King Kalākaua was forced at gunpoint to sign the Bayonet Constitution in 1887 (which, for anyone too lazy to read the links, is what allowed plantation industries and sugar/pineapple barons to gain political power by shifting political rule to a puppet legislature that white Americans & Europeans could vote for, while poor & working class Kanāka and all Asian citizens of Hawai'i lost voting rights entirely— as also detailed in Queen Lili'uokalani’s autobiography, here). The King died in 1891.
By 1893, only two years into Lili'uokalani’s reign, the coup backed by US Marines & US Minister John Stevens deposed the Queen. By the time President Cleveland nominally offered the Queen reinstatement in 1894, one year later— which she had obviously requested immediately, though I guess that counts as trying “too late” to @bailesu— Sanford Dole (leader of the coup and first “President” of the “Republic of Hawaii”) refused to honor that reinstatement; and Cleveland did nothing.
So while Cleveland did not annex Hawai'i himself, neither did he support the Hawaiian people & the sovereignty he claimed to support in their time of need, in favor of preserving good relations with soldiers and plantation owners he was happy to leave instated and stationed exactly where they were, running the Kingdom unjustly and under constant threats of violence by the US military, backed with US funds, led by wealthy Americans.
By 1895, Queen Lili'uokalani was placed under house arrest at ‘Iolani Palace and charged with treason when an attempt by Hawaiian people to restore her to power & depose the corrupt government failed. She was initially sentenced to death for this “crime,” and was then pressured into signing an abdication of the throne to stay her own execution as well as that of all the loyalists who had been captured alive in the unsuccessful insurrection.
Lili'uokalani wrote of this: “For myself, I would have chosen death rather than to have signed it; but it was represented to me that by my signing this paper all the persons who had been arrested, all my people now in trouble by reason of their love and loyalty towards me, would be immediately released. Think of my position, – sick, a lone woman in prison, scarcely knowing who was my friend, or who listened to my words only to betray me, without legal advice or friendly counsel, and the stream of blood ready to flow unless it was stayed by my pen.”
All for American money, American agribusiness, and American control of Pearl Harbor.
It was also not the last time the Queen and her neice and heir, the Princess Ka'iulani (who had been publicly asking for the return of Hawaiian sovereignty since Dole’s coup), pled their cause to President Cleveland, to no avail.
Hawai'i was annexed by the US under the order of President McKinley in 1898. The Princess died in 1899, just 7 months shy of her 24th birthday. Queen Lili'uokalani died in 1917, at the age of 79— only 101 years ago. Hawai'i was not made a US state, and its people were not granted the rights of US citizens, until 1959— 18 years after the WWII attack on Pearl Harbor, and 61 years after being claimed as a territory.
So to claim democracy is inherently “better” than all monarchies really says a lot more about the person making that claim than it does the governments in question. Because who is it better for? Who was exploited by whom, left dead by whom, violently deposed by whom? Whose people suffered for the power and profits of the other? Whose hands bore the scars of picking sugar cane and pineapple for pennies under the sun every day, and whose hands pocketed the money for selling them? Whose bank accounts grew fat while others’ language and faith were made illegal?
Particularly to say all that in defense of a democracy whose dick @bailesu is sucking as if its flaws that we must grow past include fascism and slavery, but which is still somehow superior to indigenous autonomy & self-governance without a steady American hand to overthrow and “guide” it in the “right” direction.
Think before you fucking speak.
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