Professor Jonathan Osorio, Dean of the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa’s Hawai‘inuiakea School of Hawaiian Knowledge, was contacted by the host of The Afternoon Shift on FOX 9 Minneapolis/Saint Paul if he or his colleagues from the university could be on his show to talk about the joint resolution of the annexation Hawai‘i that was signed in law on July 7, 1898.
Professor Osorio responded by stating, “I am copying two professors from UH, Kamana Beamer and Keanu Sai who might be interested. But you should be aware that Hawaiʻi was never annexed by the US. Both these scholars can attest to that.” Dr. Keanu Sai was able to do the interview.
Dr. Keanu Sai, a graduate of the Kamehameha Schools Kapālama campus in 1982 has been invited by Kamehameha Schools Ka‘iwakīloumoku Pacific Indigenous Institute, in partnership with Kanaeokāna, for a presentation on March 5, 2025, with questions and answers to follow about his recent chapter “Hawai‘iʻs Sovereignty and Survival in the Age of Empire” published by Englandʻs Oxford University Pressʻ Unconquered States: Non-European Powers in the Imperial Age in December of 2024. No registration is required for this free public in-person event and light refreshments to follow.
The public is encouraged to attend because Dr. Saiʻs presentation will get into the operational plan for transitioning the State of Hawai‘i into a military government of Hawai‘i and the impact it will have on the population of Hawai‘i, e.g. health care, land, taxes, cost of living. The session will be recorded and uploaded on Kanaeokana’s website.
The session will be recorded and uploaded on Kanaeokana’s YouTube channel.
In his chapter, Dr. Sai covers: the legal and political history of the Hawaiian Kingdom, the evolution of governance as a constitutional monarchy, the unlawful overthrow of the government by United States troops in 1893, the prolonged American occupation since 1893, the restoration of the government of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1997 by a Council of Regency, and the recognition of the continued existence of the Hawaiian Kingdom, as a State, and the Council of Regency, as its provisional government, by the Permanent Court of Arbitration, The Hague, Netherlands, in the 1999-2001 international arbitration case Larsen v. Hawaiian Kingdom. He concludes his chapter with:
Despite over a century of revisionist history, “the continuity of the Hawaiian Kingdom as a sovereign State is grounded in the very same principles that the United States and every other State have relied on for their own legal existence.” The Hawaiian Kingdom is a magnificent story of perseverance and continuity.
THE EVENT WILL BE LIVE STREAMED ON FACEBOOK STARTING AT 3:30pm HI TIME
On KITV Island Life Live yesterday, Dr. Keanu Sai explains the American invasion of the Hawaiian Kingdom and its unlawful overthrow of the government on January 17, 1893. This began a prolonged occupation that is now at 132 years.
Oxford University Press (OUP) has made it official that the American occupation of the Hawaiian Kingdom is the longest occupation in modern history that began in 1893. It was previously thought that the longest occupation in modern history was the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem that began in 1967.
The significance of OUP’s publication of Unconquered States: Non-European Powers in the Imperial Age, with a chapter written by Dr. Keanu Sai titled “Hawai‘i’s Sovereignty and Survival in the Age of Empire” is that Hawai‘i was never the 50th State of the American Union but rather an occupied State under international law with its rights and obligations intact despite the prolonged nature of the occupation. What was defeated or overthrown, albeit illegally, was the government of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893, and not the Hawaiian Kingdom as a State, which is also referred to as the country.
Dr. Sai’s chapter reconnects the Hawaiian Kingdom to Great Britain, not the United States, when it became a British Protectorate in 1794 under the reign of King Kamehameha I. In 1843, Great Britain recognized the Hawaiian Kingdom as a sovereign and independent State, which ushered in the Hawaiian Kingdom into the Family of Nations. Dr. Sai then explains the connection to the United States by an invasion of U.S. Marines on January 16, 1893, which led to the unlawful overthrow of the Hawaiian government and its unlawful seizure of the Hawaiian Islands during the Spanish-American War in 1898. To be conquered is for the Hawaiian Kingdom to have transferred its sovereignty and territory to the United States by a treaty of cession.
There is no such treaty that exists except for the unlawful imposition of American laws, which is the war crime of usurpation of sovereignty during military occupation. Dr. Sai explains under international law why the Hawaiian Kingdom continues to exist as an occupied State under international law, which the Permanent Court of Arbitration acknowledged in 1999, in Larsen v. Hawaiian Kingdom. The PCA not only acknowledged the Hawaiian Kingdom’s continuity as a State, but also recognized the Council of Regency as its provisional government during the occupation.
Dr. Sai was one of 23 academic scholars from around the world that was invited to write a chapter on a non-European State that was not conquered under international law. If Dr. Sai’s chapter had no historical or legal basis, OUP would not have allowed the chapter to be published. This is a cornerstone of academic research where a scholar does not argue a position in their research, but rather provides historical and legal evidence that cannot be refuted. In this sense, the scholar is subject to a scientific approach where a scholar’s findings and conclusions are open for rebuttal by other scholars who serve as reviewers. This is called peer review in the academic world where opinions have no place. OUP states in the book, “Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.”
Only when the American occupation is recognized worldwide can the occupation come to an end by a treaty of peace. OUP is added leverage to bring compliance to the law of occupation or the criminal culpability that ensues if the State of Hawai‘i is not transformed into a Military Government to administer the laws of the occupied Hawaiian Kingdom.
Dr. Keanu Sai was invited to do a podcast interview by Professor Pascal Lottaz on the subject of the American occupation of the Hawaiian Kingdom, a Neutral State. Professor Lottaz is an Assistant Professor for Neutrality Studies at the Waseda Institute for Advanced Study in Tokyo. He is a also a researcher at Neutrality Studies, where its YouTube channel, which airs their podcasts, has 153,000 subscribers worldwide.
With Oxford University Press (OUP) upcoming release, on December 30, 2024, of Unconquered States: Non-European Powers in the Imperial Age with a chapter by Dr. Keanu Sai on the Hawaiian Kingdom and its continued existence as a State despite having been under a prolonged American occupation since 1893, it will make it official that Hawai‘i is the longest occupation in modern history. Previously, it was thought that the longest occupation was Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem that began in 1967.
The reach of OUP is worldwide. In all its publications it states “Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford, Auckland, Cape Town, Dar es Salaam, Hong Kong, Karachi, Kuala Lumpur, Madrid, Melbourne, Mexico City, Nairobi, New Delhi, Shanghai, Taipei, and Toronto. With offices in Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Chile, Czech Republic, France, Greece, Guatemala, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, South Korea, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, and Vietnam.”
Dr. Sai’s chapter has effectively pierced the false narrative that has plagued Hawai‘i’s population and the world that Hawai‘i is an American state, rather than an occupied State. The Hawaiian Kingdom’s continued existence as an occupied State is not a legal argument but rather a legal fact with consequences under international law. Dr. Sai concludes his chapter with:
Despite over a century of revisionist history, “the continuity of the Hawaiian Kingdom as a sovereign State is grounded in the very same principles that the United States and every other State have relied on for their own legal existence.” The Hawaiian Kingdom is a magnificent story of perseverance and continuity.
With the world knowing about the American occupation of the Hawaiian Kingdom it will assist in facilitating compliance by the Hawai‘i Army National Guard with the law of occupation so that the American occupation will eventually come to an end by a treaty of peace.
On December 30, 2024, Oxford University Press will be releasing a book titled Unconquered States: Non-European Powers in the Imperial Age. The editors of the book, Professor H. E. Chehabi from Boston University and Professor David Motadel from the London School of Economics and Political Science, invited 23 scholars from around the world to contribute their scholarship. Dr. Keanu Sai is the author of chapter 21—Hawai‘i’s Sovereignty and Survival in the Age of Empire.
Here are the reviews:
“This is an ingenious collection, a book on international history in the 19th and 20th centuries that really does, for once, “fill a gap.” By countering our simple assumption that the West’s imperial and colonial drives swallowed up all of Africa and Asia in the post-1850 period, Chehabi and Motadel’s fine collection of case-studies of nations that managed to stay free—from Abyssinia to Siam, Japan to Persia—gives us a more rounded and complex view of the international Great-Power scene in those decades. This is really fine revisionist history.”—Paul Kennedy, Yale University
“This is an excellent collection of scholars writing on an important set of states, which deserve to be considered together.”—Kenneth Pomeranz, University of Chicago
“Carefully curated and with an excellent introduction that provides an analytical frame, this book offers a global history of “unconquered” countries in the imperial age that is original in its perspective and composition.”—Sebastian Conrad, Free University of Berlin
“The book offers an insightful comparative analysis of political forms and relationships in non-European countries from the 18th to the early 20th centuries. The “non-conquered states” of Asia and Africa are show as sometimes resisting and but often accommodating in innovative ways European political forms and military and diplomatic techniques. The particular appeal of the essays lies in their effort to bring to the surface and critically assess the indigenous histories and struggles that enabled these political formations, each in their own way, to respond to the challenges of modernization. This is global history at its kaleidoscopic best.”—Martti Koskenniemi, University of Helsinki
Oxford University Press is the gold standard for academic publishing in the world and to have the untold story of the Hawaiian Kingdom and its continued existence under an American occupation is a monumental feat for the Council of Regency’s strategic plan under Phase II—exposure of Hawaiian Statehood. Dr. Sai is not only a Hawaiian scholar and political scientist, but he is also Chairman of the acting Council of Regency.
When the government of the Hawaiian Kingdom was restored in 1997, as an acting Council of Regency under Hawaiian constitutional law and the legal doctrine of necessity, it approached the prolonged American occupation with a strategic plan that entailed three phases:
Phase I: Verification of the Hawaiian Kingdom as an Independent State and subject of international law where a reputable international body must verify the continued existence of the Hawaiian Kingdom as a State.
Phase II: Exposure of Hawaiian Statehood within the framework of international law and the law of occupation as it affects the realm of politics and economics at both the international and domestic levels. Phase II will focus on individual accountability and compliance to the law of occupation.
Phase III: Restoration of the Hawaiian Kingdom as an independent State and a subject of international law, which is when the occupation will come to an end by a treaty of peace.
On November 8, 1999, international arbitration proceedings were initiated at the Permanent Court of Arbitration, in The Hague, Netherlands, in Larsen v. Hawaiian Kingdom, PCA Case no. 1999-01. At its website, the PCA described the dispute as:
Lance Paul Larsen, a resident of Hawaii, brought a claim against the Hawaiian Kingdom by its Council of Regency (“Hawaiian Kingdom”) on the grounds that the Government of the Hawaiian Kingdom is in continual violation of: (a) its 1849 Treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Navigation with the United States of America, as well as the principles of international law laid down in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, 1969 and (b) the principles of international comity, for allowing the unlawful imposition of American municipal laws over the claimant’s person within the territorial jurisdiction of the Hawaiian Kingdom.
Before an arbitral tribunal could be established by the PCA, it had to determine that the dispute was international, which meant the Hawaiian Kingdom had to be an existing State under customary international law. Once the PCA recognized the continued existence of the Hawaiian Kingdom as a State and the Council of Regency as its government, it then had to determine whether the Hawaiian Kingdom was a Contracting State or Non-Contracting State to the 1907 Hague Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes (PCA Convention) that established the PCA.
The reasoning for this determination was that Contracting States, which includes the United States, did not pay for the use of the facilities because they contributed yearly dues to maintain the PCA. Non-Contracting States had to pay for the use of the facilities. The PCA recognized the Hawaiian Kingdom as a Non-Contracting State under Article 47 of the PCA Convention. The PCA established the arbitral tribunal on June 9, 2000. To understand this case you can go to pages 24-27 of the ebook Royal Commission of Inquiry: Investigating War Crimes and Human Rights Violations Committed in the Hawaiian Kingdom.
The PCA’s recognition of the continued existence of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1999 satisfied Phase I. Since then, Phase II was initiated and continued when Dr. Sai entered the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa in 2001 to acquire an M.A. degree and a Ph.D. degree in political science specializing in international relations and law. According to Dr. Sai:
The Council of Regency needed to institutionalize, and not politicize, the legal and political history of the Hawaiian Kingdom as a State under international law and its continued existence today. This would be done by academic research and publications that will normalize the fact of the American occupation. From this premise, we could move into compliance to the law of occupation where the occupation will eventually come to an end by a treaty of peace. This was the most viable approach to a revisionist history that has been perpetrated for over a century.
November 28th is the most important national holiday in the Hawaiian Kingdom. It is the day Great Britain and France formally recognized the Hawaiian Islands as an “independent state” in 1843, and has since been celebrated as “Independence Day,” which in the Hawaiian language is “La Ku‘oko‘a.” Here follows the story of this momentous event from the Hawaiian Kingdom Board of Education history textbook titled “A Brief History of the Hawaiian People” published in 1891.
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The First Embassy to Foreign Powers—In February, 1842, Sir George Simpson and Dr. McLaughlin, governors in the service of the Hudson Bay Company, arrived at Honolulu on
business, and became interested in the native people and their government. After a candid examination of the controversies existing between their own countrymen and the Hawaiian Government, they became convinced that the latter had been unjustly accused. Sir George offered to loan the government ten thousand pounds in cash, and advised the king to send commissioners to the United States and Europe with full power to negotiate new treaties, and to obtain a guarantee of the independence of the kingdom.
Accordingly Sir George Simpson, Haalilio, the king’s secretary, and Mr. Richards were appointed joint ministers-plenipotentiary to the three powers on the 8th of April, 1842.
Mr. Richards also received full power of attorney for the king. Sir George left for Alaska, whence he traveled through Siberia, arriving in England in November. Messrs. Richards and Haalilio sailed July 8th, 1842, in a chartered schooner for Mazatlan, on their way to the United States*
*Their business was kept a profound secret at the time.
Proceedings of the British Consul—As soon as these facts became known, Mr. Charlton followed the embassy in order to defeat its object. He left suddenly on September 26th, 1842, for London via Mexico, sending back a threatening letter to the king, in which he informed him that he had appointed Mr. Alexander Simpson as acting-consul of Great Britain. As this individual, who was a relative of Sir George, was an avowed advocate of the annexation of the islands to Great Britain, and had insulted and threatened the governor of Oahu, the king declined to recognize him as British consul. Meanwhile Mr. Charlton laid his grievances before Lord George Paulet commanding the British frigate “Carysfort,” at Mazatlan, Mexico. Mr. Simpson also sent dispatches to the coast in November, representing that the property and persons of his countrymen were in danger, which introduced Rear-Admiral Thomas to order the “Carysfort” to Honolulu to inquire into the matter.
Recognition by the United States—Messres. Richards and Haalilio arrived in Washington early in December, and had several interviews with Daniel Webster, the Secretary of State, from whom they received an official letter December 19th, 1842, which recognized the independence of the Hawaiian Kingdom, and declared, “as the sense of the government of the United States, that the government of the Sandwich Islands ought to be respected; that no power ought to take possession of the islands, either as a conquest or for the purpose of the colonization; and that no power ought to seek for any undue control over the existing government, or any exclusive privileges or preferences in matters of commerce.” *
*The same sentiments were expressed in President Tyler’s message to Congress of December 30th, and in the Report of the Committee on Foreign Relations, written by John Quincy Adams.
Success of the Embassy in Europe—The king’s envoys proceeded to London, where they had been preceded by the Sir George Simpson, and had an interview with the Earl of Aberdeen, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, on the 22d of February, 1843.
Lord Aberdeen at first declined to receive them as ministers from an independent state, or to negotiate a treaty, alleging that the king did not govern, but that he was “exclusively under the influence of Americans to the detriment of British interests,” and would not admit that the government of the United States had yet fully recognized the independence of the islands.
Sir George and Mr. Richards did not, however, lose heart, but went on to Brussels March 8th, by a previous arrangement made with Mr. Brinsmade. While there, they had an interview with Leopold I., king of the Belgians, who received them with great courtesy, and promised to use his influence to obtain the recognition of Hawaiian independence. This influence was great, both from his eminent personal qualities and from his close relationship to the royal families of England and France.
Encouraged by this pledge, the envoys proceeded to Paris, where, on the 17th, M. Guizot, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, received them in the kindest manner, and at once engaged, in behalf of France, to recognize the independence of the islands. He made the same statement to Lord Cowley, the British ambassador, on the 19th, and thus cleared the way for the embassy in England.
They immediately returned to London, where Sir George had a long interview with Lord Aberdeen on the 25th, in which he explained the actual state of affairs at the islands, and received an assurance that Mr. Charlton would be removed. On the 1st of April, 1843, the Earl of Aberdeen formally replied to the king’s commissioners, declaring that “Her Majesty’s Government are willing and have determined to recognize the independence of the Sandwich Islands under their present sovereign,” but insisting on the perfect equality of all foreigners in the islands before the law, and adding that grave complaints had been received from British subjects of undue rigor exercised toward them, and improper partiality toward others in the administration of justice. Sir George Simpson left for Canada April 3d, 1843.
Recognition of the Independence of the Islands—Lord Aberdeen, on the 13th of June, assured the Hawaiian envoys that “Her Majesty’s government had no intention to retain possession of the Sandwich Islands,” and a similar declaration was made to the governments of France and the United States.
At length, on the 28th of November, 1843, the two governments of France and England united in a joint declaration to the effect that “Her Majesty, the queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and His Majesty, the king of the French, taking into consideration the existence in the Sandwich Islands of a government capable of providing for the regularity of its relations with foreign nations have thought it right to engage reciprocally to consider the Sandwich Islands as an independent state, and never to take possession, either directly or under the title of a protectorate, or under any other form, of any part of the territory of which they are composed…”
This was the final act by which the Hawaiian Kingdom was admitted within the pale of civilized nations. Finding that nothing more could be accomplished for the present in Paris, Messrs. Richards and Haalilio returned to the United States in the spring of 1844. On the 6th of July they received a dispatch from Mr. J.C. Calhoun, the Secretary of State, informing them that the President regarded the statement of Mr. Webster and the appointment of a commissioner “as a full recognition on the part of the United States of the independence of the Hawaiian Government.”
