Hawaiian Sovereignty: History, Competing Claims, and the Documentary Record

What the documentary record establishes.

These are not contested interpretations. They are recorded in constitutions, treaties, a presidential message to Congress, and an act of Congress — and each is cited below the statement it supports.

1. Documented historical fact

   Before 1893 the Hawaiian Kingdom was recognized as a sovereign state by Britain and France in 1843 and was dealt with as one by the governments that concluded treaties and conventions with it — the United States, Great Britain, France, Japan and others — with a written constitution and a resident diplomatic corps. What legal consequences follow from the events of 1893 and 1898 is a separate question and remains the subject of competing legal interpretations. Nineteenth-century recognition does not by itself resolve post-1893 continuity, present-day statehood, governmental succession, present diplomatic recognition, or the standing of any contemporary organization.

   Source: Kingdom constitutions of 1840, 1852, 1864, and 1887; Treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Navigation with the United States, 1849, 9 Stat. 977; Reciprocity Treaty, 1875, 19 Stat. 625.

2. Documented historical fact

   On January 17, 1893 the Hawaiian constitutional government was overthrown. Queen Liliʻuokalani yielded her authority under protest, in writing, to avoid bloodshed, and appealed to the United States to undo the act.

   Source: Protest of Queen Liliʻuokalani, January 17, 1893, U.S. National Archives.

3. Government or institutional finding

   President Grover Cleveland condemned the part played by United States forces and officials. In his message to Congress of December 18, 1893 he described what had occurred as a substantial wrong that the United States should endeavor to repair, and he pursued restoration of the constitutional government. After an impasse he referred the matter to Congress, which did not act to restore the monarchy.

   Source: Message of President Cleveland to Congress, December 18, 1893, and the Blount Report, an executive investigation later contested by the 1894 Morgan Report.

4. Government or congressional finding

   In 1993 Congress apologized to Native Hawaiians on behalf of the United States for the overthrow, and used the words "illegal overthrow" in the resolution's own text. The resolution states that it is not a settlement of any claim against the United States, and in 2009 the Supreme Court held that it did not create the substantive legal consequence asserted in the case before it.

   Source: Public Law 103-150 (Apology Resolution), Nov. 23, 1993, 107 Stat. 1510; Hawaii v. Office of Hawaiian Affairs, 556 U.S. 163 (2009).

5. Government or congressional finding

   Congress also found that the Native Hawaiian people never directly relinquished their claims to their inherent sovereignty as a people, or over their national lands, to the United States — neither through their monarchy nor through a plebiscite or referendum. This is a congressional finding stated in a statute, not a holding of any court.

   Source: Public Law 103-150, Nov. 23, 1993, 107 Stat. 1510.

These historical acknowledgments do not, by themselves, determine which modern sovereignty organization possesses lawful governmental authority.