{"id":17092,"date":"2016-08-15T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-08-15T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/live-hakamagwp.pantheonsite.io\/news\/stars-stripes-and-palm-trees"},"modified":"2019-03-05T09:14:58","modified_gmt":"2019-03-05T17:14:58","slug":"stars-stripes-and-palm-trees","status":"publish","type":"custom_quick","link":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/article-short\/stars-stripes-and-palm-trees\/","title":{"rendered":"Stars, Stripes, and Palm Trees"},"content":{"rendered":"

Postage stamps are lessons in history, politics, science, or geography packed onto a small piece of gummed paper. They\u2019re also beautiful works of art. In\u00a0<\/em>Stamped\u00a0we\u2019re going coastal, with postal.<\/em><\/p>\n

Hawai\u2018i\u2019s Queen Lili\u2018uokalani watched from a balcony as US Marines armed with Gatling guns marched through the streets of Honolulu and took up position outside the royal palace on January 16, 1893. US Minister to the Kingdom of Hawai\u2018i John Stevens had dispatched the troops in support of a small group of white businessmen and sugar planters, mostly local residents of American and European heritage, who were plotting to overthrow the monarchy and establish a new government.<\/p>\n

The following day, with guns still pointed at the palace, Lili\u2018uokalani agreed to abdicate, though not without objection. In the presence of several of her cabinet ministers, the queen signed a formal protest, emphasizing that she was stepping down only \u201cto avoid any collision of armed forces, and perhaps the loss of life.\u201d She believed the US government would review the situation and restore her to the throne.<\/p>\n

The coup was the culmination of a series of events that had begun six years earlier, when a different group of white businessmen called the Hawaiian League seized control from King Kal\u0101kaua, Lili\u2018uokalani\u2019s brother, imposing a new constitution that reduced the king to a figurehead and disenfranchised many native Hawaiians. When Lili\u2018uokalani came to the throne following her brother\u2019s death in 1891, she began drafting a new constitution to return power to the monarchy and reform voting laws. Soon afterward, Stevens arrived in Hawai\u2018i and started planning to abolish the monarchy and annex the islands, ignoring existing treaties, US policy, and international law.<\/p>\n

After Lili\u2018uokalani\u2019s abdication, the new Provisional Government of Hawai\u2018i (PG) submitted a treaty of annexation to the US Congress. Eager to discredit the former leaders and show their own political might, the revolutionaries modified existing postage stamps of the royals by splashing \u201cProvisional Government\u201d in red or black ink over the images. The new government promptly ordered an original series of stamps, including one showing palm trees embracing a star. According to the American Philatelic Society, \u201cThe design appears to reflect a hope that the palm tree islands would one day add another star to the United States\u2019 flag.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the stamps were ordered in November 1893, the PG was still pushing for annexation, but by the time the series was issued, the political climate had changed. In December 1893, following an investigation, US President Grover Cleveland rejected annexation, calling the coup \u201can act of war\u201d and \u201ca substantial wrong.\u201d Still, the new stamps were adorning letters by February 1894; on July 4, the determined PG declared a republic.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were within a hair\u2019s breadth of the queen being restored,\u201d says historian Ronald Williams Jr. The University of Hawai\u2018i at M\u0101noa faculty member interprets the star and palms stamp as part of a concerted effort by the PG to undermine Hawaiian nationhood. \u201cI see this as them claiming power in an independent republic type of way. They were hanging on to power by a thread,\u201d he explains. The new leaders were engaged in a \u201ccomplicated dance\u201d with the United States, trying to Americanize Hawai\u2018i, but without an essential ingredient: democracy.<\/p>\n

Lili\u2018uokalani appealed repeatedly to the United States for reinstatement, without success. With the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898, Hawai\u2018i became strategically important, leading the United States to take the final step of annexation. Yet no treaty was ever signed and many argue the resolution approving annexation lacked any legal validity.<\/p>\n

In the succeeding decades, US assimilation policy aimed to mask the many progressive achievements of independent Hawai\u2018i. Kal\u0101kaua was the first monarch to circumnavigate the globe, and the kingdom he and Lili\u2018uokalani ruled had more than 90 international consulates, electricity before the White House, and a literacy rate well above that of the United States for much of the 19th century. After the overthrow of the monarchy, the star and palms postage stamp contributed to the rewriting of Hawaiian history. Every time one of Lili\u2018uokalani\u2019s former subjects sent or received a letter, the message was reinforced. But now, as Hawaiians rediscover their culture and heritage, these stamps tell a different tale: one of a small group of conspirators who stole a kingdom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How the humble postage stamp played a part in the Americanization of Hawai\u2018i.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":12983,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"acf":{"hero_video_url":null,"hero_video_caption":"","deck":"How the humble postage stamp played a part in the Americanization of Hawai\u2018i.","authors_group":[{"by_group":"by","contributors_group":[15446]}],"word_count_override":"","podbean1":"","podbean2":"","redirect":"","geolocation":{"address":"21.306737, -157.8588","lat":21.306737,"lng":-157.8588},"related":[16815,16880],"twitterimage":14528,"facebookimage":14029,"twitterdescription":"","edited":"","factchecked":"","code":"","no_old_story_flag":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article-short\/17092"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article-short"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/custom_quick"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article-short\/17092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26449,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article-short\/17092\/revisions\/26449"}],"acf:post":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/16880"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article-short\/16815"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}