Interest in an independent Hawaii TL?

Would you be interested in a Hawaii TL?


  • Total voters
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My little scenario over at TMM's Independent Hawaii thread got me wanting to flesh the idea out into a TL: anyone interested?

It would feature:
-a powerful American People's Party that stays radical leftist.
-an industrialized Hawaii allied with Germany and the USA
-a USA aligned with Germany
-the collapse of the Democrats
 

Zioneer

Banned
Heck yeah! That sounds awesome. And I'm the guy who brought the TL idea up first, so could I not like this! Go ahead, I'll gladly read your TL!
 
What is this independent Hawaii going to look like? The best case scenario for the native Hawaiians probably would involve them becoming a British Protectorate as Kamehameha had envisioned. Perhaps and interesting POD would be to have Prince Albert Edward Kamehameha (Queen Victoria's Godson) not die as a child.
 
What is this independent Hawaii going to look like? The best case scenario for the native Hawaiians probably would involve them becoming a British Protectorate as Kamehameha had envisioned. Perhaps and interesting POD would be to have Prince Albert Edward Kamehameha (Queen Victoria's Godson) not die as a child.

Sorry, the POD is in 1893--Lili'uokalani doesn't surrender to the Honolulu Rifles and Wilcox manages to defeat them, largely because of the election-wary Benjamin Harrison withdrawing American support for the proposal.
 
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Go for it! It sounds promising, especially the whole Germany-America-Hawaii friendship. Never seen that one done.
 
Why don't we have checkbox polls, so I can vote "yes", "maybe", and "thande". This is a travesty of justice.
 
Sorry, the POD is in 1892--Lili'uokalani doesn't surrender to the Honolulu Rifles and Wilcox manages to defeat them, largely because of the election-wary Benjamin Harrison withdrawing American support for the proposal.

I don't believe there was a POD in 1892, but there is the US Marines being landed in 1893. I'm fairly familiar with Hawaiian history, particularly the late Monarchy era, so give it your best shot. However a problem with industrialization is that the islands are volcanic origin and lack natural deposits of coal and iron.
 
I don't believe there was a POD in 1892, but there is the US Marines being landed in 1893. I'm fairly familiar with Hawaiian history, particularly the late Monarchy era, so give it your best shot. However a problem with industrialization is that the islands are volcanic origin and lack natural deposits of coal and iron.

Again, thanks for pointing that out. I think that with good relations with the US and Japan, they'd be able to get coal and iron pretty easily.
 
Even if they could get supplies of iron and coal easily, the main question is "What good would it do?". Both Japan and California have their own industries, connected to large nations, with a large population and cadre of skilled workers. It costs money to haul iron and coal hundreds of miles across the Pacific, and even more yet to haul finished products someplace to sell. Moreover, you're talking about a nation with under 200,000 people, a good chunk being uneducated Asian plantation laborers with little attachment to the nation, and most of the natives being rural subsistence farmers and ranchers or field supervisors on the plantations. Not to mention you had a POD where you just decapitated the locus of the economy and caused many of the most educated and wealthy people in the islands to leave. Hardly the makings of a good situation.

In short, an independent Hawaii is going to be poor without focusing on cash crops. It's just too far away from everything, too small and too undeveloped to be the hub of industry. Hell, it's going to be poor even with cash crops. We didn't start really getting a healthy economy and development till tourism took off, and even then it was bolstered by the military. The main resources here are extremely rich soil and good harbors in a strategic location. That's about it.

Oh, and damn good music, food and weather.
 
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