Hawaii (state)

E

Development of the Sugar Industry

Despite the decline of the Asian fur trade and the depletion of Hawaii’s once extensive sandalwood resources by about 1830, Hawaii continued to serve as an international port of call. The whaling industry in the northern Pacific Ocean expanded rapidly, and Hawaiian ports formed a base of operations for whaling vessels, most of them American. A wide variety of commercial crops were grown in the islands, mainly to supply whaling vessels and other ships and also for shipment to California.

In the 1860s, as the whaling industry declined, Hawaii turned increasingly to a new business for its major source of income: the production of sugar. It was an industry that would transform the social, economic, and political structure of the islands.

Although the rapidly growing United States was a large potential market for Hawaiian sugar, the United States maintained a high tariff on imported sugar. In 1875, after several unsuccessful attempts, the Hawaiian government negotiated a trade treaty with the United States. The treaty, which became effective in September 1876, provided for the duty-free entry of Hawaiian raw sugar and other specified products into the United States. This gave enormous impetus to the Hawaiian sugar industry, which consequently began to attract many American investors. Sugar production, which was concentrated on the sugar plantations of Oahu, Maui, Kauai, and Hawaii, increased many times over. By 1890 the islands supplied about 10 percent of all the raw sugar refined annually in the United States.

In 1887 the treaty was renewed, with a provision giving the United States exclusive rights to the use of Pearl Harbor on Oahu. However, in 1890 the Congress of the United States passed the McKinley Tariff Act, which removed the duty on all raw sugar coming into the United States. This deprived Hawaiian sugar producers of their privileged status, and as a result, Hawaiian production fell off drastically. In 1894, however, passage of the Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act restored the pre-1890 policy, and production expanded.

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F

Importation of Labor

Because much of the work on the sugar plantations was done by hand, the expansion of the sugar industry required a considerable increase in the labor force. The native Hawaiian population had continued to decline throughout the 19th century, largely due to disease, and by 1872 had fallen to about 50,000. In addition, many native Hawaiians were unwilling to work as laborers for white planters. At the time, there were only about 5,000 non-Hawaiians living in the islands.

After the trade treaty was signed in 1876, the Hawaiian government sought to alleviate the labor shortage by the large-scale recruiting of foreign workers. Initially, recruitment efforts centered on Chinese laborers; about 20,000 to 25,000, including about 8,000 Chinese from California, were brought to Hawaii on contract. However, once their enlistment was over, the Chinese frequently showed more inclination to establish businesses of their own than to continue working on the plantations. Recruiting then concentrated on the Japanese; about 180,000 Japanese were brought to the islands between 1886, when Japan agreed by treaty to allow laborers to migrate to Hawaii, and 1908, when a United States-Japanese agreement brought the migration to an end. When their contracts expired, most of the Japanese either returned home or migrated to the U.S. mainland, but about one-third chose to stay in the islands.

The growth of the sugar industry concentrated economic and political power in the hands of a few families, mostly white settlers, missionaries, and their descendants. Many of these whites favored a closer relationship between Hawaii and the United States, in part to guarantee access to the sugar market.

G

End of the Monarchy

In the latter part of the 19th century, American and European business leaders in Hawaii found themselves increasingly at odds with the last two Hawaiian monarchs: King David Kalakaua, who ruled from 1874 to his death in 1891, and his sister, Queen Liliuokalani, who succeeded him.

During Kalakaua’s reign, the royal government became more corrupt and extravagant. The king also encouraged the revival of traditional Hawaiian chants, forms of medicine, and other practices that had been discouraged since the missionaries’ arrival. Although Kalakaua often was attacked by other Hawaiians for cooperating with the powerful Americans, the Americans saw him as too nationalistic, anti-American, and unpredictable.

In 1887 a group of American and other white business leaders, backed by an armed militia they had founded, imposed on the king a new constitution that sharply limited his powers. The so-called Bayonet Constitution also placed new conditions on the right to vote, consolidating the influence of wealthy whites. It required that voters have a yearly income of $600 or own $3,000 in property, a rule that disenfranchised about three-fourths of the native Hawaiian voters. European and American males could vote, even if they were not Hawaiian citizens, but Asian immigrants were excluded.

When Queen Liliuokalani took the throne in 1891, she attempted to regain some of the power the monarchy and native Hawaiians had lost. Much loved by her people, Liliuokalani opposed efforts of the white business community to have Hawaii annexed by the United States, sharing the overwhelmingly popular view that they were motivated by greed. On January 17, 1893, after the queen attempted to impose a new constitution, powerful white leaders occupied the government office building in Honolulu and overthrew the monarchy. The rebels were helped by the official United States representative in Hawaii, who ordered troops from a U.S. warship to land in Honolulu, on the pretext of protecting American lives and property. The rebels proclaimed a provisional government headed by Sanford B. Dole, the son of an American missionary.

H

Republic of Hawaii

Two days after taking over, the new government sent representatives to Washington to negotiate a treaty of annexation. In February a treaty was signed and submitted to the U.S. Senate.

Before the treaty could be approved, President Benjamin Harrison’s term of office expired in March 1893 and he was succeeded by Grover Cleveland. The new president, who strongly opposed imperialist enterprises, withdrew the treaty from the Senate and supported efforts to return Liliuokalani to the throne. However, by that time the revolutionaries were firmly entrenched in power, and they refused to yield to Cleveland’s pressures for a return to monarchy. Instead, realizing that annexation was not imminent, they began to arrange for the establishment of an independent republic. On May 30, 1894, a constitutional convention was convened in Honolulu. On July 4 a constitution creating the new Republic of Hawaii took effect, naming Dole as the first president.

I

Annexation

In March 1897 William McKinley succeeded Cleveland as president of the United States. Both McKinley and the U.S. public favored the annexation of Hawaii. The next year both houses of Congress approved a joint resolution to annex Hawaii. President McKinley signed the resolution on July 7, 1898, and the formal transfer of Hawaiian sovereignty to the United States took place in Honolulu on August 12, 1898. On June 14, 1900, Hawaii became a U.S. territory, making all its citizens U.S. citizens. Dole was appointed the first territorial governor.

The native Hawaiian people were overwhelmingly demoralized. Since the arrival of whites they had lost their native religion, their land, and their traditions; with the overthrow of the monarchy they lost even their independence. The descendants of early missionaries and other whites had gained complete economic control of the islands, establishing a political system run by a few powerful men that was essentially undisturbed for half a century.

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