The Hawaiˋi Subsystem: Unipolarity, Bipolarity, Tripolarity, and Multipolarity

Michael Haas

Abstract: Before the world was aware of the Hawaiian Archipelago, the equivalent of several international systems existed in the islands. Chiefs on the major islands fought for dominance until one finally prevailed, though after the world knew about the archipelago. Thereafter, island unipolarity existed and was recognized by Britain, France, and the United States as an international subsystem until 1893, when the U.S. military effected a coup. The experience of several systems and subsystems provides evidence of which one is more peaceful, a generalization that confirms evidence elsewhere in the world. Although some in the Islands now favor a return to the days of sovereign independence, the new Kingdom of Hawaiˋi would be swept up as a pawn in the loose bipolar system now developing within the Pacific. Instead of independence, some nongovernmental initiatives in Hawaiˋi have tried to recreate the era in which Pacific islands lived within a loose multipolarity.

DEFINITIONS

An international system is an aggregation of politically autonomous and semiautonomous societies that are aware of one another. An international subsystem is a subset of societies that are autonomous of other subsets. Both terms are social constructions, based judgments about the existence of power centers that include power peripheries. The question posed herein is whether subsystems existed in Hawaiˋi when hardly anyone knew that the Islands existed.

FROM ISOLATION TO FOREIGN CONTACT

Populating Hawaiˋi. Until sometime between 100-600CE the Hawaiian archipelago was uninhabited by humans. from the Marquesas then navigated their way and settled, establishing a self- reliant economy that evidently was cut off from their homeland. In about 1000, Polynesians from Tahiti came to the islands and established a feudal-type economy with chiefs in charge of various parts of the islands. In some cases, the chiefs fought to expand their territories, a warrior class developed (Hitch 1992:ch1), and wars resulted at some point. The power centers of the Islands were oblivious of other parts of the world and vice versa, so the Islands as a whole constituted an international system.

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Earliest Foreign Contact. Residents of Hawaii kept their navigational skills and visited areas of North and South America (Buck 1953), where residents lacked the ability to incorporate them into their international subsystems. Evidence exists that Japanese explorers discovered the archipelago in the fifteenth century, and some lived in the Islands after being shipwrecked (Hazama and Kameji 1986). But Japan did not try to incorporate the Hawaiˋi into its subsystem. In 1527, one of three ships in an expedition by explorer Álvaro de Saavedra was shipwrecked, and survivors intermarried with the (Fornander 1880:ii,106). The other two vessels returned to Spain to report their discovery, and in 1555 Juan Gaetano sailed to the Islands, naming them Las Islas de la Mesa. He was followed by Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira, who mapped the archipelago in 1567. Spain decided to keep their finding a secret. The Native Hawaiians had no visitors for the next 211 years until Captain arrived in 1778. The Hawaiian Islands, which had been an independent international system when he arrived, became an international subsystem when he reported the existence of what he called the Sandwich Islands to the world.

Unaware of an ongoing struggle among chiefs of the Islands for dominance, Cook unwittingly tipped the scales to one faction by providing firearms. In 1790, on Cook’s third visit, one of his ships sailed into by Kamehameha’s domain, was captured, and became his arsenal for eventual victory.

Avoiding Colonial Control. Although the captain of a British ship tried to seize the Islands as another possession of the British Kingdom in 1794, London disavowed the claim; a similar incident occurred in 1843 (Kuykendall 1938:41, 206-21). The commander of a French ship tried to declare the archipelago as a colony of France in 1819, but Paris was not interested. At a time when Britain and France were carving out colonial possessions around the world, even competing with Germany in the South Pacific, London and Paris agreed in 1843 that they would recognize the Kingdom of Hawaiˋi as a separate sovereign state, which adopted a constitution in 1840 that provided universal suffrage and many other progressive reforms. The British-French agreement was joined by the United States later in 1843.

Loss of Sovereignty. Hawaiˋi lost subsystem status in 1893, when American troops went ashore in , placed the reigning queen under house arrest until she abdicated. The troops were allied with American residents, who awaited annexation by the United States. But President Grover Cleveland would not permit annexation and even called the coup a violation of international law. Nevertheless, he

2 decided not to dispatch American troops to restore the independence of the kingdom. Even though he instructed American soldiers to go back to their ships in the port of Honolulu, the local Caucasian clique had formed their own militia and established a republic in 1894. Annexation to the United States arrived in 1898. Hawaiˋi thereby lost independence as a separate nation-state within the international system.

INTERNATIONAL SYSTEMS OF HAWAIˋI

The history of several international systems in the Hawaiian Islands is one of the most fascinating parts of international history. Thanks to careful research by Abraham Fornander, the existence of conflict between competing chiefs is now a matter of historical record, involving periods of tripolarity.

System 1: Loose Tripolarity, 1738-1758. Evidence uncovered by Fornander dates the first international system within the Hawaiian Islands from 1738, when Alapainui, ruler of the island of Hawaiˋi, nearly succeeded in unifying all the islands under his rule. His brother, ruler of , joined him in subduing Molokaˋi and in the quest to conquer Oˋahu, then ruled by Peleioholani. However, victory over Peleioholani was not achieved; there was a standoff. Accordingly, the three rulers formed a “concert” and signed the Treaty of Naonealaˋa, agreeing to a tripolar distribution of power that lasted for two decades. But the entente ended when successors of three rulers came to power.

System 2: Tight Tripolarity, 1759-1782. The new rulers were more bellicose, wanting total control of all the islands. In the Kapalipilo Battle of 1759, rulers of Maui and the island of Hawaiˋi fought for dominance, and the latter annexed the eastern part of Maui. Kahekili, ruler of Maui then launched an attack on Oˋahu to expand his territorial control and also sent an army to the island of Hawaiˋi for revenge. The two battles continued until 1782, when Oˋahu fell to Kahekili. Also in 1782, a ten-year civil war ensued on the island of Hawaiˋi when the heir to Kalaniˋōpuˋu sought to distribute land in a manner that upset the chiefs of the Kohala and Kona districts, who wanted Kamehameha to become the new ruler of the island. In 1778, when Captain Cook broadcast the existence of the Hawaiian Islands, the international system was over; Hawaiˋi became a subsystem within the international system. But there

3 was urgency among the rulers of the various islands to consolidate power in a single subsystem let colonial powers would bite off the islands one by one.

INTERNATIONAL SUBSYSTEMS OF HAWAIˋI

Subsystem 1: Tight Bipolarity, 1783-1795. After Maui’s victory over Oˋahu, Kahekili moved to Honolulu, thereby creating a power vacuum in the middle of the archipelago. In 1790, armed with weapons secured from the British, Kamehameha gained control over Lanaˋi, Maui, and Molokaˋi and prevailed in the civil war on his home island. In 1795, Kamehemeha’s armies went to Oˋahu. In the Battle of Nuˋuanu, Kamehameha’s forces and pushed Kahekili’s army to the Pali Precipice. Those who escape plunging to their death did not contest the new hegemony of Kamehameha, who then ruled all the islands except for Niˋihau, Kauaˋi, and a portion of his home island. He then established a monarchy in 1795, ruling as .

Subsystem 2: Loose Unipolarity, 1796-1818. To unify the islands, Kamehameha’s fleet of warships sailed toward Kauaˋi, but the expedition was abandoned due to a heavy storm. He decided not to attempt another naval attack in 1796, when he returned to handle a revolt on his home island. He then softpedalled the goal of conquering Kauaˋi. His patience was rewarded when Kaumauliˋi decided to surrender voluntarily in 1810, provided that he would remain as the island’s governor. Meanwhile, Kaumauliˋi had allowed a contingent of Russians to establish a fort on the island in 1796 as a headquarters for Russian activities in the Pacific. In 1815, KaumauliˋI asked a representative of a Russian company to support his autonomy from Kamehameha (Daws 1968:51-51). When the Russians decided that their venture was too costly, they departed in 1818. Kamehameha then was the uncontested rule of the islands.

Subsystem 3: Tight Unipolarity, 1818-1893. The position of Kamehameha I and his successors loosened considerably as events of the nineteenth century unfolded. Colonial takeover was a possibility, though rogue efforts by Britain (1794, 1843) and France (1819) were disavowed. The 1843 entente between Britain, France, and the United States ensured that the Kingdom of Hawaiˋi would remain independent, though Washington extended the Monroe Doctrine to the island kingdom. When a sugarcane industry developed from midcentury, workers were imported from China and Japan, and the control over the economy shifted to American and European commercial interests. In 1867, the United States offered to

4 buy Midway. But when the kingdom refused, the U.S. Navy seized the territory. In 1887, the United States gained a leasehold over Pearl Harbor and thus the right to post military vessels on Oˋahu. At the instigation of American economic interests, some American troops landed in Honolulu in 1893, arresting the queen until she abdicated. They hoped that Washington would then assert control, but President Grover Cleveland refused. In 1894, the same clique established the Republic of Hawaiˋi, backed by a militia of Caucasians. In 1898, the two houses of Congress voted to annex the islands, and the days of the Hawaiˋi International Subsystem were over.

EPILOG

The Pacific-Asian Congress of Municipalities (PACOM). One way to recreate the international system or subsystem has been to form international organizations in the Pacific (Haas 1989:ch9). The first was the Pacific-Asian Congress of Municipalities, established in 1971 to link 81 sister cities in 27 countries with headquarters in Honolulu. Mayor Frank Fasi created the network, based on provision of the International Union of Local Authorities, an organization started in 1913 at the Hague to provide a central service point. Discussion in various biennial PACOM meetings was primarily on problems of governing cities and thus had no strategic or military implications. The symbolism of Hawaiˋi as an international actor continued until Fasi’s electoral defeat. PACOM ceased operation in 1988.

Pacific Islands Tourism Development Council. Two efforts to form an international body focused on tourism were undertaken at a time when few island nations had been awarded independence. One proposal was made in 1966 by the leader of ’s independence movement. In 1971, a Melanesian Tourism Council was formed among British Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, New Hebrides, and Papua New Guinea, but abandoned in 1973. When a UN officer stationed in at the time of the 1966 conference was recruited to work for the State of Hawaiˋi in 1972, he decided to launch the Pacific Islands Tourism Development Council. Beginning in 1975, 12 territories joined together in several meetings up to 1978. By that time, several colonies had been awarded independence. They realized that their tourism promotion problems were so different from those of Hawaiˋi that they chose instead to rely on the South Pacific Forum framework, an intergovernmental organization formed among the newly independent countries of the region with headquarters in Suva, Fiji.

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Pacific Islands Conference. The East-West Center was established by Congress in 1960 as a federal agency across the street from the campus of the University of Hawaiˋi at Mānoa. In 1975, the entity was transformed into an independent nonprofit corporation under the law of the State of Hawaiˋi. The first president of the new independent corporation then decided to provide a forum for all leaders in the South Pacific, sovereign and nonsovereign. Two meetings were held—in 1980 and 1985. Contributions were made by 12 of the 27 countries involved, with Australia, Japan, and the State of Hawaiˋi contributing the most. There was no representation from Washington, though Specialized Agencies of the United Nations were present as observers. At the 1980 meeting, a Pacific Islands Development Program was established as a project that would develop multilateral funding for projects in the South Pacific, and more than a dozen projects were developed thereafter, including some at the 1985 meeting.

However, by 1985 the South Pacific Forum consisted of 15 independent countries in the heart of the South Pacific. The South Pacific Commission, which had been formed in 1948, originally had representation from nonsovereign colonies, but with the colonial powers in control of the agenda. The Forum was created as an alternative to the neocolonial Commission, and the Pacific Islands Conference was similarly perceived. In the competition between the three bodies, the South Pacific Forum was preferred by the newly independent countries as well as UN agencies. The Pacific Islands Conference ceased to exist, and the East-West Center began to establish itself as a thinktank.

Independence Movements. Many Native Hawaiians never accepted takeover by the United States and hope that somehow the Kingdom of Hawaiˋi will be restored. The fact is that the annexation was contrary to international law, something that President Grover Cleveland said at the time but could not marshal support too oust the occupying force of 1893. One recent advocate went to the Permanent Court of Arbitration (1999) to argue the case. The case was dismissed, since the United States was not a party.

Efforts to achieve independence, nevertheless, continue. Native Hawaiians are divided on whether to achieve an independent state or a state-within-a-state similar to Native American settlements that have some sovereign capabilities (Haas 2019).

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CONCLUSION The paper is written to record events that are not widely known. Elsewhere, subsystems of the Islands were pooled with Asian and European subsystems in a quantitative analysis that argues unipolarity is the most peaceful type of international subsystem, with multipolarity (and tripolarity) the least peaceful, leaving bipolarity in between (Haas 1970, 1974: Part IV).

That Hawaiˋi lost independence is a tragic event. The Kingdom of Hawaiˋi, one of the most progressive in the world, in 1830 became the first country to abolish the death penalty. The constitution of 1840 provided for universal suffrage, not excluding women. The constitution’s a bill of rights protected “all people of all lands” for “life, limb, liberty, freedom from oppression; the earnings of his hands and the productions of his minds.” Freedom of religion and the right to a fair trial were also in the kingdom’s bill of rights. In 1841, Hawaiˋi was the first country in the world to offer universal primary education, though with tuition required. All forests were nationalized in 1846 to protect them from loggers. Racial intermarriage was encouraged by the kings. Yet the American annexation of the islands occurred without a plebiscite. Some in Hawaiˋi would prefer to return to the days of independence, even though the islands would inevitably remain within the American sphere of influence.

REFERENCES Buck, Peter (1953). Vikings in the Pacific. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Daws, Gavan (1968). Shoal of Time: A History of the Hawaiian Islands. New York: Macmillan. Fornander, Abraham (1880). An Account of the Polynesian Race. London: Trübner. Haas, Michael (1970). “International Subsystems: Stability and Polarity,” American Political Science Review, 44 (1): 98-123. Haas, Michael (1974). International Conflict. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. Haas, Michael (1989). The Pacific Way: Regional Cooperation in the South Pacific. New York: Praeger. Haas, Michael (2019). “Restoration of Independence for Hawaiˋi,” Peace Studies Journal, 12 (August): 23- 38. Hazama, Dorothy Ochiai, and June Okamoto Kemji (1986). Okoga Sama De: The Japanese in Hawaii, 1895-1995. Honolulu: Bess Press.

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Hitch, Thomas Kemper (1992). Islands in Transition: The Past, Present, and Future of Hawaiˋi’s Economy. Honolulu: First Hawaiian Bank. Kuykendall, Ralph A. (1938). The , 1774-1854. Honolulu: University of Hawaiˋi Press. Permanent Court of Arbitration (1999). Larsen v Hawaiian Kingdom (https://pca-cpa.org/en/cases/35/).

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