Download Lost Kingdom: Hawaii's Last Queen, the Sugar Kings, and America's First Imperial Adventure AudioBook Free
First colonized around 200 A.D. by intrepid Polynesian islanders, Hawaii existed for more than 100 years in wonderful isolation. Foreigners did not go to the islands until 1788, when Captain Cook, looking for the fabled Northwest Passage, stumbled after this nation using its own belief system and culture. Three decades later, fourteen Calvinist missionaries still left Boston bound for Hawaii, and when they came they altered the royal family to Christianity, and set up missionary universities where English was taught. A thriving monarchy got ruled over Hawaii for years. Taro fields and fish ponds got long sustained local Hawaiians but sugar plantations had been steadily subsuming them. This fractured, vulnerable Hawaii was the united states that Queen Lili'uokalani, or Lili'u, inherited when she came to power by the end of the nineteenth hundred years. Her predecessor got signed away many of the monarchy's protection under the law, but while Lili'u was striving to put into place a constitution that could reinstate them, other factions were plotting annexation. By using the North american envoy, the USS Boston steamed into Honolulu harbor, and Marines arrived and marched to the palace, inciting the Queen's overthrow. The annexation of Hawaii was extremely questionable; the issue brought on heated up debates in the Senate and President Cleveland offered a highly worded conversation opposing it. This was the first time America had come to beyond the borders of the continental U.S. in an work of imperialism. It was not until President McKinley was elected and the Spanish-American Battle erupted, that Hawaii became a crucial strategic property, and annexation finally approved Congress in 1898.
