Hawaiian Kingdom

The Hawaiian Kingdom was the archipelagic state that united the inhabited Hawaiian Islands from 1795 to 1893. Kamehameha the Great, war chief of Hawaii island, campaigned fifteen years from 1782 and conquered Oahu, Maui, Molokai and Lanai in 1795, and when Kauai and Niihau yielded voluntarily in 1810 the whole chain bowed to one government at Honolulu. Two dynasties, Kamehameha to 1874 and Kalakaua to 1893, won recognition from Europe and America while whalers, traders and missionaries crowded the ports, bringing guns, sugar, and the syphilis, smallpox and measles that wasted the Native Hawaiian people. The planters grew stronger than the throne: in 1887 the Honolulu Rifles, American settlers in uniform, forced the Bayonet Constitution on Kalakaua, and when his sister Liliuokalani, queen since 1891, tried to restore the old order in 1893 she fell, ending the kingdom after the Black Week standoff of America, Japan and Britain over her restoration.