Hawai`i entered the decade of the 1890s as a kingdom and emerged from it as a Territory of the United States, with a provisional government and a republic in between. It was a time of monarchs and "mission boys," of royalists, republicans and revolutionaries.
The storm that had been gathering broke on Jan. 17, 1893, when the Hawaiian monarchy ended in a day of bloodless revolution. Armed insurrection by a relatively small group of men, most of them American by birth or heritage, succeeded in wresting control of the Islands with the backing of American troops sent ashore from a warship in Honolulu Harbor. To this "superior force of the United States of America," Queen Lili`uokalani yielded her throne, under protest, in order to avoid bloodshed, trusting that the United States government would right the wrong that had been done to her and the Hawaiian people.
Sugar and a coerced constitution played roles in the drama -- intertwined themes of economics and politics.
Sugar was by far the principal support of the Islands, and profits and prosperity hinged on favorable treaties with the United States, Hawaiian sugar's chief market, creating powerful economic ties. As the Islands' sugar industry grew, large numbers of contract laborers were imported first from China, then from Japan and other countries, to work on the plantations -- the beginning of Hawai`i's present multicultural population. Plantation ownership and control of the business community were in the hands of men of American or European blood.
