In 1893 a small group of white planters and missionary descendants backed by the United States overthrew the Kingdom of Hawai‘i and established a government modeled on the Jim Crow South. In Nation Within Tom Coffman tells the complex history of the unsuccessful efforts of deposed Hawaiian queen Lili‘uokalani and her subjects to resist annexation, which eventually came in 1898. Coffman describes native Hawaiian political activism, the queen's visits to Washington, D.C., to lobby for independence, and her imprisonment, along with hundreds of others, after their aborted armed insurrection. Exposing the myths that fueled the narrative that native Hawaiians willingly relinquished their nation, Coffman shows how Americans such as Theodore Roosevelt conspired to extinguish Hawai‘i's sovereignty in the service of expanding the United States' growing empire. "The best single book on annexation."― The Nation "Tom Coffman has gracefully constructed a new vision of Hawaiian history, broader perhaps than any produced in the last 100 years. . . . A stunning, transoceanic story."― Kehaulani Lum , Honolulu Star-Bulletin "[A] page-turner—and an eye-opener."― Honolulu Weekly " Nation Within explores those 'strange five years' from 1893–1898 during which a cabal of 'missionary boys' hijacked a sovereign nation, deposed its monarch, prostituted the words 'republic' and 'democracy' as badly as any Third World Communist dictator ever has, and handed over an unwilling native people to the care and keeping of the breast-beating, muscle-flexing expansionist United States. (And if you think I overwrite, then I challenge you to read the book.) . . . weep, grow angry . . . "― Dan Boylan, Professor of History, University of Hawaii, , MidWeek "All Americans who wish to understand how and why the United States annexed Hawai‘i in 1898 should read this book. Tom Coffman has forever dispelled the commonly held belief that annexation was a benign and inevitable process of self-determination. Readers of Nation Within also will come to understand why Native Hawaiians today seek justice and reconciliation from an American government that usurped and destroyed their national sovereignty a century ago." -- Edward P. Crapol, Professor of History, College of William and Mary Tom Coffman is an award-winning independent writer and filmmaker. He is the author of several books including The Island Edge of America: A Political History of Hawai‘i , and the producer of many documentaries including O Hawai‘i: From Settlement to Kingdom and Nation Within . Nation Within The History of the American Occupation of Hawai'i By Tom Coffman Duke University Press Copyright © 2016 Tom Coffman All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-8223-6197-8 Contents Foreword, Introduction, Chapter One: A False Spring, Chapter Two: Retrieving History, Chapter Three: Coping with Great Powers, Chapter Four: Roosevelt's Frontier, Chapter Five: The Queen's Dilemma, Chapter Six: American Expansionism, Chapter Seven: A Two-Layered Conspiracy, Chapter Eight: Trade-off for Pearl Harbor, Chapter Nine: An American Coup, Chapter Ten: Hawaiian Resistance, Chapter Eleven: Battle on the Potomac, Chapter Twelve: A Republic in Name, Chapter Thirteen: The Hawaiian Revolt, Chapter Fourteen: Conjuring the Yellow Peril, Chapter Fifteen: The Doorway to Imperialism, Chapter Sixteen: Hawaiin Protests, Chapter Seventeen: The Treaty of Annexation, Chapter Eighteen: The Queen in Winter, Chapter Nineteen: The Hawaiian Petition, Chapter Twenty: Cuba and the Philippines, Chapter Twenty-one: Raising Old Glory, Notes and Acknowledgements, Endnotes, Index, CHAPTER 1 A False Spring Having survived the brutal cold of Washington's winter, the Hawaiian delegation welcomed spring. Having survived yet another campaign to annex their homeland to America, they took a brief moment to remark cheerfully on the survival of Hawai'i as an independent nation. Perhaps the moment for America to take over Hawai'i had come and gone, and perhaps the Hawaiians could now get their country back. The queen of Hawai'i had been living in a hotel in Washington during most of 1897, and the delegates of the native political societies had arrived toward the end of the year, in the dead of winter, to support her with the most ambitious of their many petitions. The delegation had come from mass rallies in Hawai'i against annexation that had been attended by thousands of Hawaiians, who now were nearly one quarter of the earth's surface away. At one of the rallies against annexation, a speaker had likened the Kingdom of Hawai'i to a house, which had been built by the great king, Kamehameha. A handful of foreigners had taken over the house, and they had given the Hawaiians a lei stand in return, where the Hawaiians were expected to reside and sell flowers. Would the Hawaiians live in the lei stand? 'A'ole, the crowd had shouted back. No, never. When the delegates to Washi