex issues in history, but an important issue. The writers explain that well before the United States' overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy, through the "connivance of the armed forces," the British had actually raised their flag on the Islands in 1843

(Meller, et al., 1997 p. 168). The reigning monarch "provisionally ceded" the Islands to England, but took back that agreement within five months. Meller and Feder make the point that by the time of Mahele the great majority of the Hawaiian population had been "dispossessed" from the properties that had owned in their families for centuries (Meller 169). What the Americans did not realize, or had ignored if they did realize, Meller goes on, is that the Hawaiian culture -- much like the Native American culture in the U.S. -- had a "metaphysical" relationship with the land (Meller 169).

In order to "civilize" the Hawaiians, much the way they tried to "civilize" the indigenous Indian natives on the mainland, the Americans believed that getting the Hawaiians to use the soil according to "Christian principles of commerce" would civilize them. Along with that strategy, the Americans also printed the Hawaiian language (which had previously only been a spoken language) and used that to promote the English language instead of the Hawaiian language (Meller 169). The Meller / Feder article substantiates what Banner asserted about the diseases brought by mainlanders that killed off large portions of the Hawaiian population. Indeed, between 200,000 and 400,000 native Hawaiians lived on the Islands at about the time Captain Cook (reportedly the first white visitor) arrived in 1778; by 1910, the time of the first official U.S. Census of the Hawaiian population, there were just 38,547 natives remaining.

The Actual Motivation for the Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom

Writing in the Journal of Economic History, Sumner J. La Croix and Christopher Grandy explain that the beginning movement leading to the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy (kingdom) was accomplished through a cunningly crafted document. The La Croix article explains that, "…a small group of Caucasian" residents actually launched the overthrow through the signing of a limited time "reciprocity treaty" in 1876

(La Croix 1997 161). With the background of the social, cultural, religious and language dynamics that were imposed on the native Hawaiians as a foundation of understanding, the next step in building a solid background into the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii involves economics and trade.

The reciprocity treaty of 1876 as it is broken down into understandable points by author La Croix, greatly expanded the exports of sugar and rice to the mainland United States and in turn generated an increase in exports of U.S. goods to Hawaii (La Croix 161). The structure of the treaty also led to the "gradual worsening" of Hawaii's bargaining position with the United States, a dynamic that gave the U.S. "better terms" with the expiration of the treaty in 1883. In addition, the treaty of 1876 promoted a transformation of Hawaii's political structure by "massively increasing the wealth" of the Caucasian owners of Hawaiian sugar plantations (La Croix 161).

Moreover, La Croix and Grandy assert, the "opportunism" exhibited by the United States in 1890 with respect to trade agreements between Hawaii and the U.S. threatened the new found wealth of the planters and hence that issue played a pivotal role in the overthrow of the Kingdom (La Croix 162). At this point in their article, La Croix and Grandy explain that the motivation for the takeover of Hawaii -- and all the reasons that went into this annexation of a sovereign nation -- have been debated over time and there are various explanations in the literature. For example, some scholars have focused on the strong desire on the part of the sugar interests to benefit from the two-cent-per-pound bounty on American-owned sugar production that was provided in the McKinley Tariff of 1890.

Julius Pratt, author of History of United States Foreign Policy, challenged the view of those who say the sugar interests and the money involved was the motivating and pivotal factor that went into the overthrow (La Croix 162). Pratt argued that the overthrow was a "racially-charged bid" to secure a "more stable government" (La Croix 162). Another historian / scholar William Russ Jr. suggested that the immigration of laborers from Asia -- brought in by the tens of thousands to work the sugar cane fields -- apparently threatened the "white elite" (La Croix 162). Russ has written books called Hawaiian Revolution and Hawaiian Republic and certainly in those books has put forward his own accounting of the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom.

Merze Tate, referenced earlier in this paper, believed the source and motivation for the overthrow lay in the goal of the "economic elite" to own more and more property through "excessive taxation" (La Croix 162). Another scholar, Ralph Kuykendall, has written that the monarchy was about to topple anyway, and it was just a matter of time before that came about, according to La Croix on page 162 of his journal article. But as for La Croix and Grandy, their view is that the political history of the overthrow, along with the economic evidence available, will outlast any other description of why and how the annexation took place.

Relying on the reciprocity treaty as the fundamental foundation for the clarification of the overthrow, La Croix insists that when a large country cuts a trade deal with a much smaller country the advantage goes naturally to the larger more economically sophisticated country. If the treaty has a limited term, or if it can be cancelled by either of the signatories, then "renegotiation will occur in an environment that has been altered by the structural change" that was created by the initial treaty that was signed (La Croix 162).

What that means, boiled down, is that the bigger country (in this case the United States) has a stronger bargaining position because the momentum has been established for the exports of the smaller country to be purchased by the bigger country. And that money has been coming in to the small country's economy and is now needed and expected by the smaller country for their domestic purposes. So when the treaty expires and new negotiations are in progress the larger country expects to be able to negotiate better terms for its own purposes. This is not nuclear physics, nor is it complicated economics; it's just how the world works, La Croix explains in a roundabout way.

Meanwhile, La Croix continues on page 163, the very fact that the small country's negotiating position is diminished (due to the dynamics explained in the paragraph above) -- combined with the "heightened demands" of the larger nation -- can "spark" a political debate and even a crisis in the smaller country (La Croix 163). Hence, the reciprocity treaty in this case assisted in the transformation of the domestic politics of the small country, Hawaii. And in this case, the group of Caucasians who owned the assets used to produce the exports (sugar) becomes wealthier and has a stronger position vis-a-vis the domestic politics of the smaller country. Now, with a new trade agreement being pursued by both countries, it is obvious that the Caucasian interests who owned the sugar plantations had "incentives" to take "additional political action" to assure that that the flow of money from the trade deal and the local rents that related to their ownership of land in Hawaii continues (La Croix 163).

The scenario that La Croix and Grandy present take the reader through the process building up to the overthrow, step by careful narrative step. La Croix allows that obviously there were more dynamics than just the trade deal at work; he lays them out and though some have been mentioned previously, it is worth following his explanation. In addition to the unequal trade negotiations resulting from the expiration of the reciprocal trade agreement, there was one, the radical decline in the population of native Hawaiians; two, the "massive migration" of Asians (Japanese and Chinese laborers) to come and work in the sugar cane fields; three, the Caucasian ownership of the sugar factories; and the "domestically-driven politics of the McKinley Tariff." All of these, plus the influence (as mentioned earlier in this paper) of the Caucasian Christian missionaries (which La Croix does not include but is worth mentioning), led to the evolution of the two countries' economic and political relations. And ultimately, these dynamics led to the demise of the Kingdom and to the death of its independence.

On page 163 La Croix mentions that whaling vessels stopping at the Hawaiian Islands in the 1840s and 1850s had at that time become the "dominant source of income" for many Hawaiian businesses. His point is that sugar did not play that much of a role in the Hawaiian economy until trade came into play in the later 1800s.

There was actually an annexation agreement between the U.S. And Hawaii in 1854, La Croix writes on page 167. It gave U.S. citizenship to all Hawaiians, made Hawaii a state, and gave money to the royal family. However, before he could sign the annexation treaty, Kamehamela III died and the king who succeeded him, Kamehamela IV, was against annexation, and refused the deal (La Croix 167). Meantime the new reciprocal trade agreement, signed in 1876, actually cost the U.S. money (because of the elimination of the tariffs) but within the agreement was a deal to allow the U.S. future options on what is now Pearl Harbor (La Croix 170). In 1884 a new treaty was developed in Congress and this time the U.S. Senate added another important amendment: In turn for low tariffs on their sugar exports to the U.S., the Hawaiian monarchy would grant to the U.S. The "exclusive right" to enter Pearl "River" and maintain a repair and fueling station there (La Croix 175). But the ruling monarch at that time, King Kealakekua, was bitterly opposed to giving the U.S. rights to Pearl Harbor, and refused to sign the treaty.

His refusal to sign the pact led to anger in the Hawaiian business community. In July 1887, opponents of the king -- "mostly Caucasians" -- took up arms and forced the king to accept a new constitution and a new cabinet. It was now called the "Bayonet Constitution" and weakened the king considerably. The king was also under fire for some allegedly poor financing decisions, La Croix writes (181); the stage was set for the clash that was soon to come. And meantime in 1890 things took a bad turn for Hawaii: La Croix (182) explains, "The 1890 McKinley Tariff's provisions on sugar constituted a clear instance of opportunistic behavior by the United States." The U.S. retained all privileges given to it under the reciprocity treaty, but the treaty took away Hawaii's free ride with reference to tariffs on sugar.