Hawai'i's Last Queen

In the 1700s the Hawai'ian Islands were encountered by European seagoing explorers. By the end of the 1800s the native Hawai'ian population had dwindled to a small fraction of its numbers and influence, due to disease, and the persuasive seduction of Christianity. The diseases arrived in the 1700s. Christianity arrived in the form of protestant missionaries from New England in the 1830s. In the last decades of the 19th century, the "Missionary Boys" - second generation descendants of the original missionaries - somehow wound up with all of the land, wealth, and power in the islands. When Hawai'ians attempted to stop the giveaway of Pearl Harbor to the United States in the 1890s, the Missionary Boys, in cahoots with a rogue US diplomat, called in the US Marines, and took over the Hawai'ian Islands. The US government investigated, and attempted to give the power back to Queen Liliuokalani, but the business cartel known as the Missionary Boys ignored the US government's demand that power be returned to the Queen. Soon Hawai'i was annexed as a US territory, in order to facilitate the cartel's agricultural business with the US. And the rest is history. Not well-known history, though. This 1997 PBS documentary is an introduction to the truth about Hawai'i. Who knew that Pearl Harbor was an issue prior to 1942?