WI: No Hawaii Annexation
- Thread starter Will Kürlich Kerl
- Start date
katchen
Banned
Hawaii stays an independent nation under British protection, the US most likely gives the Philippines it's independence upon getting the Spanish and the US pursues it's Manifest Destiny in the Pacific in a more sustained, less imperialist and dare I use the term, racist way by fully developing Alaska into probably 3-6 states. Much better for everyone concerned.
TFSmith121
Banned
Japan shows up and treats them like the Okinawans;
or the Germans show up and treat them like the Herreros.
Or the British show up and treat them like the Punjabis at the Jallianwala Bagh.
The Hawaiians got rooked by the Americans in terms of the land itself, but Hawaii's fate could have been much worse; given the strategic position of the islands, they were not going to remain independent, as a kingdom or republic, in the era of Great Power politics.
Best,
or the Germans show up and treat them like the Herreros.
Or the British show up and treat them like the Punjabis at the Jallianwala Bagh.
The Hawaiians got rooked by the Americans in terms of the land itself, but Hawaii's fate could have been much worse; given the strategic position of the islands, they were not going to remain independent, as a kingdom or republic, in the era of Great Power politics.
Best,
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....It says "Annexation", not "Overthrow".
So, The Republic of Hawaii stands as a US-Allied nation.
So, The Republic of Hawaii stands as a US-Allied nation.
If the US doesn't annex Hawaii then expect the British to do so. Mind you they will probably keep the native government unless it tries to get uppity, in which case the British won't replace it gently.
Strategically it's far to important to be left alone and the British see it as a prime naval base, if the Yanks don't get it they will.
To me that's the only logical outcome.
Strategically it's far to important to be left alone and the British see it as a prime naval base, if the Yanks don't get it they will.
To me that's the only logical outcome.
TFSmith121
Banned
The problem is that the Republic could not defend itself,
The problem is that the Republic could not defend itself, any more than the Kingdom could, and power abhors a vacuum.
Best,
The problem is that the Republic could not defend itself, any more than the Kingdom could, and power abhors a vacuum.
Best,
The Republic Existed for Four years without anyone attempting to fill said vacuum.
Besides, the Provisional government did realize there was a problem, and set up their government to be permanent enough until a pro-annexation candidate was elected President.
Dole isn't an idiot, if he and his allies can't get an annexation, they'll undoubtedly try for the next best thing. It's a matter of waiting.
Although given the time, I find it difficult to believe that the US will consistently elect anti-imperialist candidates, who will refuse annexation.
katchen
Banned
I realize that Alaska is only the size of Queensland, mate, which makes it moderately sized by Australian standards( and twice the size of Texas and New South Wales), but the state of Alaska as it is is so big that it's unwieldy. For one thing, the capital, Juneau, is stuck in a panhandle made up of fiords like you find in Norway and Western Tasmania and New Zealand and totally detached from the rest of Alaska. It would be like New South Wales including Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania--and having it's capital at Hobart.
Secondly, while Alaska is cold, it's no colder than much of European Russia or Sweden. And it's well watered with plenty of ice and snow. There's as much arable land in Alaska as you find to make up a state the size of Oklahoma. Or Victoria. And because so much of it is so close to the Arctic Circle, that land gets anywhere from 18 to 24 hours of sunlight during much of the growing season. Which means that 60 frost free days is the equivalent of 90 to 120 frost free days in, say, Iowa or Minnesota. That's why it's possible to grow corn and feed hogs up near Fairbanks
Thirdly, unlike Australia, Alaska is broken up by several mountain ranges. So if Alaska were fully settled, you'd have one major center of population in the Panhandle (and a small one, at that, because there is little level land), one around Cook Inlet and the Copper River Basin to the east of Cook Inlet, one in the Tanana Valley around Fairbanks, one around Bristol Bay and the Alaskan Peninsula west of Cook Inlet and the Alaska Range and one around the Sweard Peninsula and the Bering Strait, with much more thinly populated hinterland all around it. It's a bit like Australia itself, actually. Alaska's Top End fully settled would have huge amounts of oil and coal production, but also reindeer ranching, bitter cold though it is. Even moose can be domesticated, it turns out, for milk as well as meat. All Alaska needed was what Australia needed, infrastructure and a lot of immigration at the turn of the 20th Century. Alaska did not get railroads and settlement for a number of reasons, Aussie Hawker. Firstly, the Russians never got settlers into Alaska by the time they sold it to the Americans in 1867. Secondly, as soon as Alaska was sold, the Republican Congress went all Tea Party about it and refused to appropriate a nickel to administer Alaska, claiming that acquiring it in the first place was a waste of money and could the government please sell it back to the Russians? This state of affairs lasted until a bloke named Juneau discovered the first gold in Alaska in 1885, which is how the town of that name got built and how that town became the Territorial and then State Capital. Also as a result of Congress's pique, the US never got around to settling a boundary dispute with British Columbia until 1903.
Between the two, Alaska missed the boom in railway building in the 1880s and 1890s.The Union Pacific almost built a railroad to Alaska as a joint venture with the Canadian Grand Trunk Railroad, being built from Winnipeg to Prince Rupert, but the plan was to actually build the line over the Bering Strait into Siberia and across to European Russia. When Theodore Roosevelt mediated the settlement of the Russo-Japanese War somewhat in Japan's favour, conservatives in Russia got the Russian Government to withdraw approval for the railroad. Then the Cold War intervened--until now President Putin is trying to revive the idea.
And in the US, the Panic of 1907 ended just about all investment in railroad expansion and investors did not distinguish between possibly good projects and bad projects because so many railroad investors had lost their shirts. And railroads had a bad reputation and the public was against the government doing any more to help them. By the time paved roads started being built, the US had a glut of farm products and even though farms were being lost to dust bowl drought, Franklin Roosevelt was not about to open up huge new areas to farming. And by the 1960s, when the demand for farm products was up, the US was starting to see the environmentalists come in claiming that any expansion of farmland or human habitation or human activity at the expense of any wilderness was an unmitigated atrocity. So there you have it. ,
Taking this literally - Hawaii continues as an independent republic under the domination of white planters and businessmen. The opposition to President Sanford Dole and his associates is mainly native Hawaiian supporters of the monarchy - considered "Royalists", though not all were determined to bring back the monarchy.
Dole retires as President after 1900. There is another round of legislative elections. The "royalists" may not boycott this election.
The Dole-ists manipulated the franchise with property qualifications. But they can only push that so far. By 1910, there will be a lot of pressure from outsiders to open the political process. Non-whites will be players. Hawaii has large ethnic-Chinese and ethnic-Japanese communities, plus the native Hawaiians, some Filipinos, and the whites.
I don't have numbers for the proportions in the early 1900s, but ISTM certain that the Asian communities were already large and moving up socially. Wealthier Chinese and Japanese merchants, shopkeepers, professionals, and possibly some landowners would qualify to vote, and would enter the legislature.
The RoH would be similar to Singapore - prosperous, multi-racial. It would suffer, perhaps, from ethnic tensions among the largest groups. Unlike Singapore, it would have no single dominant group, which could aggravate racial rivalries.
Intermarriage would IMO be limited. I don't know of much intermarriage between ethnic Japanese and Chinese in any milieu, or between for instance ethnic Chinese and Malays in Malaysia.
By the 1920s, the mainly non-white disfranchised population would be campaigning for equal status. At some point universal suffrage would be adopted. Then it becomes much more diverse.
I imagine a scenario in the lower house of Hawaiian Parliament: deputies coming from different backgrounds - native Hawaiian, Japanese, Chinese, Ilocanos, some Europeans, mixed-race Hawaiians... very mixed!
unprincipled peter
Donor
yikes, katchen. seems a bit of dreaming going on. The US is going to be less racist without Hawaii? Alaska is going to get developed? they're going to cough up the Phillipines immediately?
no way, no how to any of them. The US was racist. Alaska was undeveloped because of it's environment (and remains so today, not because of environmentalism). The phillipines were kept because if we didn't, someone else was going to scarf them up.
Hawaii isn't going to remain as is. Someone will take over. The US took over for it's own self interest. they're not going to let someone else take over and run the place counter to the US interests. I'm guessing the brits let us have it because it wasn't worth the fight, and better us than anyone else. If we hadn't taken it, it very well may have been a bone of contention in the first decade of the 1900's, triggering world wide conflagration.
The history of Hawaii might change, and with it Pearl Harbor sparking our entry into WW2, but otherwise, the US stays the same, minus one state.
no way, no how to any of them. The US was racist. Alaska was undeveloped because of it's environment (and remains so today, not because of environmentalism). The phillipines were kept because if we didn't, someone else was going to scarf them up.
Hawaii isn't going to remain as is. Someone will take over. The US took over for it's own self interest. they're not going to let someone else take over and run the place counter to the US interests. I'm guessing the brits let us have it because it wasn't worth the fight, and better us than anyone else. If we hadn't taken it, it very well may have been a bone of contention in the first decade of the 1900's, triggering world wide conflagration.
The history of Hawaii might change, and with it Pearl Harbor sparking our entry into WW2, but otherwise, the US stays the same, minus one state.
Alaska doesn't need 6-12 senators. It's the fourth smallest state in terms of population - giving them any more senators'd be utterly foolish.
Tallest Skil
Banned
You realize that no one lives up there, right? 3-6 states is utterly impossible.
So’s Colorado, but you don’t see them complaining. Hi-yo!
Seriously, it’s 17º right now in Indiana. 4º tomorrow.
What a wrong post.
No US Hawaii completely changes the country after 1941, you realize. Never mind before.
unprincipled peter
Donor
Tallest Skil,
what part of my reference to Pearl Harbor escaped your attention? Obviously, that has some major butterflies (although I think we were entering WW2 at some point), but Hawaii doesn't really affect the development of the US. IF no H = no WW2 (not that simple), then yes life totally changes for the US after 1941. before, not so much.
what part of my reference to Pearl Harbor escaped your attention? Obviously, that has some major butterflies (although I think we were entering WW2 at some point), but Hawaii doesn't really affect the development of the US. IF no H = no WW2 (not that simple), then yes life totally changes for the US after 1941. before, not so much.
Size=/Need for more government subdivision. As pointed out Alaska is very sparsely populated and most of the real population is concentrated in a few select areas and namely one area really. By your logic Canada a nation bigger in size than the US, should probably have 60 provinces rather than 10 and 3 territories.
Also If you’re going to add that Alaska’s north could have been developed more than it did. The almost exact same could be said for much of canada’s north. It’s just not easy to get people to settle in sub-arctic lands (at least not in north America).
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David S Poepoe
Banned
King Kalakaua had remarked once that he had the largest navy in the world at his call - the combined might of both Britain, the United States and France, since neither would want the other to possess Hawaii. Besides there had been a treaty of recognition between those three powers earlier in the 19th century.
There are a few neutral countries in the late 19th century that existed by agreement as 'buffer states' by the Great Powers. Siam is the best example and Afghanistan is another.
The Kingdom of Hawaii did not, in the 1890s, exist as a British protector so the observation about it being under British protection is wrong. The Japanese have no ability to project their power outside of East Asia. The Germans aren't really interested in the Pacific, aside for it being very far away from Berlin.
The worse possible result of non-Annexation would be the Republic continueing on and power being held by the oligrachy that eventually ending up sitting on several company board of directors in Honolulu. It would be a 'company town' on a much larger scale.
The best possible result of non-Annexation would be independence.
Except that the British and French not wanting the other to seize the islands for themselves had issued the joint Anglo-Franco Proclamation in 1843 recognising the independence of the Hawaiian monarchy and undertaking to not annex the place. Of course that's not to say that they couldn't go back on it later but it stuck for 50 years without that happening. When Captain Paulet sailed up and forced the Kingdom to briefly become a British protectorate he was effectively told to wind his neck and stop playing silly beggars by his commanding officer Rear Admiral Thomas as soon as he found out, the admiral then sailing out to the islands to apologise to the King and fully renounce the treaty.