HISTORY AND DEMOCRACY
HOW OUR AMERICAN DEMOCRACY AND INTERESTS CONQUERED AND ILLEGALLY ANNEXED HAWAII BY FORCE!!
THE STORY OF THE USURPATION OF THE KINGDOM OF HAWAII BY THE US GOVERNMENT AND THE BRITISH TROOPS.
How the United States Stole the Legacy of the Hawaiian Nation
Photo: Her Royal Majesty, Queen Lilioukalani of Hawaii, Last Queen of Hawaii
The
Hawaiian Islands were unknown in the west before 1778. As early as 1843 the
United States asserted that it would not allow any European power to possess
Hawaii, probably after an abortive attempt by the British to annex it. This
was in accordance to the Monroe Doctrine, which established the American
colonial sphere of influence over the Western Hemisphere, in order to rival
the influence of the European powers. In the unabridged version of Webster's
New Twentieth Century Dictionary, the word "usurpation" is defined as: "The
act of usurping; the act of seizing or occupying and enjoying the place,
power, functions or property of another without right; especially the unlawful
occupation of a throne." This is vital, because anyone with even a passing
appreciation of the value of lawfulness should understand that the process by
which the State of Hawaii was annexed to the United States lacked this
lawfulness, and the breach was so obvious that in 1993, even the Congress of
the United States apologized formally to the Hawaiian people. Moreover, this
process was not a peculiarity of history, but was instead the same basic
pattern by which Europeans stole the lands of native people everywhere they
encountered them, through what history -- written by the victorious Europeans
-- came to call "colonialism." When the first Europeans came into contact with
Hawaii, the native people accepted nudity and lived very simple, happy lives.
This came to an end twenty years after the first Congregationalist
missionaries landed on the islands in 1818. By 1838, nudity was prohibited and
the native religious dance, the Hula, was outlawed. The missionaries devised
the first alphabet for the Hawaiian language, and they taught the whole native
people how to read and write. The chiefs of the seven principal royal families
of Hawaii felt that the future of the islands lay with lands outside the
Hawaiian worldview, which caused them to turn their princely children over to
a missionary couple to educate. The missionaries lost no time introducing
these innocent minds to the rigors of Christian theology.
Photo, below: A very early Hawaii postcard.
In
1778 there was a total of 800,000 native-born Hawaiians; within a mere fifty
years 80% of the native population would perish. Largely as a result of the
"diseases of foreign contact," such as alcoholism and diseases for which the
native people had no native immunity. This is the same basic pattern that took
place in north America too, some estimates putting the native population at
the time Columbus discovered the "New World" as high as fifty million. Many of
them died before ever seeing a white man, from diseases like smallpox, that
the first natives brought back with them, who had contact with the Europeans.
The missionaries openly used their influence to westernize the traditional
society of Hawaii. Initially foreigners were not allowed to buy native land,
which they clamored against right from the start. The first step in changing
the native culture was to press for a "constitutional government," which, of
course, meant different things to different people, a cloud of confusion the
missionaries were eager to exploit in their own best interests.
The article continues on the following pages.