A Kingdom Falls
Kalakaua died in 1891 and was succeeded by his sister, Lili'uokalani (1891–1893). Lili'uokalani wanted to restore native Hawaiian powers. In January of 1893, she dissolved the legislature and was about to instate a new royalist constitution. This sparked a revolt, which U.S. troops supported, and the monarchy was dissolved to be replaced by a provisional white government. The Republic of Hawaii was declared in 1894, and a revolution to restore the Queen failed. In 1898, U.S. President William McKinley approved the American annexation of the Hawaiian Islands.
FAST FACT
The dubious deeds of 1893 have not been forgotten. There is an active sovereignty movement that considers the annexation of Hawaii to be illegal and which has as its goal the restoration of native rule. One hundred years after the dissolution of the Hawaiian monarchy, the U.S. Congress passed a resolution in which it apologized “to Native Hawaiians on behalf of the people of the United States for the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii on January 17, 1893 with the participation of agents and citizens of the United States, and the deprivation of the rights of Native Hawaiians to self-determination.”
In the years that followed annexation, the Hawaiian economy was overwhelmingly based on agriculture, especially sugar and pineapples. For decades there had been a need for plantation workers, and a great many foreigners were recruited, including Japanese, Filipinos, Chinese, Koreans, and Portuguese. By the year 1920, more than 40 percent of the population of Hawaii was Japanese. Hawaii also hosted American military bases. Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu became home to the Pacific Fleet.
