by Sam
On September 2, 1838 a little girl was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. Her name was Lydia Liliuokalani, and she would one day be the Queen of Hawaii. When she was born she was wrapped in the finest, soft, tapa cloth. Just after her birth, she was taken away from her parents, and was raised by Abner Paki and his wife Konia. At age four, Abner and Konia sent her away again, this time to a Royal School.
Lydia at age 24, married a “ha’ole” named John Owen Dominus but she was not happy being married, and they had no children. Dominus was the governor of O’ahu and Maui. Dominus died shortly after Liliuokalani took over the throne, and she never married again. When her brother died, she took over the throne of Hawaii in January of 1891. As ruler, her goal was to please her people and to protect their interests, but she had many problems doing this. One of the first things she tried to do was to stop the use of a new constitution that her brother had agreed to, that limited the powers of the Hawaiian rulers. She ruled for 12 years, and then the United States government took over her power, even though she didn’t want them to.
By 1892, the Hawaiian Islands were in deep economic trouble with problems in their biggest crop which is sugar. People were upset with Lydia’s rule and some of them formed a secret association called the “Annexation Club” who tried to take the islands from her. The Annexation Club wanted to take Lydia’s powers away from her, and to annex Hawaii to the United States. Lydia tried to solve the money problems of her people by allowing a lottery to pay for public expenses, and tried to let opium be brought in to the Hawaiian Islands. This made lots of people angry including the religious missionaries and the drug dealers, who would have stopped making so much money. People were angry with Lydia Liliuokalani and thought she was going against the teachings of the Bible, and that she supported gambling and drinking. Liliuokalani suffered from a bad public image
On January 17th ,1893, her government was overthrown by a small group of men, backed by the U.S. government. The purpose of taking over the government, was to escape the taxes on sugar and help the Hawaiian economy. Lydia protested, but eventually gave up fighting so that people wouldn’t die. On July 4th, 1894, the Republic of Hawaii was created, and was recognized by the U.S.
Liliuokalani believed for the rest of her life, that the U.S. would see that they had done the wrong thing and would “right the wrong that had been done to her and the Hawaiian people.” Lydia spent a lot of time in the U.S. trying to get the government to change what they had done to her islands.
