Don Wildman

Yes.

U.S.

government acknowledges their wrongdoing, but they fail to reverse what happened.

1895, a failed royalist counter-rebellion led to the queen then being arrested and imprisoned in Ailani Palace, the building that still stands in the middle of Honolulu.

And she is forced to abdicate when her supporters are threatened with execution.

Things get really ugly.

Yes.

The overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom was not a popular revolution, but a small organized coup that

driven by foreign economic interests enabled by U.S.

military and diplomatic support.

We learn a lot from the Hawaiian situation that we carry forth into the 20th century, don't we?

supporting industries and and you know greed but also of course with the racialized undertones of you know why they thought they were justified in doing this because they saw hawaiians as inferior as exactly and and weak and vulnerable which was actually a welcoming thing they were yeah taking advantage of so hawaii at that point has lost its queen its constitution its independence very tragic but it was not yet officially part of the united states and we'll be discussing how that happens after this break

Noah, with Hawaiian sovereignty effectively non-existent, what was stopping the U.S.

from just immediate annexation?

Right.

And in the midst of that, the Spanish-American War breaks out.

And this brings in the whole conversation we don't have time for today, but about the Philippines and all of that effect and how Hawaiians must have been looking very close to what was happening in the Philippines with the Americans there taking over.

But the fighting in the Pacific, especially in the Philippines, makes it obvious, if it wasn't already, that we were going to need, that the United States would need a strategic outpost in the Pacific.

So all of what has happened, you know, makes that that much more strategic and urgent for America.

The new president is going to be William McKinley, who's all about expansion.