Orders from disorder? King Kalākaua’s 1881 global tour and the Hawaiian monarchy’s late nineteenth-century deployment of royal orders and decorations

Abstract

The history of the late nineteenth-century Hawaiian kingdom is often viewed as an inevitably tragic story. It comprises the rapid decline of the native Hawaiian population through disease, the weakening of Hawaiian monarchs’ political autonomy by pro-American sugar interests, followed by the US-led overthrow of the monarchy in 1893. The story culminates in formal annexation of the kingdom in 1898 and supposedly ends with Hawai’i’s admission as America’s 50th state in 1959. In fact, the history of the late nineteenth-century Hawaiian monarchy, and in particular its active resistance to US imperialism, remains a palpable force within contemporary Hawai’i. It influences the current native Hawaiian independence movement and informs a range of decolonising projects involving current scholars and activists across the Pacific. The following discussion of royal Hawaiian orders and decorations offers some new raw materials for those seeking to recover the agency and global entanglements of Hawai’i’s monarchy both prior to and following US annexation.