I treated myself to the new Sarah Vowell book in hardcover and breezed through it in about two weeks. She is such a joy to read and I really enjoy her writing style. This book was about the end of the Hawaiian Kingdom. I share in her sentiment regarding the end of the Hawaiian kingdom and this book shines light on the other side of the concept of "Manifest Destiny". Understanding what really happened in Hawaii saddens me but most of all it frustrates me that we (as a society) are not taught these things in school.
What I liked best about Vowell's assessment of the annexation was exactly how hypocritical it was of the United States to go through with it after the founding fathers worked to try to limit the power and warn of the risk of overreaching that power, especially with regard to the navy. The underlying reason for Hawaii's importance was it's strategic location in the Pacific. If it is any consolation, it certainly wasn't an easy sell to Congress, though, as it took time to finalize the annexation.
It all started with the missionaries. Apparently, some verse in the bible encourages readers that it is their responsibility to invade territories and push their religious ideals on indigenous people who were living just fine without them for hundreds, sometimes thousands of years. This is the basis of the concept of "manifest destiny" we all read about in junior high -- the idea that it was God's destiny for us to expand the US settlement across North America to the Pacific Ocean. The missionaries arrived in Hawaii in the early nineteenth century and there was really no looking back for the indigenous Hawaiians at that point. Sure they were able to have access to some modern ideas and concepts (like monogamy and allowing women to eat bananas -- no joke!) but it came at the cost of freedom.
The majority of this book outlined the events that took place soon after the missionaries arrived in Hawaii and ended with the formal annexation at the turn of the 20th century, which meant I enjoyed the majority of the book until the end, where I become extremely frustrated, angry, and slightly ashamed.
Once the missionaries settled in they convinced the locals how beneficial it would be for them to grow sugar (instead of the local staple, taro root) and sell it to settlements in California and Oregon. The locals were successful at this but soon, the US put tariffs on imported sugar, making the Hawaiian sugar more expensive and less attractive. The Hawaiians sent a representative to Washington to lobby for a special agreement to include no tariffs for Hawaiian sugar coming in to the US. The US agreed on one condition -- Hawaii cannot contract their ports or land with any other nation. This is a direct violation of sovereignty, as pointed out by Vowell. To me, this was the most appalling part of the book. Do you know that currently, Congress is not allowed to dictate to individual US states where they should allocate their federal funding? This is protected by STATE SOVEREIGNTY. So we respect our states as sovereign but we do not do the same for other sovereign nations? Who the hell do we think we are?
This brings up another point that was expressed by many indigenous Hawaiians at the time. Wasn't the United States established to escape colonialism and the control of the British monarchy? The founding fathers were anti-colonialism and against invading territory and starting wars (Does this seem relevant today, in 2011? You bet.). Hawaii lost its freedom to the country that was founded on freedom. It seems not only backward but blatantly hypocritical.
This book was an interesting insight into what happened with Hawaii. It saddens me that even an aerial view of this was not taught in school. It makes me wonder how the history books will read when they reflect on the time we are living in now.
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