U.S. Marines Land in Honolulu, American Businessmen Overthrow Hawaiian Kingdom and Depose Queen Liliuokalani in Illegal Coup

On January 16, 1893, U.S. Minister to Hawaii John L. Stevens orders 162 U.S. sailors and marines from the USS Boston to land in Honolulu under the pretense of protecting American lives and property. The following day, January 17, a Committee of Safety consisting of thirteen men—seven foreign residents (five Americans, one Scotsman, and one German) and six Hawaiian Kingdom subjects of American descent—stages a coup d’etat and declares the overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani and the Hawaiian monarchy. The Committee, led by the same American businessmen including Sanford B. Dole and Lorrin Thurston who forced King Kalakaua to sign the Bayonet Constitution in 1887, proclaims a Provisional Government and immediately seeks annexation to the United States. The presence of U.S. military forces renders the Hawaiian Kingdom unable to defend itself, and Queen Liliuokalani yields her authority “to avoid any collision of armed forces and perhaps loss of life” under explicit protest, stating she expects “the Government of the United States shall, upon the facts being presented to it, undo the action of its representative and reinstate me in the authority which I claim as the constitutional sovereign of the Hawaiian Islands.”

The coup is precipitated by Queen Liliuokalani’s attempt to promulgate a new constitution that would restore power to the monarchy and expand voting rights to Native Hawaiians who had been disenfranchised by the 1887 Bayonet Constitution. The proposed 1893 Constitution would increase suffrage by reducing property requirements, eliminate voting privileges extended to European and American residents who are not Hawaiian citizens, and restore executive authority to the Crown. These democratic reforms threaten the power of American business interests that control the Hawaiian government through the Bayonet Constitution’s restricted electorate, and the Committee of Safety moves to overthrow the monarchy before the new constitution can be implemented. The coup thus represents American businessmen overthrowing a sovereign government to prevent democratic expansion of voting rights that would empower indigenous people.

U.S. Minister Stevens acts in coordination with the Committee of Safety, landing marines the day before the planned coup in a show of force that makes armed resistance by Hawaiian forces impossible. Stevens recognizes the Provisional Government immediately after its proclamation, despite the fact that it controls no military forces of its own, holds no territory beyond a single government building, and represents no democratic mandate from Hawaiian citizens. The hasty diplomatic recognition by the U.S. representative provides the coup with a veneer of legitimacy and signals that the United States will not permit restoration of the monarchy. Stevens’ actions constitute a clear violation of Hawaiian sovereignty and abuse of diplomatic authority to serve the interests of American businessmen rather than to conduct legitimate diplomatic relations between sovereign nations.

The Committee of Safety immediately establishes a Provisional Government with Sanford Dole as President and begins negotiations for annexation to the United States. The conspirators’ ultimate goal has always been annexation, as they explicitly stated when forming the Hawaiian League in the 1880s. The overthrow is not a spontaneous response to the Queen’s proposed constitution but rather the culmination of a decade-long campaign by American sugar planters and businessmen to eliminate Hawaiian sovereignty and secure Hawaii’s permanent incorporation into the United States. Annexation would make Hawaiian sugar production domestic rather than foreign, eliminating tariffs and restoring the preferential market access that the 1890 McKinley Tariff had removed, thereby protecting the enormous profits of American plantation owners.

President Benjamin Harrison, in the final weeks of his administration, supports annexation and submits a treaty to the U.S. Senate in February 1893. However, Grover Cleveland takes office in March and withdraws the treaty, expressing concerns about the circumstances of the overthrow. Cleveland commissions former Congressman James Henderson Blount to investigate the events in Hawaii. The resulting Blount Report, based on extensive interviews with participants in the coup and Hawaiian officials, concludes that the overthrow was illegal, that Minister Stevens and U.S. military forces acted inappropriately in supporting the coup, and that the Provisional Government does not represent the will of the Hawaiian people. In his December 18, 1893 message to Congress, President Cleveland formally acknowledges that “the Hawaiian Kingdom was unlawfully invaded by United States marines on January 16, 1893, which led to an illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian government the following day.”

Despite Cleveland’s recognition that the overthrow was illegal and his recommendation that the monarchy be restored, the Provisional Government refuses to relinquish power, and Congress declines to take action to restore Queen Liliuokalani. The coup plotters, having seized power with U.S. military backing, simply wait for a more sympathetic U.S. administration. The Provisional Government transforms itself into the Republic of Hawaii in 1894, creating a constitutional facade for what remains an oligarchy imposed by force and maintained by the implicit threat of U.S. intervention should Native Hawaiians attempt to restore their sovereign government. Sanford Dole serves as President of this republic, which exists solely as a transitional structure pending annexation.

Native Hawaiians massively oppose annexation. In 1897, when the U.S. Congress again considers an annexation treaty, Native Hawaiians organize a petition drive that collects signatures from over 21,000 people—the vast majority of the adult Native Hawaiian population—explicitly opposing annexation and demanding restoration of the monarchy. The petition, delivered to the U.S. Senate, demonstrates that annexation violates the will of the indigenous people and occurs without their consent. Despite this overwhelming opposition, the United States annexes Hawaii in 1898 through a joint resolution of Congress—a legislative act rather than a treaty—specifically to avoid the requirement that a treaty receive two-thirds Senate approval, which would fail due to insufficient support for annexing territory against the explicit opposition of its indigenous population.

The 1898 annexation coincides with the Spanish-American War and reflects the growing U.S. imperial appetite for Pacific territory and military bases to project power toward Asia. Hawaii’s strategic location makes it valuable for naval operations, and Pearl Harbor will become one of the most important U.S. military installations in the Pacific. The coup and annexation thus serve dual purposes: protecting American business interests in Hawaiian sugar and securing strategic territory for U.S. military expansion. The indigenous Hawaiian people and their sovereignty are sacrificed to these economic and military objectives.

Queen Liliuokalani spends the rest of her life advocating for Hawaiian sovereignty and pursuing legal remedies against the United States for the illegal seizure of Hawaiian Kingdom lands and assets. She files suit against the United States seeking compensation for the approximately 1.8 million acres of Crown and Government lands that were seized during annexation. The suit ultimately fails, as U.S. courts rule that the United States cannot be sued without its consent and that the political question doctrine prevents courts from reviewing the annexation decision. These legal roadblocks demonstrate how international law and domestic legal protections provide no effective remedy when powerful nations seize the territory of weaker ones, and when domestic courts defer to the political branches on matters of imperial expansion.

The 1993 Apology Resolution passed by the U.S. Congress formally acknowledges the historical record: “the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii occurred with the active participation of agents and citizens of the United States,” and “the indigenous Hawaiian people never directly relinquished to the United States their claims to their inherent sovereignty as a people over their national lands.” The resolution recognizes that the overthrow was illegal under both Hawaiian law and international law, that it occurred without the consent of the Hawaiian people, and that the United States bears responsibility for the violation of Hawaiian sovereignty. However, the Apology Resolution is purely symbolic and includes language specifying that it does not provide a legal basis for claims against the United States, ensuring that formal recognition of the crime produces no legal consequences or compensation for the victims.

The overthrow establishes patterns of U.S. intervention and regime change that will be repeated throughout the 20th century: U.S. military forces provide the coercive backing for local elites aligned with American business interests to overthrow governments that threaten those interests; diplomatic representatives act as co-conspirators rather than neutral observers; the appearance of local political processes masks the reality of foreign-orchestrated coups; and legal or constitutional justifications provide thin cover for naked exercises of military and economic power. The Hawaiian coup becomes a template for U.S. interventions in Cuba, Nicaragua, the Philippines, and throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

For Native Hawaiians, the overthrow represents the complete loss of sovereignty and self-determination. Within seven years, Hawaiians go from citizens of an independent kingdom to subjects of an illegal provisional government to citizens of a puppet republic to territorial residents of the United States, with no point in this process reflecting their consent or respecting their rights. The economic dispossession that began with the Great Mahele and accelerated under the Bayonet Constitution becomes total when the United States claims all Crown and Government lands—approximately 1.8 million acres—as federal property. Native Hawaiians who had lived on, cultivated, and held traditional rights to these lands are converted into trespassers on what becomes U.S. government property, with no compensation and no legal recourse.

The lands seized through annexation will be used for U.S. military bases, agricultural leases to American corporations, and government facilities that benefit settlers while providing minimal benefit to Native Hawaiians. The seizure of Hawaiian Kingdom lands without consent or compensation constitutes one of the largest property thefts in U.S. history and creates the foundation for ongoing economic inequality in which Native Hawaiians have among the highest poverty rates and lowest land ownership rates in their own homeland. The political and economic structures established through the illegal overthrow and annexation persist into the present, maintaining disparities in wealth, land ownership, and political power that originated in the armed coup of January 1893.

Queen Liliuokalani dies in 1917 at age 79, never having seen restoration of the monarchy or justice for the illegal seizure of her kingdom. Her protest against the overthrow—yielding authority temporarily under explicit duress while denying the legitimacy of the coup and demanding eventual restoration—remains the formal position of Native Hawaiian sovereignty advocates who continue to assert that the Hawaiian Kingdom exists under illegal U.S. occupation and that Native Hawaiians retain inherent sovereignty that was never legally extinguished. The events of January 1893 remain contested territory in Hawaiian politics, with some Native Hawaiians seeking restoration of the Kingdom, others seeking a nation-within-a-nation status similar to Native American tribes, and still others working within the U.S. political system to secure greater rights and compensation for historical injustices.

The overthrow demonstrates that constitutional government, international law, and diplomatic norms provide no protection against imperial aggression when a powerful nation decides that its economic and strategic interests justify seizing the territory of a weaker one. The Hawaiian Kingdom had done everything according to international legal standards—maintained diplomatic relations with major powers, entered into treaties as a sovereign nation, developed constitutional governance—yet these achievements provided no shield against American businessmen willing to use armed force and a U.S. government willing to back their coup with military power and diplomatic recognition. The lesson of the Hawaiian overthrow is that sovereignty ultimately rests on power rather than law, and that small nations remain vulnerable to capture by foreign interests regardless of their legal status or the democratic legitimacy of their governments.