Republic of Hawaii

The Republic of Hawaii was the formal name of the government that controlled Hawaii from 1894 to 1898 when it was run as a republic. The republic period occurred between the administration of the Provisional Government of Hawaii which ended on July 4, 1894, and the adoption of the Newlands Resolution in the United States Congress in which the Republic was annexed to the United States and became the Territory of Hawaii on July 7, 1898.

The Hawaiian kingdom was overthrown in 1893 as a result of the intervention of foreign business interests and the U.S. military. The Republic of Hawaiʻi was led by men of European ancestry, like Sanford B. Dole and Lorrin A. Thurston, who were native-born subjects of the Hawaiian kingdom and speakers of the Hawaiian language, but had strong financial, political, and family ties to the United States. Dole was a former member of the Kingdom legislature from Koloa, Kauaʻi, and Justice of the Kingdom's Supreme Court, and he appointed Thurston—who had served as Minister of Interior under King Kalākaua—to lead a lobbying effort in Washington, DC to secure Hawaii's annexation by the United States.