Republic of Hawaii

The Republic of Hawaii was the short-lived planter republic of the islands between the kingdom and the Stars and Stripes, proclaimed on 4 July 1894 and annexed on 12 August 1898. When Queen Liliʻuokalani rejected the Bayonet Constitution of 1887, the Committee of Public Safety deposed her in 1893; Cleveland, no imperialist, refused their island, so Dole and Thurston wrote a republic to wait for a friendlier president. One party ruled: Hawaii-born Americans speaking Hawaiian at home and dollars in the counting-house, running courts, a legislature and an army of eight hundred against royalists and Japanese labourers. McKinley's victory and the Maine's sinking in Havana harbour changed Washington's mind; the Newlands Resolution took the islands in 1898 without treaty or plebiscite, and the sugar planters got the territory they had designed. Four years of bunting and annexation clubs closed a century of Hawaiian sovereignty, from Cook's landing to the flag's lowering.