Difference between revisions of "Correcting Kinzer"

Revision as of 23:17, 26 June 2007

Stephen Kinzer's book, Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, attempts to trace a line from the Hawaiian Revolution of 1893 to the Iraq War of 2003. Without passing judgment on the material in his book regarding places other than Hawaii, it seems Kinzer has drawn upon a mistaken view of the history of the Hawaiian Islands, and has unfortunately muddied the already brackish waters of the past. This page will help sort out factual errors presented by Kinzer, and hopefully be a reference for clarifying the historical record.

Sugar planters?

On page 4, Kinzer states, The influence that economic power exercises over American foreign policy has grown tremendously since the days when ambitious planters in Hawaii realized that by bringing their islands into the United States, they would be able to send their sugar to markets on the mainland without paying import duties.. Although catchy, and certainly reasonable on its face, his statement suffers from several problems.

1) The sugar issue in the late 1890s due to the passage of the MiKinley Tarriff did not add any import duties to Hawaiian sugar - in fact, it eliminated all duties on all foreign sugar. This did have a deleterious effect in Hawaii, but only because it undermined a previous advantage held by Hawaiian sugar producers granted by the Reciprocity Treaty of 1874. Annexation to the United States was a double-edged sword for Hawaiian sugar, because on the one hand, they would enjoy a 2 cent per pound bounty as "domestic" producers - but then they would also be subject to U.S. labor laws and regulations, whereas under the kingdom they were unfettered by such concerns. A very prominent sugar baron, Claus Spreckels aka "King Spreckels", was a staunch royalist, and to assert that all Hawaiian sugar planters were of one mind on the matter is deceptive.

Richard D. Weigle wrote a piece, Sugar and the Hawaiian Revolution in 1947, stating, In actual fact the planters comprised a vigorous bloc of opinion opposing annexation to the United States, and the key to their attitude lies in their dependence upon contract labor. Annexation to the United States would mean conformity to American immigration legislation and the cessation of the influx of laborers from Asiatic countries so necessary to the life of the plantations. Weigle further states, we may at the at the outset discard the thesis that the revolution was an attempt by the Hawaiian planters to secure the domestic bounty...the elusive bounty would not have gone to the Hawaiian planters it its entirety...The planters probably realized that its continuance was extremely uncertain.