Plague and Fire
Page 3
Many ordinary people in Europe and the United States went even further. To them, the differential death rates indicated that the white race, which they regarded as superior to other races in any event, had happily evolved immunities to what had once been the world's greatest killer. This combination of racial smugness and wishful thinking certainly prevailed among the whites of Honolulu right through the arrival of plague in December 1899. Austin's Hawaiian Weekly, for example, assured white Hawaiians that Europeans and Americans living in Asia were so seldom attacked by plague "that no one even discusses the matter." The Honolulu Independent reminded residents that plague was not dangerous to whites "who are honest and cleanly." A white housewife writing to friends on the mainland assured them she felt safe because plague "seldom attacks clean white people anyway.""
Despite those popular assumptions, public health officers throughout Europe attempted to eliminate the kind of conditions that seemed to enable bubonic plague in Asia, and public health officers throughout the Pacific and the Western Hemisphere expressed concern about their own vulnerability. Since the last major flare-up of bubonic plague more than a hundred years earlier, dramatic changes had taken place in the prevailing patterns of world trade and travel. Many places that had remained relatively isolated through the end of the eighteenth century, and hence relatively safe from all previous epidemics of bubonic plague, were now important nodes on heavily trafficked international routes, and were thus almost certainly more vulnerable in the 18gos than they had been the last time plague spread out of Asia.
Honolulu was just such a place. As late as 1870, most boats coming from the Asian mainland still made the trip to Hawaii under sail power and often took more than two months to get there; by the i89os, impressive new steam-powered vessels rarely took more than three weeks to make the same trip, even against heavy weather. Hand in hand with improved shipping came increased imperial interest in the Pacific region. England, France, and Germany all wanted a share of the burgeoning Asian trade, and so did the rapidly emerging Japanese empire. Honolulu, which had grown very slowly through the first three quarters of the nineteenth century, found itself strategically in the middle of the increasing trade and naval activity that began vigorously crisscrossing the Pacific in unprecedented volume after 1885. From that point on, the city's population had been rising dramatically."
By 1899 Honolulu was home to just under forty-five thousand people, more than three times its population only twenty years earlier. What had recently been a large town occupying the gently sloping ground north and east of Honolulu harbor already sprawled several miles to the east and west along extensions of Beretania and King Streets, veered up the Manoa Valley, and crept around the extinct crater that locals called Punchbowl Hill, into the lower portions of the Nuuanu Valley. Although the Chamber of Commerce proudly billed the four-story Judd Building, built in 1898 at the corner of Fort and Merchant Streets, and the i 899 six-story Stangenwald Building next door to it as the city's first "sky scrapers," the vast majority of Honolulu's downtown buildings were two-story stone and wooden structures left over from quieter times. The city maintained its unpaved streets with crushed rock. Horses pulled trolley cars and market carts through the central city, and wealthy residents owned horsedrawn carriages, but bicycles were the most common mode of mechanical transportation. Honolulu would not have internal combustion automobiles for sale until i 9oo.13
Honolulu at the end of the nineteenth century. Chinatown is shaded. Also note Quarantine Island.
With ships from all over the world coming and going on a daily basis, the people of Honolulu recognized their city's increased vulnerability to epidemic diseases. Soon after receiving word in i 894 that bubonic plague was spreading outward from Hong Kong, the Honolulu Board of Health had imposed a regimen of inspections and quarantines upon all incoming ships. Shortly thereafter, the Hawaiian government also began maintaining sanitary officers of its own in the principal ports of China and Japan, officers who were charged with inspecting the contents and personnel aboard all vessels outbound for Hawaii. Without a clean bill of health from one of those inspectors, ships from plague ports were summarily denied entry to Honolulu harbor. Even with a clean bill of health, all ships entering Honolulu harbor from ports known to have suffered plague attacks were detained for seven days on a shoal designated as Quarantine Island. Captains had to certify the continuing health of their crews and passengers; violators were subject to a five-thousand-dollar fine and seizure of their ship. Anyone who appeared ill was isolated until the ailment resolved itself.''
Though not especially rigorous and ultimately subject to circumvention by unscrupulous captains, that system seemed to be effective. Plague had appeared regularly on other Pacific islands after 1895, but not in the Hawaiian archipelago. In 1896, United States Army medical observers stationed at Pearl Harbor, which had been leased to the American navy, reported back to Washington that nearby Honolulu remained a reasonably salubrious city with a strong and effective Board of Health securely in place and doing a good job. The Honolulu press praised their government's medical defenses, and through the summer of 1899 Hawaii remained plague-free."
he government guarding Hawaii from the world pandemic of plague was a watchful and wary one-and not just in matters of public health. Self-proclaimed as the Republic of Hawaii, it was run by a white minority and represented no more than a quarter of the archipelago's population in any meaningful sense. The precarious nature of that government and the still-vivid memory of recent political struggles strongly influenced the behavior and reactions of everyone involved in the great Chinatown fire of January i goo.'
Through most of the nineteenth century, the Hawaiian Islands had been ruled by Hawaiian kings. With the permission of those monarchs, Europeans and European Americans gradually but steadily settled in the archipelago, introduced plantation agriculture, and directed international trade. Whites gained additional influence through close counseling relationships with the indigenous aristocracy and successful Christian missionary work. Sugar became the principal source of revenue for the islands, especially after favorable trade treaties were signed with the United States in 1875. In order to increase production of that lucrative crop, the Hawaiian monarchy had permitted whites to import labor-chiefly from China through the i88os, and then from Japan during the i89os, but also from such places as the Portuguese Azores. Though legally regarded as foreign citizens, Asians altogether constituted a majority of the archipelago's population by the mid- 18 gos.
Beginning in the 188os the sometimes uneven but largely cooperative relationship between the Hawaiian monarchy and the islands' powerful white elites began to break down. Fearful of becoming a colonial figurehead, King David Kalakaua encouraged a renaissance of Hawaiian culture to offset the influence of white outsiders. He also began to exploit rifts in the ranks of the white elites to maintain his own independence. Increasingly led by Americans, the dominant faction of whites formed a rough working alliance of sugar planters, old missionary families, and influential Honolulu merchants to resist what they regarded as the king's irresponsible abuses of power. Accusing Kalakaua of making dangerously arbitrary decisions and awarding government posts to the highest bidders, the white alliance engineered the adoption of a revised constitution in 1887. The new system preserved the monarchy but sharply curtailed the independent prerogatives of the sovereign. The new system also retained many features of the traditional Hawaiian caste system, especially those features that had morphed into white privileges through business arrangements or intermarriage with the Hawaiian aristocracy. And the new constitution of 1887 continued to explicitly exclude virtually all Asians from participation in the political system.
In 1891 Queen Liliuokalani replaced King David Kalakaua on the Hawaiian throne. To the dismay of most whites, she promptly began to reassert traditional sovereignty in ways that directly threatened their privileged economic positions. In the view of many white Americans, Liliuokalani seemed bent upon the counterproduct
ive task of restoring a backward and corrupt form of aristocratic rule. If the queen's counterreformation succeeded, whites feared a period of chaos and destabilization that might make the strategically located Hawaiian islands easy prey for any number of ambitious imperial forces in the Pacific. By 1892, pro-American Honolulu merchants and pro-American sugar planters began meeting in clandestine sessions reminiscent of the Committees of Correspondence that preceded the American Revolution. The name they gave themselves reflected their ultimate goal: the Annexation Club.
The white elites decided by the end of 1892 that the best future for Hawaii, and not incidentally for themselves, could be secured by executing a four-step plan. First, they would have to remove the volcanic Liliuokalani, whom they feared to be dangerously unpredictable. Next they would establish a provisional government to keep the peace and conduct affairs of state in the short term. Third, they would promptly arrange for the voluntary surrender of their provisional government to a speedy annexation by the United States. Finally, they would arrange to have the United States government formally reconstitute the Hawaiian Islands as an American territory. They believed their four-step plan would preserve white control at the local level, while allowing the archipelago to develop under the foreign power of their own choosing-the United States.
The motives of the pro-American annexationists have been debated for more than a century and were probably as varied as their members. Some among them were simply trying to hold on to a cushy situation. Their economic clout had allowed them, in effect, to replace the indigenous aristocracy, and they did not wish to be unseated. Others had persuaded themselves that American-style management of public affairs offered the best chance in the long run for improving the lives of everyone in the islands, not just the whites. The so-called missionary wing of the annexationist movement hoped to see Hawaii become a beacon of Protestant values, beaming brightly at the crossroads of the Pacific. In their view, such an outpost of Christian virtue could best be defended by the United States. According to a later investigation conducted by Democratic congressman James Blount of Georgia, still others in the annexationist camp hoped that an American takeover would restore favorable trading terms for Hawaiian sugar, something that had recently been lost under United States tariff revisions.
Most of the annexationists were also overtly racist and patently paternalistic in their motivations. The white Americans believed they possessed the world's best forms of government, best forms of religion, and best forms of economic development. They regarded Hawaiians, not to mention the islands' Asian majorities, as incapable of enlightened and progressive self-rule, at least under their current circumstances. Consequently, by white logic, the engineering of an American takeover assumed the status of a sacred duty. If the annexationists failed to put Hawaii on the right path while they still could, everyone on the islands was likely to suffer in the future. The guilt for such needless suffering would be upon the eternal consciences of those who saw their duty but failed to act. Though no doubt sincere, white attitudes were breathtakingly arrogant.
In January 1893, Liliuokalani publicly suspended the constitution of 1887 and dramatically announced from the balcony of the lolani Palace her intention to establish a constitution of her own. Her plan of government would restore indigenous control over the islands and reestablish autocratic royal rule. The Annexation Club, now somewhat augmented in numbers and calling itself the Committee of Safety, took the queen's bold maneuvers as a pretext for launching the four-step plan they had been discussing. The pro-American revolutionaries had previously secured the proactive collusion of the United States minister to Hawaii, a political appointee named John Stevens. Stevens promptly ordered U.S. Marines into the city. Though ostensibly present to protect United States property in what appeared to be an unsettled political situation, the troops were regarded by everyone in Honolulu as a shield for the annexationists.
The palace coup that followed was all but bloodless, since the bulk of the city's white working classes rallied in support of the pro-American elites, while the queen's potential allies dared not confront the marines. Many people in Honolulu seem to have been simply confused and understandably cautious, reluctant to commit themselves forcefully either for or against the contending factions, since neither side could claim untainted legitimacy or anything resembling a general consensus. Though little more than a loosely cooperating network of friends and associates, the proAmerican planters and merchants held Liliuokalani under house arrest and declared themselves the provisional rulers of Hawaii.
The Committee of Safety immediately established ruling councils and installed Sanford Ballard Dole as their titular head and provisional president. Most observers, however, considered Lorrin A. Thurston to be the chief architect and guiding spirit of the annexationist takeover. Both men were United States-educated lawyers with strong social and economic ties to the leading white families of Hawaii. As a political team, they complemented each other nicely. Dole's Hawaiian birth, missionary background, Hawaiian-language fluency, Sunday-school-teacher demeanor, and firmly confident sense of high principle made him an ideal and disarmingly resolute front man. Thurston's frequently demonstrated ability to make things happen, combined with his reputation as a brilliant analyst and a man of uncannily shrewd judgment, made him the perfect political strategist. Both men would also be deeply involved seven years later in the events that led to the Chinatown fire.'
To follow through with their original intentions, leaders of the provisional government presented themselves the day after the coup to American minister Stevens and asked formally that the islands be placed under the protection of the United States. Playing his prearranged role, Stevens instantly recognized the revolutionaries as the legitimate government of Hawaii, despite the fact that no real government yet existed. Though Stevens lacked legal authority from Washington to take any of these actions, he then ordered the American flag raised over Hawaiian government buildings as a sort of interim acknowledgment of pending annexation. By the middle of February, the cooperating parties in Honolulu had drafted a treaty designed to make the annexation official.
When news of the Honolulu coup and the proposed treaty of annexation reached Washington, many politicians in the American capital expressed grave misgivings about what seemed to be going on in the Pacific. Democratic congressmen in particular took a dim view of Stevens's behavior. Since the administration he served, that of President Benjamin Harrison, had been defeated in the November elections of 1892, Stevens was a lame-duck Republican appointee at the time he was taking these extraordinary actions. To many Democrats, Stevens's support for the coup and his precipitous and clearly premeditated gestures of recognition looked like flagrant acts of last-minute cronyism on the part of an officer who would be replaced in March, rather than careful steps of statecraft undertaken in the interests of the nation he was supposed to be serving. Consequently, the Democrats successfully delayed action on the proposed Hawaiian treaty and sent Congressman Blount to the islands to determine what was happening six thousand miles from Washington. Democrats thus ensured that their own incoming administration under Grover Cleveland would make the call regarding American relations with Hawaii.
When President Cleveland received Blount's report, he renounced Stevens's actions and apologized for the unauthorized complicity of United States military forces in the coup. To redress the wrong, Cleveland both rejected the proposed annexation and instructed his new minister to Hawaii to lay the groundwork for restoring Liliuokalani to the throne, provided she accepted certain conditions, including amnesty for the revolutionaries. After initially refusing, Liliuokalani apparently acceded to those conditions, but the annexationists in any event adamantly refused to surrender the power they were now consolidating. Since the queen's position on amnesty was disputed, and since American military intervention would look to the rest of the world like de facto annexation anyway, Cleveland decided to do nothing.
With their plan for speedy annexation on hold,
Dole and his associates in the provisional government now found themselves in the awkward position of having to put a full-scale and at least semi-permanent domestic government of their own into place if they hoped to remain in power. The revolutionaries did this by drafting yet another new constitution and declaring themselves the Republic of Hawaii. Cleveland felt he had no choice but to recognize the Dole regime, which he did a month later. Liliuokalani, for her part, planned to tour the United States in search of support for restoring her monarchy.
The new Republic of Hawaii was not designed as a long-term solution to the governmental problems of the archipelago; it was designed to maintain the power of a relatively small minority of pro-American leaders until political circumstances in the United States might allow them to secure the final two aims of their original four-step plan: American annexation and territorial status. Consequently, the supporters of the new republic had no intention of risking a fully representative system of government, which they might not be able to control. Even with the support of the American-born working classes, especially in Honolulu, and of the Portuguese, who self-consciously cast their lots with the pro-American oligarchy and thereby successfully "whitened" themselves from marginal foreign laborers to loyal citizens, the new regime could probably count on active political support from less than a quarter of the people then living in the islands.`