The Fiftieth State: Rethinking Hawaiʻi’s Path to Incorporation

• In Event: American Empire in the 20th Century: Transformations in Law and Representation

Abstract

By the end of the 19th century, the U.S. had expanded to the Pacific Ocean and begun to turn its attention overseas to islands in the Pacific and Caribbean. The era of settler colonialism and the creation of new U.S. states was over, giving way to a new type of empire building characterized by the indefinite “possession” of territories like Puerto Rico and Guam. Scholars now conceptualize American empire in two categories: settler colonialism and overseas empire. Hawaiʻi does not nearly fit into either category, resembling characteristics of both types of empire building but not fully one or the other. In this paper, I examine archival materials from the 19th century and argue that Hawaiʻi conforms to the settler colonial model of American expansion and in fact, was consistently viewed through the lens of settler colonialism. This finding challenges our understanding of American settler colonialism, revealing that it is not limited to the North American continent but rather is a transpacific process.

Author

• Maye Henning, University of Portland