Hawaii

A sovereign kingdom recognised by the major powers, overthrown by resident American businessmen with the help of US marines. Polynesian voyagers settled the islands well over a thousand years ago, and Kamehameha I unified them by 1810 using European weapons and advisers. The kingdom signed treaties with Britain, France and the United States and had consulates around the world. Disease reduced the Native Hawaiian population catastrophically, and American missionary families acquired land and then sugar plantations, importing Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese and Filipino labour that made the islands demographically unlike anywhere else. The 1887 Bayonet Constitution stripped the monarch's powers at gunpoint; when Queen Liliuokalani moved to restore them in January 1893 a planter committee deposed her, backed by marines landed from a warship. President Cleveland's own investigation called the overthrow unlawful and recommended restoring the queen, and Congress ignored him. Annexation came in 1898 during the Spanish-American War, when Pearl Harbor's value was obvious. Statehood followed in 1959. Congress passed a formal apology for the overthrow in 1993, and a sovereignty movement continues. The Hawaiian language was banned in schools from 1896 and is being revived through immersion education. Honolulu on Oahu is the capital. The state is the only one made entirely of islands and the only one outside North America. Mauna Kea is the tallest mountain on earth measured from its base. Hawaiian and English are both official languages. It is the most racially mixed state by share of residents. Kilauea on the Big Island has erupted almost continuously in recent decades.

MyHistorian
A causal knowledge graph of history