Alejandra Guilmant titties over the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893 and the brutal nature of the act: The Political, Military, and Cultural Aggression

How the Hawaiian Kingdom was brutally overthrown and the brutal nature of the act: The Political, Military, and Cultural Aggression.

January 17th, 132 years ago in 1893… Ka La O Ka Huli O Ke Aupuni… the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom occurred.

The sun rose over Honolulu on January 16, 1893, glinting not just on the Pacific waves, but on the ambitions of a handful of white men. In the opulent rooms of the American League, a cabal of sugar barons and plantation owners, their pockets heavy with the wealth of stolen land, made their final move. Their target was not a foreign tyrant, but a beloved and civilized monarch: Queen Liliʻuokalani, the rightful ruler of the Hawaiian Kingdom.

For days, the air had been thick with treason. These men, whose fortunes were built on Hawaiian soil, now schemed to sever the nation’s soul. Their grievance? The Queen’s audacious act of proposing a new constitution—one that would restore power to her people and away from the foreign interlopers who had already seized it. To them, this was not democracy; it was an inconvenience to their profits.

The instrument of their treachery was not a Hawaiian mob, but the cold, blue steel of American imperialism. With breathtaking cynicism, they conspired with John L. Stevens, the U.S. Minister to Hawaii, a man who had long shed any pretense of diplomacy. He was their trump card, their occupying force in waiting.

On the afternoon of January 17th, the charade began. The Queen, believing she was acting to prevent bloodshed, stood down her small, loyal force of royal guards. She had received a terrifying ultimatum: step aside, or witness the slaughter of her people. As she made this agonizing choice for the sake of her lāhui (nation), the real violence began to unfold.

It was a brutality of symbolism, of a flag raised in conquest.

From the barracks of the U.S.S. Boston, anchored provocatively in the harbor, a swarm of 162 American marines and sailors disembarked. They marched, not to a foreign shore, but through the streets of a friendly, sovereign capital. Their rifles were loaded, their cannon dragged through the dust, their bayonets fixed. They did not fire a shot. They didn’t need to. Their presence was the shot—a silent, psychological cannonade aimed directly at the heart of the Hawaiian monarchy.

They took up positions around Iolani Palace, the very seat of Hawaiian governance. The sight was a profound desecration: the uniforms of a foreign republic, flanking the home of the Aliʻi (royalty), under the flimsy pretext of “protecting American lives and property.” It was a lie, transparent and cold, and everyone knew it. This was not protection; it was a muscle-flex, a brutal display of raw power designed to make resistance seem suicidal.

1893: Captured US Troops surrender to Queen Liliʻuokalani after a failed armed coup against the Hawaiian Kingdom led by American extremists.

While the Queen was held hostage in her own palace by the threat of American force, the conspirators marched to the government building and declared the monarchy abolished. They did so under the shadow of American rifles, in a room they felt empowered to seize only because of those rifles. They named themselves the “Provisional Government,” a title that rang hollow over the bayonets that enforced it.

The true, gut-wrenching brutality came in the aftermath. Queen Liliʻuokalani, in an act of profound love for her people, yielded her authority not to the traitors, but “to the superior force of the United States.” She trusted in American law and honor. It was a trust that would be brutally betrayed.

The United States, after a swift “investigation,” condemned the act as an “act of war” and an “embarrassment.” But the damage was done. The new, so-called government, now entrenched by American recognition, made its final, cruel move: they permanently barred the Queen from her throne, outlawed the Hawaiian language in schools, and began the systematic erasure of a thousand years of culture and sovereignty.

The overthrow was not a battle with cannon fire and fallen soldiers. Its brutality was more insidious. It was the violence of a knife in the back from a trusted friend. It was the violence of seeing your nation’s flag lowered and a stranger’s raised while foreign troops stood on your king’s grave. It was the slow, cultural strangulation that followed—the theft of a nation not in a blaze of war, but in the cold, calculated silence of a diplomatic betrayal, a wound that has never fully healed.

We learned that to save the Hawaiian culture and people from disappearing, Kalākaua, the last king of the Hawaiian kingdom, went on a world tour in 1881, and travelled to Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and the United States, and he became the first reigning monarch to circumnavigate the globe

As a result,

TRASHY | SCANDALOUS