Where is Maui headed? (Honolulu: gated, price, vs.)

[KauaiHiker]

Originally Posted by whtviper1

Yes!! A few radical extremists don't override 1.3 million people many of whom have roots here over a hundred years!

Why not? Isn't that essentially the history of the Bayonet Constitution that hbh just gave us? Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it, just not on the same winning side.

[KauaiHiker]

Originally Posted by hawaiian by heart

I could say its a misunderstanding and a Flubar situation if it wasn't for the fact that Hawaii isn't an isolated one time thing for the U.S stuff like this happens today, iraq for example.

It was standard operating procedure for the US at the time as well. In California, the Americans were literally illegal immigrants who took over and then called the marines in to protect them:

California Republic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[McFrostyJ]

Originally Posted by KauaiHiker

Why not? Isn't that essentially the history of the Bayonet Constitution that hbh just gave us? Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it, just not on the same winning side.

Because two wrongs don't make a right.

[KauaiHiker]

Originally Posted by McFrostyJ

Maybe he is referring to you saying that it can be stolen right back.

Good point, I did indeed phrase it that way. I was trying to counter the logic of the stealing argument, not describe how I envision a possible transition to sovereignty. I should've used quotes.

As I further elaborated, I believe sovereignty is possible without taking anything from anybody, except for those who think that they are guaranteed returns on their speculation.

[Jonah K]

Originally Posted by whtviper1

Yes!!!!!!

Except we'd never get the 201,000 sympathetic residents! And then we'd still be over 500,000 short for a majority to consider this fantasy.

Getting the 201,000 "sympathetic residents" is no problem. The Office of Hawaiian Affairs managed to get 125,631 folks to sign up for its somewhat unsuccessful Kanaʻiolowalu "Native Hawaiian Roll" effort. According to the 2010 Census, there were 289,970 residents of Hawaiian ancestry in Hawaiʻi, so there's an "untapped pool" to go after. Moreover, considering that many residents of Hawaiian ancestry have non-Hawaiian relatives, it shouldn't be that difficult to find another 100,000 folks that are sympathetic towards Hawaiian sovereignty.
http://www.ohadatabook.com/QT-P9_Hawaii.pdf

The biggest problem is getting the 349 well-organized "radical extremists."

[Jonah K]

Originally Posted by hawaiian by heart

@whtviper1, Jonah K

Yes or No was what happened to Hawaii illegal? No bs of it happened 100 years ago. Yes or No? And if it was illegal? did our government know Yes or No?

Under the laws of the Hawaiian monarchy, the treasonous acts of the "Committee of Safety" that resulted in the overthrow of Liliʻuokalani were illegal. Under the international conventions at the time, the acts of the "Committee of Safety" that resulted in the overthrow of Liliʻuokalani were "extralegal." The culpability of the United States lies in the fact that it knowingly received "stolen goods" from the so-called "Republic of Hawaiʻi" when it annexed Hawaiʻi in 1898 using the "Newlands Resolution."

[wtlloyd]

Yep. Civil war wasn't about slavery, it was about secession.

The North bent over backwards to accommodate the South's "peculiar institution", it was that day's equivalent of the Tea Party that forced war.

Seems those same no-nothings yapping "States Rights!!" haven't learned a thing...

[McFrostyJ]

Originally Posted by Jonah K

Under the international conventions at the time, the acts of the "Committee of Safety" that resulted in the overthrow of Liliʻuokalani were "extralegal."

One thing I truly love about this forum is how I end up learning so many new words from you guys, like extralegal. To be honest, at first I thought it was a typo. Then I looked it up in the dictionary! LOL!


I wish I would have gotten more out of the education that was offered to me. However, thanks to many of you here, I continue to learn.
Mahalo!

[OpenD]

Originally Posted by KauaiHiker

Why not? Isn't that essentially the history of the Bayonet Constitution that hbh just gave us? Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it, just not on the same winning side.

The trick is to learn from ALL the history, not just the selected piece of history that fits your preconceptions and supports your existing worldview and foregone conclusions.

When I read the WHOLE history of Hawai'i, I see a very different picture than what has been presented here as a black & white tale, figuratively, of good natives being ripped off by bad Americans. The affair of the Bayonet Constitution of 1887 didn't occur in a vacuum, and it didn't come out of nowhere. The wheels for the eventual overthrow of the Hawaiian Government were actually set in motion a hundred years earlier, when foreign trade began. And no foreigners forced that trade on the Hawaiian Chiefs and Royalty... they were more than eager to buy foreign goods, and would pay handsomely for them... and in the main it was the greed of the Hawaiian upper classes that lead to the downfall of their system. Hawaii wasn't stolen from the Hawaiian people, it was sold off bit by bit by those at the top to support their lavish and sometimes dissolute lifestyles.

Life for a commoner in Hawai'i in the early 1800s was simple, primitive, and sometimes harsh. You made a living growing simple staple crops, wildcrafting native foods, fishing and hunting... but 2/3 of everything you grew, etc. went to the chief, as "rent," taxes and tributes. In addition, you owed three days a month of free work on whatever public project the Chief or the King ordered. These proportions were later immortalized in Kam III's Great Mahele land division, in which 1/3 of the land went to the Crown, 1/3 went to the 265 Chiefs, and 1/3 went to the Commoners, of whom there were many tens of thousands. Not exactly a fair system or an equal distribution of wealth, was it? Worse, because the commoners were poor, and mostly couldn't read and write past a few passages of Bible verse, they didn't file the papers to legally register title to their 3 acre "homesteads," and 99% of their portion of the land distribution was eventually taken over by the Chiefs, and then sold to foreign investors. So who stole what from whom?

As the British Historian Lord Acton famously said, "Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely." He might as well have been talking about Hawai'i, because things at the top started to rot while Kamehameha the Great was still alive. Fragrant native sandlewood could be traded by the Chiefs to the Chinese for silks and gold and rum and other goods, and trade they did, at such a furious rate that by the mid 1830s the sandlewood forests had been decimated, never to recover. So much for the myth that Hawaiians never harmed their 'aina.

What had merely started under Kam I trended up strongly after Kam II took the throne in 1820, because he liked to drink hard and he liked to party hard, and he bought a yacht for 4X its original purchase price in order to party harder, but only 2 years later the boat had to be extensively rebuilt due to wood rot, and then it was destroyed a couple of years later. But no worries, by then Kam II had other yachts, as did a number of the Chiefs, who had a strong preference for schooners and brigs over canoes. Can you smell the money being burned? Meanwhile the commoners had to continue paying their tax in sandlewood to the Chiefs, because the penalty for non-payment was to have your house burned to the ground. When the sandlewood forests played out in the mid-30s the chiefs and the King just borrowed money to keep up their lifestyles, and the country fell into debt.

Kam II was also a social climber, with delusions of grandeur, which eventually lead to his early demise. He sailed to London in 1824 to be received by the King of England and feted by High Society. Unfortunately he contracted measles and died there, as did his co-regent, thrusting his 11 year old brother onto the throne to become Kamehameha III.

Although many diseases were visited on the Hawaiians by contact with traders from the East and West, measles was the great killer of the kanaka maoli people, because they had no natural resistance to the disease, and they were unusually susceptible to its effects. Once introduced it was unstoppable, and the destruction of the people was massive. From an estimated population of 450,000 in 1778 they had already been reduced to about 150,000 people in 1825, then to 75,000 in 1854, and to 40,000 by the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy. It was tragic, but given the state of medical science in the era, it was unavoidable, once contact with the outside world had been opened up, as it had at the Hawaiians' request.

Kam II had also ended the Kapu system of nearly 2,000 intricate rules with harsh penalties (death to a man who ate with women) that functioned to allow the Chiefs to keep their commoners in line, so their governance of the masses became harder. Resistance to and resentment of their rule and their taxes steadily increased, and in parallel the upper classes' disdain and scorn for the commoners grew.

Kam III was a bit more sober, and he served a longer term. And clearly he was a more attentive and responsible monarch than his brother had been, although he seemed somewhat weak when confronted. For example, the sandlewood forests were acknowledged to be on Royal lands, but in a face-off with the chiefs about control of the sandlewood trade, he just handed the forests over to them. Arguably he did more to shape the pre-overthrow country we're familar with than anyone else. Strongly influenced by the missionaries, he pushed for acceptance of the 1939 Bill of Rights and 1940 Constitution, setting up the Legislature, and the land division of 1948, etc.

Ironically, in my view, establishing a system of land titles contained within it the seeds of the kingdom's eventual downfall, because it enabled foreign investors to buy Hawaiian land fee simple with some assurance they could actually hang on to it, or even sell it if they wished. Before then land transactions with foreigners often involved long term leases, but without a written record system, disputes were common.

The economic boom of the whaling industry after 1819 brought with it a hungry demand for land around Honolulu Harbor for warehouses and shops and homes, which was accomplished by virtue of long term ground leases by the royalty or chiefs, not sales... because land wasn't private property, remember? In one prominent case a large plot of land by the harbor was acquired on a 299 year lease from Kam II's co-regent, and was subdivided and wharves built, etc., then once she died and Kam III came to the throne the lease was declared invalid and the lessee left with empty hands. It was disputes over deals like this, and corruption within the Hawaiian judiciary, and perceived injustice towards English and American citizens that lead to foreign governments being petitioned to intervene, and as a result certain interventions occurring, such as the Paulet Affair of 1848, when the British seized control of the country for a few months. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

There's far more, and I could go on, but it's easy enough to pull up the full history online, or at your local library. My point is, the story being presented by activists, of the happy, carefree brown natives of Hawai'i (Est. 300 AD) being ripped off by violent and rapacious white folks, is a carefully constructed and simplistic fairy tale, forged around an "us vs. them" mentality. But truth be told, as I asserted a few hundred words back, there is blame enough to assign to both sides of this issue.

There's simply no way for an issue this complex to be resolved without both sides coming together for communication and reconciliation and forgiveness and acceptance. As Gandhi exhorted "An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind."

[McFrostyJ]

Originally Posted by OpenD

Kam III was a bit more sober, and he served a longer term. And clearly he was a more attentive and responsible monarch than his brother had been, although he seemed somewhat weak when confronted. For example, the sandlewood forests were acknowledged to be on Royal lands, but in a face-off with the chiefs about control of the sandlewood trade, he just handed the forests over to them. Arguably he did more to shape the pre-overthrow country we're familar with than anyone else. Strongly influenced by the missionaries, he pushed for acceptance of the 1939 Bill of Rights and 1940 Constitution, setting up the Legislature, and the land division of 1948, etc.

Great post! However, I think an error was made with some of these years