The Hawaiian Republic: And Its Struggle to Win Annexation

by William Adam Russ Jr.

In this second volume of his study, William Adam Russ, Jr. follows up on the story of the turn-of-the-century revolution that abrogated the monarchy and ended the sovereignty of the Kingdom of the Hawaiian Islands. The Hawaiian Republic (1894-98) chronicles how the Hawaiian government leaders had to establish and preserve a stable nation with themselves in power while representing only a small minority of the citizenry - and at the same time maintain a semblance of democratic principles to convince the United States Congress and the American people that Hawaii was worthy of joining the Union.
In January of 1893 a small group of businessmen primarily of American background launched a revolution in the Hawaiian Kingdom. Their objective was to abrogate monarchy, declare a provisional government, and seek annexation to the United States. They ultimately succeeded in the first two objectives but failed in the third.
In his earlier study, The Hawaiian Revolution (1893-94), Russ made it clear that annexation to the United States, rather than the establishment of an independent state, was the primary aim of the revolutionists. Their failure to achieve annexation from the Cleveland administration forced the leadership to form a permanent government until union could be reached.
In the present study, Russ discusses the problems faced by the revolutionary Hawaiian government leading up to annexation. While most of the native Hawaiians and others refused to support or cooperate with that government, the government had to appear to be a popular institution with the citizenry in order to appeal to the Americans. To make matters worse, the population included a large majority of immigrants who were not allowed to participate in civic affairs - and at the same time Japan was making demands on the government to give rights to Japanese immigrants equal to all other foreigners on the Islands.
This work on the Hawaiian Republic is unique as there are no comparable detailed accounts of the period in Hawaii's political history and in the history of the relations between the Islands and the United States. The author uses sources rich in detailed information on the period as it was viewed from the leading players in Honolulu and Washington and in newspapers in Honolulu, New York, and San Francisco. His use of government documents of the Republic and the United States covers the official approach to policies, giving readers the substance of the attitudes, beliefs, and ideas of the leaders so quoted. For this reason The Hawaiian Republic (1894-98) remains a valuable asset for those who study Hawaiian history.

398 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1992

Reviews

[Beth Cato · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was a slow, painful read, delving into monotonous minutia--there's even a full chapter on a congressional filibuster--but there was also genuinely useful information. Therefore, I read on. This book--like its predecessor--is valuable but must be regarded within the context of the time it was written, when Hawaii became a state in the 1050s. The introduction explains this rather bluntly: that Russ approached his research as a blatant nationalist and didn't really consider the opinions of native Hawaiians, whose thoughts were largely undocumented. The choice of words dates the work, too--"Oriental" is often used. Russ asserts that Hawaii became an American territory when it did because of the Spanish-American war and the need for a reliable coaling station in the Pacific. He discusses the racial issues of the time; many in Congress resisted admitting Hawaii because of its dark-skinned, pagan population and its high numbers of Japanese and Chinese laborers. Japan had imperialist interests in Hawaii in the 1890s; Russ goes as far as calling Hawaii a "Japanese colony," though that extreme viewpoint could be argued.

Other areas (that are tediously explored) involve the back and forth manipulation to discourage Royalists and the major effort to run a trans-Pacific cable to Hawaii.

This set of books is not one that I would recommend unless you are really in need of nitty-gritty details about the politics of Hawaii at the start of the 20th century. While thoroughly cited, it is undoubtedly biased toward the American viewpoint, though at the end the author skips ahead in a major way to praise the diversity of Hawaii and how people have come together.