The Hawaiian Islands were once known as the North Sandwich Islands and were 'discovered' by Captain Cook in 1779. King Kamehameha II decided to visit the UK in 1824 hoping to meet George IV. Unfortunately, he and his wife died before such a meeting. What if they had survived and decided to bring Hawaii under British protection. A similar constitutional arrangement to Tonga or Fiji achieved in retaining their monarchy. The state flag has a union flag on it. Would the growing expansion by the US in the Far East make trouble later on in the 19th century. A more aggressive policy in the Pacific by the US to establish other islands within their sphere of influence. A clash with the Germans over Samoa or with the French? Hawaii could become an important link for the British to Australia via Canada. Singapore and Hawaii become the Gibaltars of the Far East. Therefore, a surprise attack on Cooks' Harbour by the Japanese in 1941? The British could have annexed Hawaii, and it would probably have stuck. The islands would also probably have been much less intensively developed -- more along the lines of Fijii. Some British planters and merchants, imported Asian labor (more from India than from East Asia, though) and a more prominant native Hawaiian and part-Hawaiian group. Independence in the 1960's as part of the Commonwealth. Hawaii make so much more sense to be in British hands, i wonder why the Brits didn't fight for it. The US doesn't have any use for it compared with the trade and influence it could have had (maybe exceeding Hong Kong in trade) and, like you said, would be the Gibraltar of the Pacific. -- it was general British policy not to annex a territory without a very good reason. A good reason for annexing Hawaii just never came up. From what I can understand, and I refer everyone on to Gavin Daws' Shoal of Time, the excellent and standard history book of Hawaii at the University of Hawaii, the British accepted American hegemony in Hawaii since they would rather of had the Americans than anyone else. I'm sure that French expansion into the Pacific worried them to some degree and the possibility of Hawaii being German possession would have caused them to acted first. In fact Prince Henry of Prussia, the Kaiser's brother and later Admiral in the Reichsmarine, visited Hawaii in the 1879 and there were economic ties with Germany, namely H. Hackfeld and Co. which was seized during World War I and renamed American Factors, and today is still a major company in the islands. The influence of Prussia is evident to this day in the legacy of Captain Henry Berger, bandmaster of the Royal Hawaiian Band from 1872 to 1924; the Prussian uniforms of the Royal Guard, which today march in various parades and ceremonial occassions and the Schellenbaum presented to King Kalakaua by Kaiser Wilhelm I on the occassion of his visit to Berlin in 1881, the replica is on display at Iolani Barracks and carried by the Royal Guard at events honoring the Hawaiian royalty. There is also a history of Russian (Imperial Russia that is) connections to Hawaii. When on his 1881 World Trip, in which he became the first crowned head of state to circumnavigate the world, King Kalakaua was asked how big was Hawaii's navy. To which he answered (and I paraphrase) that it was the largest in the world since neither Great Britain or the United States would let either or any other party take Hawaii. Kalakaua was also the first monarch to address the Joint Houses of Congress in the 1870s when he visited Washington D.C. to ensure the passage of the Reciprocity Treaty between the U.S. and Hawaii. Right. The Russians didn't know what to do with their Baltic Fleet in the peacetime and have sent them several times on around the world voyages, just to demonstrate the world that Russia is a civilized country and a great maritime power as well. During several of their expeditions, they have landed in Hawaii and made a great impression on Hawaiian king by the number of their ships. One Russian captain is said to have shown the king map of the world where Russia was the largest nation on Earth and impressed king have asked for Russian protectorate. It all came to nothing in the end, though if Russia has kept Alaska, Hawaii would be very useful. Or perhaps, they might use Pearl Harbour as an alternative to Vladivostok and Port-Arthur. I have done a what if a while ago, by which the WWII starts with surprise Japanese attack on Russian naval base of Zhemchyjnaya Gavan' (translated from Russian as "Pearl Harbour") Alternative for what? There's a big difference between a naval base and a railhead; Vladivostok and Port Arthur would still have to exist, or there would be no Russian presence in the Pacific it all - or little point in having one I was under the understanding that it _was_ a British protectorate, although apparently not as formally as I thought; this status ended (apparently) in the 1870s. Hawaii was an important part of the trade route connecting Hong Kong/Singapore and Australasia to British Columbia and the transcontinental railroad, however - as the bounty of Hawaiian fruit in 1880s and 1890s pictures of Vancouver food retail storefronts demonstrates; the wet, warm wind known as the Chinook (which by the time it gets to the Prairies is a warm, dry wind) was/is known as the "Pineapple Express", which has its origins in the easy sail this seasonal wind made directly from Honolulu to Vancouver. Why the British didn't garrison Hawaii is a good question; it may have had something to do with the power of the Hawaiian kingdom. It's hard to understand British negligence concerning this strategic outpost, given the naval/marine character of their empire and the archipelago's active role in the Asia/Australia to North America trade route...... 1) What benefits would accrue to Whitehall from occupation compared to the costs? From the British point of view they pretty much had all they wanted from Hawaii already - and Britain frequently made deals with local rulers particularly in India. 2) Their only real rival in the Pacific was the United States who were not considered all that hostile in the post-Civil War era. The Japanese rise to power was still a generation away and everyone "knew" the Americans were hugely interested in making megabucks in the Pacific and Asia and not all that interested in gaining colonies - at least until the Spanish-American War. There would probably be a sizable ethnic Japanese population -- the Anglo-Japanese association of the first quarter of this century would help the growth of a Japanese ethnic population in the Sandwich Islands, though probably not to the point in OTL (where ethnic Japanese form close to half of the Hawai'ian population). Still, I'm unsure whether there could have been a more sizable ethnic Hawai'ian population in a British Hawai'i than in an American one. New Zealand, rather than Fiji, might be a better parallel, with a bare British ethnic majority co-existing with a large (perhaps, 30%) ethnic Hawai'ian populatin together with some ethnic groups from South Asia or Polynesia. -- unlikely, given the climate and crops. British settlers didn't migrate in large numbers to non-temperate areas, as a general rule.