Hawaii

The Hawaiian Archipelago is a chain of eight major islands and around 137 smaller islands and islets. The oldest of these is roughly 28 million years old, while the youngest, Hawaii, is relatively young at 400,000 years old. “Hawaii” is how the group of islands is often referred to, including by Michener, though the largest of the islands is also named Hawai’i. It is believed that the first Polynesians initially landed on the south coast of this island, though later than 817 CE, as was thought at the time of Michener’s writing.

Hawaii is a novel that uses fictional characters to portray Hawaii’s history, with a primary focus on events occurring between the early 19th and mid-20th centuries. Michener’s book covers the basics of Hawaii’s period of sovereignty followed by its annexation by the United Sates but doesn’t present more details of this political transition, which are useful to help frame the context of the novel’s events and cultural impact.

From 1795 until the late 19th century, the Hawaiian Islands were united under the central rule of the dynasty of King Kamehameha. This lineage destabilized during the 1870s as Hawaii transitioned from one short-lived monarch to another. By 1887, King Kalakaua was pressured by the powerful planter class to sign a new constitution. This would diminish his authority and give voting rights to propertied white men, while withholding the vote from landless Indigenous people and other immigrants. In 1891, Kalakaua’s sister, Queen Liliuokalani, became the last ruler of the island nation. Her political views brought her into direct conflict with the planters because she wanted to write a new constitution restoring the absolute power of the monarchy and suffrage to Indigenous people and non-landowners.

Such a move threatened the wealthy American and European residents of Hawaii, who effectively constituted an oligarchy. They formed an organization called the Committee of Safety, which staged a coup to overthrow the queen’s government. Their incursion was assisted by the United States government minister stationed in the islands, who called in the support of a company of Marines. The Committee of Safety created a provisional government consisting of 13 men from their own ranks. Although the United States initially demanded reinstatement of the queen, the provisional government refused, and matters remained at an impasse until William McKinley was elected president in 1896. He yielded to pressure from expansionists among his advisors, and a treaty of annexation was drafted despite the opposition of Indigenous Hawaiians.

Following several legal battles and appeals to the US senate, a royalist rebellion against the newly formed Republic of Hawaii resulted in the arrest of many royal supporters and the 10-month imprisonment of the queen in her own palace. While imprisoned, Liliuokalani was strong-armed into signing over her throne to the US government, who vowed to subject her supporters to the death penalty unless she abdicated. The treaty was enacted in 1898, and Hawaii became an American territory.

The small group of merchants and planters who controlled the Hawaiian economy and its politics would continue in power for several more decades. While this group favored annexation, it strenuously opposed statehood. Many of the exploitative labor practices used by the Hawaiian planters had already been outlawed in the mainland states, so they found territorial status more convenient in allowing them to import cheap migrant labor. As the novel indicates, labor unions and the Democratic party were both kept out of the islands until the 1950s.

The tide began to turn when the descendants of the merchant class came of age. They were United States citizens and could vote. The Republican party that had dominated Hawaiian politics finally lost control, and the new generation actively campaigned for statehood. Despite these changes, Washington feared that Hawaii would become a Republican stronghold, and resisted granting statehood until its acceptance could be balanced by the admission of a Democratic-leaning state. Thus, Alaska and Hawaii were both admitted to the union in 1959. Ironically, Alaskan voters have since tended to lean Republican while Hawaii tends to vote the Democratic ticket. Hawaii, the novel, was published the year Hawaii became a state.

In 1993, on the 100th anniversary of the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy, the United States government belatedly issued an apology, acknowledging that the Hawaiians had never willingly relinquished their sovereignty. The resolution stated that the Hawaiian government had been illegally overthrown with the active participation of United States officials and some of its citizens. While this admission did nothing to alter the structure of the US-Hawaii relationship, it does suggest a significant change in contemporary attitudes regarding American expansionism. The desire for Hawaii to be restored as its own entity persists; the various proposals and appeals for this autonomy are collectively known as the Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement.