On January 17, 1893, a group of American and European businessmen, with the backing of 162 United States Marines from the USS Boston, overthrew the constitutional government of the Hawaiian Kingdom and deposed Queen Lili'uokalani.
It was not a revolution. It was a corporate coup.
The Setup
The conspirators were sugar planters and businessmen who wanted annexation to the United States to eliminate tariffs on their sugar exports. They formed the "Committee of Safety" and coordinated with U.S. Minister John L. Stevens, who ordered the Marines to land "to protect American lives and property," a pretext that has been used to justify military intervention ever since.
Queen Lili'uokalani, seeking to avoid bloodshed, yielded her authority temporarily to the United States government. She believed that once the facts were known, the U.S. would restore her to the throne.
The Betrayal
She was wrong.
President Grover Cleveland investigated and concluded the overthrow was illegal. His commissioner, James Henderson Blount, found that the American minister had conspired with the revolutionaries and that the landing of Marines was an act of war against a friendly nation.
Cleveland called for the restoration of the monarchy. Congress refused.
In 1898, the United States annexed Hawai'i through a joint resolution of Congress, a maneuver used specifically because they could not get the two-thirds Senate vote required for a treaty. The Native Hawaiian people were never consulted.
The Apology
One hundred years later, in 1993, President Clinton signed the Apology Resolution (Public Law 103-150), which formally acknowledged that the overthrow was illegal, that the Native Hawaiian people never directly relinquished their sovereignty, and that the United States had an obligation to provide a process for reconciliation.
That reconciliation has never happened.
What the Apology Means
The Apology Resolution is not just a historical footnote. It is a legal document that acknowledges:
The United States took Hawaiian land without consent. Nearly 1.8 million acres of crown, government, and public lands were seized. These lands now generate billions in revenue for the State of Hawai'i. The Native Hawaiian people receive a fraction of their value through the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, an underfunded system with a waitlist of over 28,000 families.
The overthrow was not ancient history. Its effects are the present.