Empire: World History - 167. Paradise Lost: The Taking of Hawaii

Episode Date: July 10, 2024

On 7th July 1898, President McKinley formally annexed Hawaii, making it a colonial territory of the USA. It was not until 21st August, 1959, that it became the 50th state. Orchestrated by the American planter class in Hawaii, led by Sanford Dole, this annexation was the culmination of a process throughout the 19th century which pushed the native Hawaiian population to the side for commercial gain. Listen as William and Anita look at the taking of the 50th state and the attempts by the last Queen of Hawaii, Lili’uokalani, to fight against the Americans. Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Assistant Producer: Anouska Lewis Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpirepoduk.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Drimple. I love this topic that we're going to be talking about. It's a very sad topic. It's a very sad.

I didn't know the story at all. Well, I mean, it's starring an extraordinary kick-ass woman who manages at once to be the first queen of Hawaii and the last monarch of Hawaii. So it's a tragic, tragic story and it encompasses so much of what colonization is. Brought down as ever by money, by greed and by Western rapacity in the story. And it's a very tragic tale. I mean, it's a story that we've become really very familiar with, which is, first of all, somebody will wash up on the shore. and say, I have discovered a country. Forget the fact that people have been living here for a very long time,

but I've discovered the country in the shape of Captain Cook. Then you have a wave of missionaries who, in the words of this Hawaiian monarch, who we're going to be talking about, came to do good. I love this quote from her. Came to do good, but ended up doing well, which is such a bitingly arch comment of what befalls her. And then you have the moneyed people, the money men, coming in. And then you lose a country. So, I mean, you'll understand this pathway.

And they bring in the army and then all goes to the head of the hand cut. Indeed, indeed. So look, let's first of all, before we tell this story of Queen Liliocallani, who is the last monarch of Hawaii, the first queen of Hawaii, and then the extraordinary woman in her own right. Let's talk a little bit about Hawaii. So, I mean, just first of all, William, tell us a little bit about the topography of the place and the geography and the geography and the location and everything. else that we need to know. So it's a long way from anywhere is the first and most important point. It is in the Central Pacific. It's two and a half thousand miles from San Francisco, but also 5,000 miles east of the Philippines, which means it's a very important base if you're trying to project power into that part of the world, which is why it ends up being the site of Pearl Harbor at the end of our story. And the most famous moment of its history is the moment it becomes the

bridgehead for the Japanese attack on America. But its history is very ancient. It begins with the colonization of the Polynesians. And this is a bit of history which has been argued over since the Second World War. Can you remember, Anita, the whole story of the Contiki expedition? Yes, I do. Thor Hairedale. Yeah, absolutely. These boats and navigators who navigated by the stars and were able to travel enormous distances. And he was trying to prove in 1947 by taking a balsa wood raft all the way from Peru that the Polynesians came from Latin America. And he succeeded in taking his raft into Polynesia and ending up crashing it onto a coral reef. But scholarship has moved on since

then. And it's now 100% certain that in fact the Polynesians didn't come from South America. they came from, well, originally Taiwan, that sort of coast, and were hopping from island to island about 3,000 to 1,500 BCE. So very early long-distance navigators using very sophisticated navigational and naval techniques to get these rafts from the east coast of Southeast Asia and to the Middle of the Pacific to islands such as Hawaii, Rapa Nui or Easter Island. And the three corners formed by Easter Island, Hawaii and New Zealand are what they call the Polynesian triangle.

That region shares similar language, culture and traditions. And these early sailors colonise it from Southeast Asia and managed to live out their life in perfect isolation thereafter until Captain Cook turns up in 1778. Yeah, so when, I mean Captain Cook, claiming to be the first European, and although there is some debate about this because the Spanish say we were there first. He arrives in Hawaii. And, you know, the first time, it's a pretty cordial affair.

It's a very cordial affair. They come out and they trade and... They swap things. You know, there's a, you know, garlanding. It's entirely amicable. The second time, however, is not so friendly. Because Cook gets killed. He's murdered.

A lot of his men are murdered. And not only does he get killed, he then gets skinned and stuffed, which is actually the Polynesian way with the chief. And so they're actually doing him an honour in death. But that isn't immediately apparent to his shipmates when this sort of skin turns up wrapped in feathers after he's been clubbed to death. But so, I mean, you know, he's clubbed to death. His men flee.

Some of the islanders also flee as well because there's just violence is unleashed and a bloodlet. Yes, the British start burning villages and caninading coastal settlements. and you get the full usual horrors of advanced colonial weaponry being used against indigenous peoples who've got far more primitive weaponry. Right. And some of these people who are fleeing Hawaii at this time, they end up in America, in New England, most specifically.

And one of these islanders, a young man, actually ends up going to Yale and getting an education. And it is at Yale, where he is surrounded by Christian missionaries and he adopts the Christian religion, where he says, you know what, if you do really care about saving souls, I know this place. It's an island called Hawaii. And you might want to come and have a look at this island because there are so many souls to save. And it's up, after that, you know, after his sort of pleas to come and save the souls of his countrymen, 14 missionaries from New England set sail, they go to what is on a map, it wouldn't be marked Hawaii. it would be called the Sandwich Islands.

So that's how Britain knew Hawaii, the Sandwich Islands. Which is what Captain Cook named them after his patron. The Isle of Sandwich, exactly that. So look, after that, you have sort of these 14 missionaries who come from New England to save souls. And as missionaries often do, they come with their missionary ways. So, you know, they've come in full modesty. So, you know, for men, that means covered arms, up to their wrist and, you know, sort of modest trousers and hats and all of the things that Goodpil,

do have. And for the women, it's high-buttoned dresses, many petticoats, layers. And they come to this island where they find, you know, women who dress for the climate. And, you know, they are horrified. You might want to be a little bit more explicit about what you're saying that. I mean, you know, nudity, what they describe as nudity, wanton nudity, that, you know, women are topless and they are not wearing modest clothing. And so almost as soon as they arrive, along with, you know, women are topless, and they are not wearing modest clothing. And so almost as soon as they arrive, along with the word of God that they come to preach, they also come to change the culture as well. So it's a sort of a shaming of these ways that have been held by the people of Hawaii for centuries. They start describing as being of evil and badness.

So this is the same sort of culture that Gorghain found in Tahiti and the same sort of dress codes as Tahiti. So anyone knows those lovely Gorghant pictures can imagine. what's going on in Hawaii. But I need to tell us about what's happened politically at this time because there's a king. Am I pronouncing him right? Kamahama'amaha. King Kamea, Meir.

It's King Kamea Meir. Who is... I didn't bless you ready. Yes. So the Kamea-Maya line is going to be an enormously important, an enormously important family and bloodline for the monarchy. And he had met Captain Cook as a young man, age 20. And he's now in his, what, 60s when this story.

open. See, you're doing the maths. People who don't know, William, there's a slight drop in the temperature. A slight widening of the eyes. The whirring of the con. Tension about the shoulders. Temptus then, minus five. Anyway.

You're coming from a mathematical house cell. No, I'd ask my husband, don't worry. I just don't even feign to do the mathematics. For those who don't know, Anita has a lovely husband called Simon Singh, who is one of the great mathematicians of our time. He's not used to wearing of cogs going quite so slowly. He would hate that so much. First of all, he would say, I'm a physicist.

And second of all, he would say, I am nowhere near one of the great mathematicians of our time. But he's very math-y, it is true. But King Kamehamea the first, who is a military leader. He has a great following. He's the kind of man that men look up to. And so he unites all the Hawaiian islands and becomes the king of a new Hawaii. And we should also say that there is an aspect of the story that will be the story of sort of paradise loss, that there is this beautiful island full of volcanoes and amazing tropical

vegetation and waterfalls, which was ruled by this great dynasty and then falls before American capitalism. But we should say that the king himself actually conquered and united the islands by employing Western weaponry and guns and mercenaries. So, So it's a more complex story than the kind of romanticized sort of avatar style story might need one to believe. And also what's important about King Kamehamea, although he believes in this Hawaiian identity, his mother actually does really fall in the thrall of the missionaries. So this kind of sort of Presbyterian Christianity is also swirling around the very

foundation of Hawaii. So anyway, Kamea Mayer is founding a dynasty that's going to remain in power for much of Hawaii's history. But he also, as you say, William, used Western weaponry to gain this united Hawaii. Which had never been united before. It was a very disparate group of violence. And we should also say that the scale of these islands, the whole of this enormous Polynesian island network, would fill the space from Florida to San Francisco. Yeah. And if you don't know Hawaii, it's highly volcanic. So there are. are active volcanoes to this day, which are rumbling away. But getting back to King Kamea Mayer's

rule, so the 1820s, you're getting more and more links with America in particular. And you've got an America that's also starting to get on its feet and is starting to find its own identity and is having to build its own economy. And the way in which Americans are getting money into the country is to do exactly what the British did, which is plantations make money. And they They know plantations. I mean, you know, the American founding fathers had plantations. So there is a long history and tradition and knowledge about, you know, going to a place and planting on an industrial scale.

And as I understand, there are two sorts of plantations. There's the sugar plantations, which again has an American precedent. But something which Hawaii seems to specialize in is pineapples. Absolutely right. Absolutely right. And that's going to be quite important because there is one name that is synonymous. if you're in America with pineapples and there's Dole pineapples, and that name Dole is going to figure in this story.

So just put a pin in that. But sugar is absolutely the overwhelming money-making concern. And the notorious, while we're on it, the notorious Hawaiian pizza with pineapple on top of which appalls all good neapolitans and Italians, the idea you could have anything like a pineapple in a pizza. I mean, I quite like a pineapple on a pizza. Are you allowed to say that? I've never actually had one.

You have what? No, I like pineapples, but I haven't had a pineapple pizza. What? Listen, Poshboy. You would order a pineapple pizza. We grew up on Hawaiian pizza. Pizza Hut special was Hawaiian pizza and it was an all you could eat salad bar. This is a very much tangential issue. I appreciate it.

But all you could eat a salad bar. And we had, it was like the competitive Olympics of who could pile as high as possible or the highest pile on the side plate. As Posh Boys always went to Pizza Express and had the rocket option. Didn't exist then. darling, Pizza Hut was so exotic. It was a kind of a leap into the future for McDonald's. Anyway, so back to this. So, Queen Liliocilani is born on the back of this sort of increasing trade with America where, you know, the sugar planters are coming in and they're saying, look, you know what, we'll definitely give you some of the wealth here, but you've got exactly

the right rich soil. Look at you. Look at you with your rich soil and your verdant lands. We could grow sugar here. course, you could get rich off the back of this as well. And so there is a sort of a treaty, a treaty of reciprocity in 1875 that is created. And very, very importantly, it also asks for a harbour so that these sugar planters can take the sugar that they're growing in Hawaii, take it to America, bring back men and goods back to this harbour. And it's at the mouth of the Pearl River. Want to guess what this harbour is going to be called? It couldn't be called Pearl Harbor, could it?

You're not wrong. So Pearl Harbor is created as part of this. The other thing that's happening, which I think is important, is that at this point, it's not just pineapples and sugar going out. You've got lots of workers coming in to work this. Plus, as with the stories we've heard in North America, diseases brought by Europeans, including incredible scourge of venereal diseases. But also smallpox, which is devastating.

So when Cook lands on Hawaii, the population of Hawaii is 300,000. Hawaiians. 300,000. As much as that. 300,000. 75 years later, the population is 71,000. And that is, you know, a population that has been ravaged by sicknesses that people have no natural defence against.

And then to take the numbers forward, thanks to the influx of workers in these plantations coming from Japan, China, China, the Philippines, Korea and Portugal. The proportion of the native Hawaiians that originally made up, obviously, 100% initially, then 97% as later as 1853. By 1923, the native Hawaiians have dropped only 16% of the population. So you've had a complete re-peopling of these islands in that time. Right. So against this backdrop and this Treaty of Reciprocity that we were talking about, that America and Hawaii sign, which actually will become, although nobody knows it at the time, the first step towards annexation. Nobody saw it. Nobody saw it.

At the time, they thought it's get rich, quick, we'll all make money. Everyone will be happy, happy, happy, joy, joy. Lily O'Colani. So she's born actually in a traditional grasshouse on September the 2nd, 1838. And her parents were, they're not royalty. They're not of the royal family. But they are nobles. So, you know, I suppose you'd put them down to, if we have the equivalent here, you know, lords and ladies, let's say that way. They're not blood relatives of the crown. They wouldn't have eaten in the pizza huts in Essex. They wouldn't have had a wine pizza. They would have been kind of like the Dau Rumpals actually, chumming around with very rich and important people.

Imagining themselves more rich and important than they actually were. Well, I mean, but, you know, sort of they were up there. And she's rather amazing, isn't she? She's your kind of girl. Oh, she's totally, but just before we get to why she's my kind of girl, I just don't give you a little more background about it. Because even though she's born into this family, she's really. raised by another family. And there is a system in Hawaiian culture where it is just commonplace for a child to be given over to another family. It's an adoption because, so you have your

birth parents, but you also have your adopted parents too. And your adopted parents will come from a higher social strata than your own, which is exactly what happens to Lydia Okalani. And this system is, it sort of embodies this idea that existed so prevalently in Hawaii and in other island cultures that it takes a village to raise a child. A child belongs to everybody. It is an interconnectivity. But when, you know, sort of the Westerners arrive, the Americans and the British arrive, they don't really give it the kind of importance or the respect that it has on the islands. And they just call it fostering. I mean, in their minds, she's fostered by another more noble family. Anyway, as a child, she's quite a one. And there is this story about her being, you know, really adventurous.

and one day when she's about age four or five, she's climbing up a vine, she's trying to get onto a balcony, she's basically running wild because she's a child of nature, very happy, happy-go-lucky, and she falls from this vine and she breaks her leg very, very badly. And the leg never sets properly, and she will have this sort of pronounced limp for the rest of her life. So that's just one of the things that happen in childhood. But so many of the things that happen in her childhood really do mark who she then becomes.

But she also gets a pretty good education, doesn't she? She knows French, German and Latin. She's a lover of music. And she composes her own songs, which I love. So the only reason she's able to do that is because of this fall from the balcony and this horrible accident, she gets sent to a very special school. It's called the Royal School. And it is meant to be a school for the royal family of Hawaii.

And although she's not sort of directly a member of the royal family, you know, it is decided that she can go as well. And these are schools that are run by the missionaries. So at first, the sort of the Royal Missionary School is. only four members of the royal family. So you've got people there, about 16 royals, I believe, between the ages of four and 20, get sent to this school. So 16 children, you get to know everybody who matters on this island, and she's sent to this. And that's where she does learn Greek, Latin, music, history. But most importantly, for the people running the school,

who are the missionaries, how to behave like a lady. So there'll be deportment classes, how to take tea. They've got some of the best furniture from the continent and they've created like a salon in the school so that people know how to sit, how to stand up, how to dress. And the whole purpose of this is to create a royal strata that knows how to interact with white people. Because the islanders are deemed to be primitive still by the missionaries. So they need to have a class. This is very much the British method too, isn't it? In India, you get all these schools set up like Mayo, which is designed specifically for the ruling class. And you get in Mayo, each of the Maharaniwa. Rogers, who originally starts off there, I think in the 1870s, has his own palace and his own household and comes on his own elephant. Well, I mean, the name of this room where they're all told how to sit down, stand up, which order you walk in and everything else is. It's called the Boston Room.

And something else interesting is happening at this time as well. It's this sort of slow erosion of your culture is not good enough, so here's a better culture for you to study and to understand. Hawaii always had an oral tradition. So all of the stories are handed down from mother to child, grandmother to child, you know, it goes that way. But around about this time where Liliukalani is going to this very western school, the oral tradition is being sort of subverted a little bit. You remember I told you about that that Islander who ends up in Yale and tells the missionaries to come back with him? But he's come back now. And he realizes that actually, you know, what we need to do is we need to create kind of a written tradition here. Because people,

if they're going to learn the Bible, they need to learn to read. So he starts translating Hawaiian language into a written language, a sort of a phonetic written language, and therefore, you know, the Bible is translated. And slowly but surely, you have this sort of influx of a new culture that is handed over in a language that is familiar and starts to subsume the old stories and the old ways. And I just think that's a really interesting thing. Explain to me only to one thing. You said that Lydia Kalanis family were not. not from the very top rack. So how come that she's in line to accede to the throne? It's a list of unfortunate accidents that happened to...

A series of unfortunate incidents. To various King Kamehmeir's of Hawaii. So you have them dying, and some dying really young, and some dying without any issue at all, no children at all, until you get to the point where there really is nobody else to go to. And so they look to the noble families. They look to the pure bloods, the pure Hawaiians, in the noble family. and they alight on Liliu Kulani's brother, David Kalakawa, and he is going to be the next king of Hawaii.

And of course, making him the next king of Hawaii, immediately transforms Lili Kulani into a princess. And all the time that these men are dying quite young, some of them not leaving any heirs at all, the Americans, the American planters, are buying up land. They're buying up great swathes of land because basically the Kamehamehors have allowed them to do this, because they get an income, they're able to build palaces, they're able to build buildings,

they're able to have, you know, armories and things like that. It is a deal that seems to benefit both, but it really doesn't if you're just selling great swathes of land that once belonged to the people and all the people. So you've got, you know, sort of this chafing that's going on among the native Hawaiian population. America is not the benign country that the Hawaiians have been led to believe it is. It's not just a source of money and riches for the Hawaiians. The sky is darkening. So this is a good moment, I think, to take a break before we tell about the terrible disruptions

which will follow. Welcome back. So just before the break, we have a re-evaluation that is going in the country. And in the meantime, Lili Kalani's adopted family, you know, they have died, they've left her with some wealth. And there's also a volcanic eruption that goes on, which people, people take to be a sign that actually the gods are not happy with this subjugation and giving away of land, Hawaiian land to foreigners? In fact, it's a very important part of Hawaiian culture,

isn't it? The volcano gods are considered to be great bellwethers of the times, and there are specific temples dedicated to the volcano gods, and it is believed that there are specific ways of propitiating them. So when volcanoes go off and wreak havoc, that's a sign in this culture, that things are awry. Visiting dignitaries that sort of arrive afterwards to look at what's left after the volcano and stuff. They meet Lily Killani. And they write these things, you know,

about what lovely manners she has, how Hawaiian people are just like real people. They're almost like real people. They're very shocked that they're not cannibals and not trying to eat them. I mean, there's all sorts of horrible stuff that's written about the same time. And is Lily Kalani, what's her status at this point now?

I've read somewhere that she was more educated than most of the women in America at that time. So she's very well thought of. She has that sort of bridging capability between Western culture and Hawaiian culture. She is funding a hospital, which still exists in Honolulu today and doing good social work. She's a great social work. She believes in education. She believes in the education of women and girls.

So she's like a all around good egg, educated, good egg, civilised, according to, you know, the Westerners. So deeply palatable. So in June 1887, there's a very important moment in her life. when she is chosen to represent her brother as the official envoy to the Jubilee of Queen Victoria. And she goes off there. And while she's admired and looked up to the British Royal family, she also feels very much the outsider. She's struggling with the hierarchy. She is a dark-skinned woman in a white country at a time of great racism. and she is not happy.

She writes in a letter at the time, it's magnificent, but sometimes I get so tired of all that show. I went through some of the newspapers at the time because I'm a great lover of the British newspaper archive. I love newspapers. I start off all research for all books with it. And there's so much written about her,

which is kind of just fascinated. She's not the queen at this time. She's just a princess. She's a princess. She's not a queen and an envoy. She's accompanying the king's wife, who is the proper and rightful monarch of whole. Hawaii at this time. So, you know, whenever there are banquets, the queen goes in first,

and then it will be Liliu Kulani. But the problem is the queen of Hawaii can't speak English, hasn't got confidence and doesn't know the manners. So Liliu Kulani becomes kind of the de facto envoy for Hawaii, because she has been brought up in this way in this sort of bridging school. And the newspapers are fascinated with her. And they also start turning on each other. It's very funny, the Times writes about her a lot, but every single time they write about Lilliann, they spell her name wrong. And there's a lovely newspaper from South Shields, which is just finding it hilarious how the Times is unable to cope with her name and says at one point, they might as well call her, you know, as if she's from Ireland, Lily of Kalani.

They just mangled her name so much. So, yeah, she sees the queen. The queen, you know, Queen Victoria treats her with great respect. And she's described by some newspapers as the most educated woman in the Pacific because she's, you know, able to converse. She's very, very impressive. But while she is there, things are moving in a very dangerous direction in Hawaii. The king is being accused of incompetence and corruption by a secret organization called the Hawaiian League, who are very much the representatives of the American planter lobby. And the person who hosts the meeting, the kind of Lord Voldemort of this lobby, is a man called Sanford Dole.

Who is a Hawaiian? He's Hawaiian born, actually, which is really interesting. He's Hawaiian born, but he's ethnically American. He's American, exactly. I mean, he says it about himself. He says, I'm of American blood, but Hawaiian milk. So, you know, he very much identifies as a Hawaiian. And I've got a picture of him in front of me.

Now he is that sort of late Victorian gentleman with a very long, fluffy white beard and a suit, and he's holding a sort of contract in his hand. And he takes it upon himself to push Hawaii towards stripping the monarchy of their authority and integrating Hawaii more closely with the US. And he's not doing this in any democratic way or any gentle way. He's forming the Hawaiian League with its own military wing called the Honolulu Rifles. So this is a rough, tough and autocratic organisation. And in June 1887, they start arming themselves. And the king is very worried.

What does he do, Anita? It's a bit late because he's been cozing up to these people. and they've kind of wrong-footed him. You know, it's because they don't want anything to get in their way. So he starts fortifying palaces, government buildings. And the Hawaiian League put it about, and can I just say the Hawaiian League, one thing about the Hawaiian League, they're the kind of people who ride around on horses. They're all white. They're all white, first of all.

And they have this belief, or they spread the belief, that white people would be massacred. Unless the monarchy is removed, and unless there's some kind of constitutional protection, and you know, you get rid of an indigenous king and you have some more representation from the people, we will be killed, is what they say. Is there any basis for that? Have there been pogroms? None at all.

Nothing. None at all. It is kind of a, it's a means to get more power. By the way, Sanford Dole is the same. If you live in America, you will know Dole Pineapples are the biggest pineapple company to this day. And this is the same family. So the way the Hawaiian League behave in Hawaii is that these are white guys

on horses carrying flaming torches through the streets. So it's a sort of clue, cluxy-clanny sort of thing. Clanny kind of, yeah. And their identity is very much sort of white-blood American descent. Even, you know, San Vidal is quite unique because he's Hawaiian-born, but there are lots of Americans in here. So they put it about that they're going to be a massacre. And Anita, tell us, yeah, tell us what happens on the 30th of June 1887.

This is when things really escalate. The Hawaiian League now are unleashed and they have taken to the streets and they've got, you know, they're numbering in their thousands. We're not talking about just a handful of people. They've got no authority. They're just a militia. A bunch of militia sponsored by landowning plantation owners. And they order, you know, alcohol shops, grog shops to shut. They put 150 armed men in uniform outside their armory. They've got an armoury and they've got their own sort of formal. They're militias. You know, it's these Americans know militias. So, you know, know, these guys know how to have your own private ears to look after your interests. And at 2 o'clock in the afternoon on the 30th of June 1887, Sanford-Dolle opens a meeting that will now formally call for a new constitution. But it's outrageous. I mean, there's no, there's no basis for this, there's no election, there's no any, any kind of, even a stab at democratic authorisation for this.

It's just a bunch of guys with guns asking to topple the local government and to form their own. Yeah, and also, you know, these are people who he's counted as friends before. You know, he's been naively thinking, these are my mates, the sugar barons. I can get close to them. You know, I can give Samford Dole lots of opportunities. He's not going to turn on me. And it's exactly the man who does turn on him. So what happens is they then...

They make him sign a constitution. Well, it's called... Make him sign a document that will say he's just a constitutional monarch. He will have no power. There will be, you know, like in America, Congress, they will decide things. There'll be courts that will not answer to him. He can't overrule anything. The monarchy of Hawaii is dead, and they call it the Bayonet Constitution,

because it is at the point of a bayonet. And this is the point at which our hero, Liloa Kalani, returns on the 26th of July. What does she find? Well, she comes home to a shit show. You know, she left a Hawaiian royal family that was in charge, and now they have no power, nothing. She's furious with the king. David Kalikawa, who has signed this, King David,

has signed over, you know, the country, the people and everything else to these sort of voracious and rapacious. Plantation interests, yeah. Yeah, capital interests. And she's worried. While she's been away, I should say, that the king asked her to pen a national anthem for Hawaii. So this greatest of ironies, she's just, the ink is hardly dry on the national anthem for Hawaii, which she has written. And suddenly there is no sort of almost no nationhood of Hawaii that exists in a way that she recognizes. So this very inauspicious moment, in January 1891, Lilo Colani's brother dies and she ascends the throne. What does she do?

Well, she immediately starts drafting a new constitution. Has she got any authority to impose it? Well, they had no authority to force the king to sign the other one. So she thinks, right, okay, well, if anyone can write a constitution and it suddenly comes, oh, I'll bloody write a constitution. So she writes her constitution. By the way, the Sanford-Dole constitution, the bayonet constitution, meant that only people owning a certain amount of property could vote. It absolutely stipulated that anyone of Chinese descent could not vote. And there are so many Chinese origin people who've been brought over by these plantation people who live on Hawaii, who consider themselves to be Hawaiians,

and they're overnight robbed of their right to vote or to have any say. And she writes a constitution and say, you don't have to own property. Everyone gets a vote, including the Chinese. And this is like just completely ridiculous. Does she have armed forces at her disposal? I mean, other people she can call on to take on this militia? She has a lot of people who are loyal to her, because of all this philanthropic work that she's done, while her somewhat useless and uninterested brother has been in charge.

You know, her brother at one point takes off her around the world jolly to go sort of say around the world, leave her in charge as Regent. And it's at that time that smallpox is devastating the islands again. And it's Lydia Killarney, who as Regent decides to create small. poppox hospitals, quarantine, and stop any immigration into the country because she knows it's coming in on the ships of the planters. And that's one of the reasons that the planters have for saying, you know what, we don't need a monarchy anymore. No one has the right to tell us not to bring our ships in and to bring our workers. Anita, how do the Americans and the

planters react to her new constitution? They are not happy. They're not happy at all. And Sanford Dole sort of speaks for most of them. She just issues a royal decree. And her ministers, they are not having any of it. She wants to dismiss them all and appoint her own cabinet and her own advisors and they say, well, no, we're not going anywhere. You have no authority according to the Bayonet Constitution. Nobody has to listen

to what you say. Dole says, she is showing a greater power and a disposition to interfere in politics. What he means, it's a disposition to interfere in commerce, you know, and the sugar interests. So they start then saying that she's a real

problem and that, again, Again, this rumor goes around that under her, she's planning to massacre all the white people on the island. That's what she's going to do. It's just a rumor. Absolute bollocks. She's extended the franchise to everybody in Hawaii, including the Chinese. That's what she's done. So this is the crucial moment we're now coming to the 16th of January, 1893.

How do the Americans react to that and how do they enforce their will? So they start believing this representation. There's an envoy, an American envoy, who is actually working with the sugar plant. at the moment. He's not meant to be, but he is. So he sends all these sort of missives back to the homeland, to the motherland, saying, you know what? There is going to be, unless you do something, there is going to be a terrible massacre that takes place here. His name's John Stevens, the USN boy. And between him and the sugar barons, they've actually got a plan of full annexation, is what they're after. But you can't do that overnight. So he sends these sort of panicky messages

to America. And they dispatch a ship, USS Boston, which is, going to come to Honolulu, 164 US Marines are going to disembark. They are heavily armed. With cattle and guns. Absolutely right. A serious weaponry now is being brought to shore. And they basically surround the palace. And there is no way that anybody is going to be able to argue with them. There's gunfire, there's shooting in the streets, the Hawaiian constitutional building, which is being guarded by troops that are loyal to Lydia Colani. They are sort of pulled out of action because they're going to deal with these gunfire incidents that are elsewhere. And it basically just allows Sanford Dole to walk in without any opposition at all. And he makes her then sign and say, you know what?

You will surrender or you will die. It's just naked power. And after this, Dole is nominated as the leader and he declares a provisional government. and they're now moving forward to wanting formal annexation. Yeah, bizarrely, it wasn't something that Sanford Dole actually in the end sort of wants. The Hawaiian League want to execute Lily Killarney, saying that she was a traitor and that she should have her head cut off, and so should all of her people. And they sentenced her to five years of hard labour.

And it's Sanfordal who steps in, because he has got some Hawaiian sensibility, and he knows that you don't do this to somebody of royal blood. And so he commutes it, but she's just basically confined to two rooms in her palace for the rest of her days where she stitches this quilt, which at the heart of it says, I am a prisoner, and it tells the whole story of her captivity and how she's just in prison. She's not allowed to have any word of the outside world, so she can't talk to anybody in her own kingdom. But they get news to her by bringing her flowers which are wrapped in newspapers. Nobody checks, so she's able to know what's going on, which sort of makes the pain even more. worse. There's a brief moment of hope when President Cleveland orders the reversal of the annexation. Well, because she makes representation somehow to Grover Cleveland saying, you know what,

this is just how, what are you doing? What has been done in America's name? This is not what America was built on. And then he sort of finds out what the hell these plants. They don't know what's been going on in America's name. They have no idea. They haven't sanctioned any of this. This is not state sanctioned activity. So they actually, they call back. back this man Stevens, they dismiss the captain of the USS Boston and they pull that warship back. But by then, you know, it's all sort of eroded and gone to hell already. You know, the reversal, you've already let the wolves in the door. The Kalani's let out of prison at this point?

She's just, she's confined to her rooms in the palace. So, you know, Sanford Dole doesn't ever let her rot in a prison because even that's too much for him. So somehow, despite the presidential order, Dole remains basically in charge. There's planter with his own commercial interest. who's locked up the legitimate monarch remains somehow in power. Yeah, and Cleveland's never really comfortable with this, but there will be a president who is entirely comfortable with this, who's about to boot him out of office, and that's President McKinley.

And President McKinley is a man born in 1843, fought for the Union in the Civil War. He's a lawyer. He becomes a governor of Ohio. You know, a compassionate man in many ways, but the most colonial president ever. Because he's now presented with this situation where his predecessor pulled back the Americans and said, butt out, this is not your country.

This is not being done under our flag. This is not being done in our name. But they've got basically all the land and all the control. And he says, well, why don't we just take it? Why don't we just annex it? So this Hawaiian League plan that was set, you know, almost 20 years before, comes to fruition because they finally have a sympathetic president who says, you know what, good idea, let's annex it.

And another factor in this, which affects this at this crucial moment, is in 1898, there is an outbreak of hostilities and then a full-blown war between Spain and the US. Now, we're going to be dealing with that in the next issue, because it leads to the American seizure of the Philippines, among other islands and other territories. but it also affects Hawaii. This outbreak of the Spanish-US war leads to a massive wave of pro-imperial fever across America, and this makes it, again, more open to annexing Hawaii.

Lillikilani, although she's abdicated, is still fighting for independence, but McKinley uses the opportunity of the Spanish-U.S. war to formally annex Hawaii, in July 1898, and he makes the our Lord Voldemort figure, Stanford Dole, the very first governor. So now Dole not only has his own authority and the authority of his cowboys and their guns, he has the US formally behind him, and it is an annexed territory. So while, you know, Hawaii has lost everything that it was,

Liliu Kalani also loses everything that she is because it becomes law after she's sort of charged with treason. And she's locked up in this palace. can call her by her Hawaiian name anymore. Lily Kalani, she's not allowed to be called that. She also had a Christian name when she was baptized, Lydia. And they referred her to as Lydia Dominus. That's it. That's her name is Lydia Dominus.

But she actually dies quite a tragic figure. November the 11th, 1917 is when she dies. So she's seen, you know, the whole of her country. So 20 years in basically in 20 years, yeah. It's just nuts. You are, you know, going to be queen after your brother died. you're accepted as queen, you're loved by your people, but your entire country is taken out from under you.

You're not even left with your name. You're imprisoned making a quilt. She writes an autobiography too, doesn't she, in prison? She does, she does. Hawaii's story by Hawaii's Queen. After Dole sort of pardons her, she ends up going to America where she has some headspace, she goes to Boston, and she writes this autobiography.

But she dies in November the 11th, 1917. And one of the songs, you know, we said she was a great musician. She played the organ. She conducted choir. She, you know, loved music, loved composing music. The most famous Hawaiian song that everybody will know and associates with Hawaii, you know, you're the lays and you have the barbecues on the beach and you have that music play. She wrote it. She wrote it when she adopted her first child when she was in her, I think, late 40s.

And she sees these two lovers embracing on a beach. And the lyrics are so beautiful that she writes to go with this music. you are beloved but I will see you again and on her funeral all the Hawaiians turn out and they sing that song to her cortege as it goes past you are beloved but we will meet again she's buried in the royal morselaim

and can I just say that all of the arguments she made to America to say what you have done is wrong what you have done is against justice what you have done is against what America stands for do you know Bill Clinton offered an official apology when he became president I didn't know that He offered an official apology for what had been done, the annexation of Hawaii.

And this, of course, is not the last time that we'll see American fruit interests driving politics. In 1950, famously, the United Fruit Company has a coup in Guatemala to protect its banana interests. And that is where the phrase banana republic. Banana Republic. But what a tragic story is just a bunch of planters with their own commercial interests overthrowing. a legitimate indigenous monarchy for the sake of commercial power and their own enrichment. And taking everything from her, even her name. Even her name. And it's not even a state by the time she dies. It's just a territory, a possession of the US at the mercy of these planter interests.

And it's only on August the 21st, 1959, well after the First World War, that Hawaii's formally made the 50th estate, and it becomes a place that's actually part of America with voting rights and so on. And it's an extraordinary and tragic tale. Yeah, yeah. Well, I love it. Just look her up. She's an excellent character. She's still, to this day, beloved of Hawaiian. So, you know, for them, she's an embodiment of all that they've lost in sort of culture, territory, land, autonomy, all of that. And she is, actually, she's taught in America. All Americans know who she is as well. Liliu Kalani's story is very well known in America. And all our American listeners, feel free to tell me I'm wrong, if I am, but I don't think I am.

Anyway, that's it. Join us next week. We're going to be joined by Daniel, again, Daniel Imovar, who's brilliant. He's going to be talking to us in the first of two episodes on the American colonization of the Philippines. He's going to take forward. We mentioned the 1890s outbreak of the Spanish-U.S. Now we're going to go in detail into that, because this is the moment that we see the U.S. really becoming a proper imperial power with its own colonies. Absolutely. Until then, that's all from us.

People who are members of our Empire Club, they can hear the next episodes right now. If you want to join, you can do so, EmpirePodUK.com. That's EmpirePodukuk.com. Until then, goodbye from me, Anita Arnan. And goodbye from me, William Durenpool.