A couple days ago, I blogged about Stephen Kinzer's latest book "All the Shah's Men" (read my post here: http://thepete.com/…orst-enemy ). While doing research for that post, I realized that I had seen a Q&A Kinzer did a few years back on C-SPAN regarding an earlier book of his called "Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq."
I remember being surprised at how America "acquired" Hawaii as a state. If memory serves, it went something like this:
A bunch of sugar magnates were upset at the sugar tariff the US Congress had recently legislated into being and when said magnates complained, they were told something to the effect of: "well, if you guys were inside the US, you wouldn't have to pay them, would you?"
Being only one generation away from being Americans themselves (the magnates were offspring of Christian missionaries to Hawaii) they figured that wasn't a half-bad idea. Before did anything, however, they asked if they could have a Navy vessel moved to Hawaii for a short time. The magnates then went to some local Honolulu government building and declared Hawaii under occupation of the US. Before the rightful Queen could react, the magnates pointed out to see, where a US Navy ship was visible. The Queen caved immediately and Hawaii was assimilated into the US.
At least, that's what I recall from the C-SPAN article. Either way, it made me want to buy Kinzer's book, which is something I still haven't done. I just might use the below link and remedy that.
Check out "Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq" on Amazon here: http://snipurl.com/21sj4 (I get a cut!)
It's just amazing to me how much our public school systems leave out of history class. You'd think they were intentionally trying to hide our country's flaws or something! ;)
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Orignal From: Another Book from Stephen Kinzer: "Overthrow"
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