Major Events in the Political History of Hawai'i
On October 8, 1840, King Kamehameha the Third authorized the Hawaiian Kingdom Constitution, which described the sharing of governmental power between the monarch and the parliament. This document marked Hawai'i's departure from absolute monarchism. The Constitution demonstrated the King's commitment to domestic welfare and adherence to the law of nations.
In January of 1893, before Queen Lili'uokalani could institute a revised constitution with more democratic reforms (i.e., allowing all subjects the right to vote, as opposed to just male landowners), the lawful government of Hawai'i was overthrown in a coup d'etat devised by a group of wealthy landowners advocating annexation to the United States. They were aided in this stroke of state by the U.S. foreign minister to Hawai'i and a detachment of U.S. Marines.
Demanding remedy for this unlawful act, Queen Lili'uokalani sent her formal letter of protest to U.S. President Grover Cleveland. While Cleveland did insist on the reinstatement of Hawai'i's lawful government, the annexationists' friends in the U.S. Congress waited for a president sympathic to their agenda. They got their wish with the 1896 election of William McKinley.
The annexationists installed their government de facto, renamed the nation the Republic of Hawai'i, then conveyed the islands to the United States on August 12, 1898. All Hawaiian subjects -- both kanaka maoli (persons of aboriginal Hawaiian ancestry) and kanaka 'e (those of foreign ethnicity) -- were collectively naturalized as U.S. nationals on that day.
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