Princess Kaiulani: Ahead of Her Time

At Kuhio Avenue and Kanekapolei Street in Waikiki

Hawaiian history was mandatory in fourth and fifth grade, and to this day the timeline of the Hawaiian monarchs is more familiar to your humble blogger than the jumble of names and numbers that is the history of English royalty.

However, we didn't learn much about Kaiulani, the Crown Princess when the monarchy was overthrown. Because she died of illness in 1899 at the age of 23--Hawaii was annexed by the United States in 1898--she was considered to be a footnote in history. No longer, however.

Interest in Princess Kaiulani has revived because she was the perfect rejoinder to pro-annexation propaganda that smeared Hawaiians in terms that seem scarcely believable today. Various accounts accused Hawaiians as being

Savage, dark-skinned brutes. Kaiulani was tall, graceful, and beautiful.

Heathens who were strangers to the Word of God. Missionaries had been present in the Islands for a half-century and had converted Hawaiian royalty, including Kaiulani.

Uneducated and illiterate. Kaiulani was schooled in England and spoke four languages.

At the age of 17 she issued a statement to the American people protesting the loss of Liliuokalani's throne:

Unbidden, stand upon your shores today where I thought so soon to receive a royal welcome on my way to my own kingdom. I come unattended, except by the loving hearts that have come with me over the wintry seas. I hear that commissioners from my land have been for many days asking this great nation to take away my little vineyard. They speak no word to me, and leave me to find out as I can from the rumors of the air that they would leave me without a home, or a name, or a nation.

Seventy years ago Christian America sent over Christian men and women to give religion and civilization to Hawaii. They gave us the gospel, they made us a nation and we learned to love and trust America. Today three of the sons of those missionaries are at your capital asking you to undo their fathers' work. Who sent them? Who gave them authority to break the constitution, which they swore they would uphold.

Today, I, a poor, weak girl, with not one of my people near me, and all these Hawaiian statesmen against me, have strength to stand up for the rights of my people. Even now I can hear their wail in my heart and it gives me strength and courage and I am strong, strong in the faith of God, strong in the knowledge that I am right, strong in the strength of 70,000,000 people who in this free land will hear my cry and will refuse to let their flag cover dishonor to mine.

Nearly 80 years before Saul Alinsky issued the Rules for Radicals, Princess Kaiulani understood that as "a poor, weak girl" her best chance lay with what would become RFR#4: Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.

The force of her personality, character, and wisdom captivated the American press and won her an audience with President Cleveland. Annexation, initially proposed in 1893, was put on hold. Though she ultimately lost, Kaiulani likely would have succeeded in the world of today, where the levers of power are different. She was a woman a century ahead of her time.