| dc.description.abstract | The Blount Report of 1893 is a comprehensive exposé of the American-led overthrow of Hawai’i’s Queen Lili’uokalani and subsequent seizure of the Hawaiian government. Ordered by President Grover Cleveland and composed by Georgia Congressman James Blount, the Blount Report includes numerous first-hand observations of the overthrow unparalleled in credibility and specificity, which shed light on the the influence of sugar fortune, the political power of missionaries and their descendants, and the role of American imperial interests. Ultimately, the Blount Report implicates the United States, exposing the active support of the U.S. Minister to Hawai’i and U.S. Marines in the 1893 coup d’état. By extension, the U.S. government is also incriminated by knowingly legitimating this unjust seizure of power, through annexation of Hawai’i as a territory and eventually as a State.
This paper uses the Blount Report to reveal the nature of the evolving American colonizer in Hawai’i—from religious missionary to prosperous oligarch. The events occurring in Hawai’i between 1820, when missionaries arrived, and 1893, when Queen Lili’uokalani was overthrown, mark the transformation from a colonial project based on civilization and christianzation to the materialization of a settler colonial structure, with the ultimate goal of annexing to the United States. Settler colonization, unlike classic colonization, seeks permanency and invisibility, whereby the settler fully defines and assumes the identity of the colony. For Hawai’i, Queen Lili’uokalani’s overthrow formed the foundation for the ongoing settler structure upon which the American State of Hawai’i is built. By using the Blount Report to illuminate the underlying structure of Hawai’i’s settler colonial state, this paper intends to contribute to the project of Hawai’i’s anti-colonial settler deconstruction. | en_US |
