Taking Hawaii: How Thirteen Honolulu Businessmen Overthrew the Queen of Hawaii in 1893, With a Bluff

Stephen Dando-Collins

pri 2014 · Open Road Media

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The true story of a queen deposed, a five-year police state, an attempted counter-coup, and the end of an independent nation.

On a January afternoon in 1893, men hunkered down behind sandbagged emplacements in the streets of Honolulu, with rifles, machine guns, and cannon ready to open fire. Troops and police loyal to the queen of the sovereign nation of Hawaii faced off against a small number of rebel Honolulu businessmen—American, British, German, and Australian. In between them stood hundreds of heavily armed United States sailors and marines. Just after 2:00 p.m., the first shot was fired, and a military coup began.

This is the true, tragic, and at times amazing story of the 1893 overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii and her government. It’s also the story of a five-year police state regime in Hawaii following the overthrow, an attempted counter-coup by Hawaiians in 1895, and of how Hawaii became a United States possession.

In Taking Hawaii, award-winning author Stephen Dando-Collins reveals previously little-known facts uncovered during years of research on several continents, in the most dramatic and comprehensive chronicle of the end of Hawaii’s monarchy ever published. Using scores of firsthand accounts, this often minute-by-minute narrative also shows for the first time how the queen’s overthrow teetered on a knife’s edge, only to come about purely through bluff. Taking Hawaii reads like an exciting novel, yet this tale of a grab for power, of misjudgment and injustice, truly took place. Judge for yourself whether you think the queen of Hawaii was wronged, or was wrong.

Praise for Stephen Dando-Collins’s previous books

“An exciting account from a passionate author who has done the necessary research.” —Kirkus Reviews

“A page-turner of a history.” —Publishers Weekly

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Australian-born novelist Stephen Dando-Collins trained as a graphic artist and worked as a designer, copywriter, and later senior executive with leading advertising agencies before serving as chief operating officer for Australia at a US market research group. He has been a full-time author, editor, and researcher since 1996, dealing mostly with historical subjects. His acclaimed work of American history, Standing Bear Is a Person, telling the true story of an 1879 Nebraska legal case, was published in 2004. The first in his series of definitive histories of the Roman legions, Caesar’s Legion, based on more than thirty years of research, has found a broad audience around the world since it was published in 2002. The second in the series, Nero’s Killing Machine, was published in 2005, followed by Cleopatra’s Kidnappers in 2006 and Mark Antony’s Heroes in 2007. The Inquest, his debut novel, benefits from his expert knowledge of Rome and the Romans of the first century.