The Story About The Last Queen of Hawai who Suffered A Coup D’Etat

Liliuokalani was the final sovereign monarch of the Hawaiian Kingdom, reigning from January 29, 1891, to the fall of the Hawaiian Kingdom on January 17, 1893. She was the only queen regnant and the last sovereign monarch of the Hawaiian Kingdom.

On January 29, 1891, nine days after her brother’s death, Liliuokalani succeeded to the throne as Queen of Hawaii.

A new constitution was proposed during her rule, to restore the monarchy’s authority while also granting financially disenfranchised people the opportunity to vote.

Pro-American forces in Hawai’i were alarmed by her efforts to amend the Bayonet Constitution and toppled the monarchy on January 17, 1893.

The revolution was aided by the arrival of US Marines under the command of John L. Stevens to safeguard American interests, which left the monarchy unable to defend itself on the battlefield.

The Queen’s Early Life

Her parents, Analea Keohoklole and Caesar Kapaakea welcomed Liliuokalani into the world on September 2, 1838. As is customary in Hawaii, she was named after an incident that occurred shortly after her birth. During her pregnancy, Kuhina Nui (regent) Elizabeth Knau had suffered an eye infection, which she had to have surgery to treat.

It was she who came up with the names for the kid, which included the terms liliu (intelligent), loloku (tearful), walania (a searing agony), and kamakaeha (sore eyes).

Her ancestors belonged to the Alii class of Hawaiian aristocracy and were collateral relatives of the ruling House of Kamehameha, with whom they had common ancestors dating back to the 18th century.

She started her formal education at the Chiefs’ Children’s School in 1842 when she was four years old. She and her classmates had been declared eligible for the throne of the Hawaiian Kingdom by King Kamehameha III, who had announced in a ceremonial ceremony.

It was subsequently observed by Liliuokalani that these students were solely those whose claims to the throne had been accepted.

On May 5, 1853, she received a third-place result in her final class examinations, behind only Victoria and Nancy Sumner.

After her marriage, she officially enrolled at Oahu College in 1865, where she studied under Susan Tolman Mills, who would eventually go on to establish Mills College in California.

The Regency of Liliuokalani

When Kamehameha V died in 1872, leaving no heir, the Hawaiian Kingdom’s 1864 Constitution mandated that the legislature choose the new king. The legislature did so following the Constitution.

A non-binding referendum and a unanimous vote in the legislature resulted in Lunalilo being the first democratically chosen monarch of the Hawaiian Islands.

In 1874, Lunalilo died without leaving a surviving successor. In the subsequent election, Liliuokalani’s brother, David Kalkaua, campaigned against Emma, the dowager queen of Kamehameha IV, who was also Liliuokalani’s sister-in-law.

The selection of Kalkaua by the legislature, as well as the announcement of his appointment, sparked a disturbance in the courts. The soldiers from the United States and the United Kingdom were brought in, and several of Emma’s followers were imprisoned.

Emma’s connection with the Kalkaua family was strained as a consequence of the election outcome.

On behalf of the Hawaiian people, Liliuokalani presided as Regent throughout Kalkaua’s 1881 globe trip. A smallpox outbreak in 1881, which was likely introduced to the islands by Chinese contract workers, was one of her first duties as a government official.

Following a meeting with her brother’s cabinet ministers, she ordered the closure of all ports on Oahu, the halting of all passenger boats leaving the island, and the establishment of quarantine for those who had been afflicted.

The precautions taken helped to keep the illness under control in Honolulu and Oahu, with just a few instances reported on Kauai.

The Reign of The Queen

Liliuokalani was sworn in as the first and only queen of the Hawaiian Kingdom on January 29, 1891, in the presence of cabinet ministers and supreme court judges. She was the first and only queen of the Hawaiian Kingdom, and she was the first and only woman to occupy the position.

The burial of her brother took place within the first several weeks of her reign, making it difficult to concentrate on her duties. One of her first actions after the conclusion of the period of mourning was to seek the official resignation of the holdover government from her brother’s rule, which she did shortly after.

These pastors refused, and they petitioned the Hawaii Supreme Court for an injunction.

All but one of the judges decided in support of the Queen’s decision, and the ministers were forced to resign.

A New Constitution

The effort by Queen Liliuokalani to publish a new constitution to reclaim powers for the monarchy and Native Hawaiians that had been lost under the Bayonet Constitution was the precipitating event that led to the collapse of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893.

Angered by her attempt to promulgate a new constitution, her opponents, led by two Hawaiian citizens, Lorrin A. Thurston and W. O. Smith, and including six Hawaiian citizens, five United States citizens, and one German citizen, moved to depose the Queen, overthrow the monarchy, and seek the annexation of Hawaii to the United States.

Soon after her ascension, Liliuokalani started receiving petitions from the two main political parties of the period, Hui Klaiina and the National Reform Party, requesting that the Bayonet Constitution be rewritten.

Even though she had the backing of two-thirds of the registered voters, she sought to repeal the old 1887 constitution, but her cabinet withheld their support since they knew what her opponents were going to do in reaction.

The proposed constitution would have restored authority to the king as well as voting rights to native Hawaiians and Asians who had been deprived of their citizenship due to economic hardship.

This plan was opposed by her ministers and closest allies, who attempted unsuccessfully to discourage her from pursuing these measures, both of which were later used against her in the developing constitutional crisis that ensued.

The Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom

Political demonstrations and meetings were held across the city of Honolulu as a result of the political repercussions. Activists against the monarchy and annexationists, as well as leading Reform Party politicians such as Lorrin A. Thurston, a grandson of American missionaries, and former cabinet ministers under the Bayonet Constitution, formed the Committee of Safety in response to what they saw as the “revolutionary action of the queen” and conspired to depose her.

Royalists and loyalists established the Committee of Law and Order, which convened in the palace plaza on January 16, 1893, in reaction to the uprising.

Nwahu, White, Robert W. Wilcox and other pro-monarchist figures delivered remarks in favor of the queen and the government of the United Kingdom.

To satisfy the instigators, the queen and her allies decided to forgo their plans to unilaterally publish a constitutional document. As of January 17, Stevens formally acknowledged the temporary administration formed under pro-annexation leader Sanford B. Dole as the de facto government, which had already been recognized by the Queen of England.

On January 19, a delegation headed to Washington, D.C., to request that the United States annex the territory immediately.

A committee of Native Hawaiian representatives presented the K Petitions in June 1897, and it was signed by President McKinley. However, the Treaty for the Annexation of the Hawaiian Islands failed to pass in the United States Senate after the K Petitions were submitted.

The petitions were presented as evidence of widespread grassroots opposition to annexation on the part of the Hawaiian people, and the treaty was defeated in the Senate; however, despite the treaty’s failure, Hawaii was annexed by Congress in July 1898 through the Newlands Resolution, which was a joint resolution of the House of Representatives and the Senate.

The annexation ceremony was conducted on August 12, 1898, in Iolani Palace, which is still in use as the government’s executive headquarters. President Sanford B. Dole officially turned over “the sovereignty and public property of the Hawaiian Islands” to United States Minister Harold M. Sewall at the White House on Tuesday.

Taking its place on Hawaii’s state flagpole was a large American flag flying over the island by the people of the United States of America.

Originally Published on Medium