Hawaiian Kingdom

The Hawaiian Kingdom, also known as Kingdom of Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian: Ke Aupuni Hawaiʻi), was a sovereign state located in the Hawaiian Islands which existed from 1795 to 1893. It was established during the late 18th century when Hawaiian chief Kamehameha I, from the island of Hawaii, conquered the islands of Oahu, Maui, Molokai, and Lanai, and unified them under one government. In 1810, the Hawaiian Islands were fully unified when the islands of Kauai and Niihau voluntarily joined the Hawaiian Kingdom. Two major dynastic families ruled the kingdom, the House of Kamehameha and the House of Kalākaua.

The kingdom subsequently gained diplomatic recognition from European powers and the United States. An influx of European and American explorers, traders, and whalers soon began arriving to the kingdom, introducing diseases such as syphilis, tuberculosis, smallpox, and measles, leading to the rapid decline of the Native Hawaiian population. In 1887, King Kalākaua was forced to accept a new constitution after a coup d'état by the Honolulu Rifles, a volunteer military unit recruited from American settlers. Queen Liliʻuokalani, who succeeded Kalākaua in 1891, tried to abrogate the new constitution. She was subsequently overthrown in a 1893 coup engineered by the Committee of Safety, a group of Hawaiian subjects who were mostly of American descent, and supported by the U.S. military. The Committee of Safety dissolved the kingdom and established the Republic of Hawaii, intending for the U.S. to annex the islands, which it did on July 4, 1898 via the Newlands Resolution. Hawaii became part of the U.S. as the Territory of Hawaii until it became a U.S. state in 1959.

In 1993, the United States Senate passed the Apology Resolution, which acknowledged that "the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi occurred with the active participation of agents and citizens of the United States" and "the Native Hawaiian people never directly relinquished to the United States their claims to their inherent sovereignty as a people over their national lands, either through the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi or through a plebiscite or referendum." Opposition to the U.S. annexation of Hawaii played a major role in the creation of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement, which calls for Hawaiian independence from American rule.