AHC: Federated Empire of Oceania/Polynesian Confederation

Rush Tarquin

Gone Fishin'
King Kalakaua of Hawaii had a pretty hair-brained idea to create a Polynesian confederation, or the Federated Empire of Oceania. It didn't work.

He succeeded in getting the King of Samoa to begrudgingly sign up, though that appears to have been from desperation as he was in the middle of a civil war and it was just prior to Samoa getting annexed by the Germans. No meaningful Hawaiian aid arrived in time. Apparently similar deals were struck with Tonga and the Gilbert Islands. Hawaii also had a claim to the Sikaians as it was gifted to Hawaii in the 1850s and I believe the crown of Samoa was offered to the Hawaiian king in the 1850s but it was turned down.

The challenge is to make a successful *Polynesian confederation. It doesn't need to be Kalakaua's crazy scheme of OTL. You'll probably need to find a great power ally interested in backing Hawaii and not wanting to annex it, like Britain or a friendly Japan.

POD is open-ended, but try and keep it in the 19th century.
 
King Kalakaua of Hawaii had a pretty hair-brained idea to create a Polynesian confederation, or the Federated Empire of Oceania. It didn't work.

He succeeded in getting the King of Samoa to begrudgingly sign up, though that appears to have been from desperation as he was in the middle of a civil war and it was just prior to Samoa getting annexed by the Germans. No meaningful Hawaiian aid arrived in time. Apparently similar deals were struck with Tonga and the Gilbert Islands. Hawaii also had a claim to the Sikaians as it was gifted to Hawaii in the 1850s and I believe the crown of Samoa was offered to the Hawaiian king in the 1850s but it was turned down.

The challenge is to make a successful *Polynesian confederation. It doesn't need to be Kalakaua's crazy scheme of OTL. You'll probably need to find a great power ally interested in backing Hawaii and not wanting to annex it, like Britain or a friendly Japan.

POD is open-ended, but try and keep it in the 19th century.

Sounds cool. Why don't you write it yourself?
 
King Kalakaua of Hawaii had a pretty hair-brained idea to create a Polynesian confederation, or the Federated Empire of Oceania. It didn't work.

He succeeded in getting the King of Samoa to begrudgingly sign up, though that appears to have been from desperation as he was in the middle of a civil war and it was just prior to Samoa getting annexed by the Germans. No meaningful Hawaiian aid arrived in time. Apparently similar deals were struck with Tonga and the Gilbert Islands. Hawaii also had a claim to the Sikaians as it was gifted to Hawaii in the 1850s and I believe the crown of Samoa was offered to the Hawaiian king in the 1850s but it was turned down.

The challenge is to make a successful *Polynesian confederation. It doesn't need to be Kalakaua's crazy scheme of OTL. You'll probably need to find a great power ally interested in backing Hawaii and not wanting to annex it, like Britain or a friendly Japan.

POD is open-ended, but try and keep it in the 19th century.
I think you would need New Zealand and Australia to get aboard. How that would happen I have no idea.
 
Well before answering a big question here is what exactly is the area of your definition.


Polynesia refers to a grouping of islands in the Pacific, but not all of the Pacific Islands.

Oceania can refer to all of the islands as well as Australia, New Guinea and New Zealand.

Pacific Islands usually refers to the combined islands of Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia, but excludes New Guinea and New Zealand.
 
I think you would need New Zealand and Australia to get aboard. How that would happen I have no idea.
I think that point of the OP (or at leat the coolest part of this idea) is that it's a confederation made out of native initiative, making it free of colonial powers...
No whiteys - is what I was trying to say.
 

Rush Tarquin

Gone Fishin'
Well before answering a big question here is what exactly is the area of your definition.


Polynesia refers to a grouping of islands in the Pacific, but not all of the Pacific Islands.

Oceania can refer to all of the islands as well as Australia, New Guinea and New Zealand.

Pacific Islands usually refers to the combined islands of Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia, but excludes New Guinea and New Zealand.

Given the mention of Australia and New Zealand, I think people are perhaps a bit confused about the scope of this challenge. The names in the title aren't mine, they're historical (and I can no more divine Kalakaua's intentions than you can). I'm not gonna set hard limits on this, but I think the feasible options are the places Hawaii had a shot at in the 1850s and 1880s mentioned in the OP.

The main concern is not Australia or New Zealand if Britain is a friend of Hawaii. The bigger concern, I think, is preventing the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy and preventing the US from annexing it.

EDIT: Well that and finding the financing to support a small fleet to connect this far flung 'empire', even if it's just for enforcing fishing rights and being a purely symbolic gesture towards upholding some sort of collective security arrangements. The financing would likely need to come from a great power.
 
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I think that point of the OP (or at leat the coolest part of this idea) is that it's a confederation made out of native initiative, making it free of colonial powers...
No whiteys - is what I was trying to say.

New Zealand and Australia will have to lend support to it even if they are not members for the union to have a chance. By virtue of size they dominate the region and that won't change
 
I had this nation form in my tl, Mistress of the South Seas, in the 1890s with Australia and Japan promoting it to Britain as a way of keeping the Americans out of the Pacific.
 
New Zealand and Australia will have to lend support to it even if they are not members for the union to have a chance. By virtue of size they dominate the region and that won't change

True, but a federation that they are members of will be absolutely dominated by them, and therefore may not be interesting to the smaller islands.

A Polynesian Confederation as a 'trade union for heads of state' in the Pacific could work, I think. Basically an organization for the Polynesian governments to cooperate collectively when negotiating with European countries as well as Australia and New Zealand could be useful. Free trade and immigration between islands could also be a goal of the group, but most economic opportunities are outside of Polynesia, unfortunately.
 
Overall I think that it's very unlikely for all of the Oceanian islands (excluding ANZAC) to be united.

The largest thing I think is plausable would be to be to Micronesia, Polynesia (excluding Hawaii and New Zealand) and Fiji as a result of the United States managing to gain all of those islands (or in Fijis case, convince them to join it) and eventually giving it independence as a single country (the below map).

Pacific Federation.png
 
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I've been working on and off on an ATL centered on this. The two likely PODs, in my mind, to use are:

1. Boki and his followers leaving Hawaii in 1829/1830. Financially pressed Governor Boki left Hawaii with many followers in an attempt to find an island full of sandelwood in a means of paying back debts. The ship was lost at sea and Boki, apparently, may have made landfall in Samoa and eventually settled there.

2. Kamehameha's failed attempt to invade Maui. During one of Kamehameha's final campaigns to conquer Maui a huge warfleet was assembled at Waikiki and an epidemic broke out, most likely because of crowded conditions of the camp. The major impact here is that many of the most experienced war chiefs and warriors died. The Hawaiian 'officer corps', to use a very general phrase, was decimated. These men would be important to keep about after Kamehameha I dies and Kamehameha II and Kamehameha III have Queen Kaahumanu serving as regent and when dealing with the missionaries.

The general idea: Boki and his followers leave Hawaii and instead of fine sandelwood islands reach Nauru and many other islands in the South Pacific. Favorable reception there, and in particular contact with the Maori on the North Island of New Zealand, leads to the opening of diplomatic relations between the various islands. Formal alliance between the various islands doesn't occur until the 1880s, but the presence of the Hawaiian flag thru out the Pacific keeps most other powers out.

The economy of the budding Federated Empire of Oceania is sugar, copra and guano. Industry will be concentrated in Hawaii and Aotearoa.
 
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