Lost Kingdom: Hawaii's Last Queen, the Sugar Kings, and America's First Imperial Adventure Book

First colonized in around 200 A.D. by intrepid Polynesian islanders who set off in double-rigged canoes and paddled thousands of miles across the Pacific Ocean until they reached the Hawaiian archipelago, Hawaii existed for hundreds of years in splendid isolation. Foreigners did not visit the islands until 1788, when Captain Cook, looking for the fabled Northwest Passage, stumbled upon this small, bountiful nation with its own belief system and culture. Three decades later, fourteen Calvinist missionaries left Boston bound for Hawaii, and when they arrived they converted the royal family to Christianity, and set up missionary schools where English was taught.

A thriving monarchy had ruled over Hawaii for generations. Taro fields and fish ponds had long sustained native Hawaiians but sugar plantations had been gradually subsuming them. Soon, a small group of sugar kings controlled a majority of the arable land. This fractured, vulnerable Hawaii was the country that Queen Lili'uokalani, or Lili'u, inherited — along with significant family debt — when she came to power at the end of the nineteenth century. Her predecessor had signed away many of the monarchy's rights, but while Lili'u was trying to put into place a constitution that would reinstate them, other factions were plotting annexation. With the help of the American envoy, the USS Boston steamed into Honolulu harbor, and Marines landed and marched to the palace, inciting the Queen's overthrow. As the U.S. envoy wrote at the time, "The Hawaiian pear is now fully ripe, and this is the golden hour for the United States to pluck it."

The annexation of Hawaii was extremely controversial; the issue caused heated debates in the Senate and President Cleveland gave a strongly worded speech opposing it. This was, after all, the very first time America had reached beyond the borders of the continental United States in an act of imperialism. It was not until President McKinley was elected and the Spanish-American War erupted, that Hawaii became a critical strategic asset, and annexation finally passed Congress in 1898.

Meticulously researched, with fascinating detail and a sweeping, epic narrative, Lost Kingdom is a story of fading traditions, and a Queen who lost her throne and her homeland.