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5 Haw. J.L. & Pol. 1 (2023)

handle is hein.journals/hwijlp5 and id is 1 raw text is: EDITOR'S NOTES-VOLUME 5 Since the attempted coup of 1887, history written on Hawai'i has been a highly political endeavor of a specific nature. The insurgents from the time of 1887 through the time of the United States coup de main of 1893 and beyond began writing a defensive justification narrative for their illegal actions as historical narratives. One among many of the distortions of historical truth has included a re-describing of the role of American missionary advisors in the earlier part of the 19th century as the driving force and main actors behind the development and running of a constitutional government of a nation-state. The motivations for the crafting of a history against which enormous primary evidence exists to the contrary was the aim at winning public and material support from the United States, and elsewhere to secure and maintain control over Hawai'i. Losing control over Hawai'i for the insurgents could have led to prosecution for treason under the law an offense that was punishable by death. Exemplifying this false narrative, Lorrin Thurston, one of these insurgents, wrote: Hawaiian Christianization, civilization, commerce, education, and development are the direct product of American effort. Hawaii is in every element and quality which enters into the composition of a modern civilized community, a child of America.1 As Hawaiians began to enter the battle of historical narratives in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, certain facts of history put forward in American hegemonic writings were latently taken up as foundational truths in the writings and teachings by Hawaiians themselves. One example of a false truth from the insurgents that was carried forward in Hawaiian written work was the false fact of the annexation of Hawai'i as a fait acompli. As a fact, the annexation of Hawai'i has been proven wrong in newer scholarship of the past 25 years. The so called annexation of Hawai'i is no longer an accepted fact by most Hawaiian scholars. Another example of a historical fallacy that still circulates today and still has several Hawaiian proponents, is the idea above that the early missionaries were the driving force behind the development and running of the Hawaiian Kingdom's constitutional government. Professor Jon Osorio provides an example of a Hawaiian indigenist thesis based on this idea. He wrote: Accordingly, the very formation of a national entity in 1840 under the rudiments of Euro-American constitutions victimized the Native Hawaiians, consigning them to unfamiliar and inferior roles as wage laborers. Caucasian newcomers proceeded to transform the economic and social systems, i Lorrin Thurston. A Handbook on the Annexation of Hawaii (1897).

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