Once upon a time, an eminent American full-throatedly espoused annexing a strategically situated, lightly populated island territory—and deployed a host of reasons for why the land grab was necessary.
I refer, of course, to US Navy captain and historian Alfred Thayer Mahan’s advocacy of annexing the Hawaiian Islands, alternatively known as the Sandwich Islands in those days. Mahan was writing during the 1890s, the heyday of empire. The strategist framed his brief for annexation in a letter to the editor of the New York Times (1893), from which he later derived a full-blown Forum article titled “Hawaii and Our Future Sea Power” (1897).
Circumstances prompted Mahan to take up his pen in both instances. In 1893, annexationists were clamoring for Democratic president Grover Cleveland to lay claim to the archipelago. Why that year in particular? Because opportunity beckoned. Propertied American “sugar barons” who dominated the islands had ousted Queen Liluokalani’s indigenous regime with support from a US Navy cruiser, USS Boston. The American minister to Hawaii—the United States only instituted the rank of ambassador that year—swiftly recognized the revolutionary government as the lawful authority in the islands. Läs artikel