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Comment by balls187 | Hacker News Reader

> …was seized by force by the US and the natives never had any say.

Just like the rest of the United States.

Not really; this was more coup-y than usual. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overthrow_of_the_Hawaiian_King...

And the Hawaiian Kingdom existed for less than 100 years. It was formed by force when the other islands in the chain were conquered by the big island.

You can see how that's not quite the same thing, right?

I don’t?

Low-grade inter-tribal conflict over leadership, versus an external superpower annexing and then sending your kids into boarding schools thousands of miles away(https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-confronts-cultur...), banning your entire language for four generations (https://www.hawaiipublicschools.org/TeachingAndLearning/Stud...), and wiping out 84% of your population (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2015/04/06/native-ha...) are not remotely in the same realm.

I suppose coup-y is a slight improvement over genocide-y. Though I suspect that wouldn't have been much consolation to the native Hawaiians.

Native Hawaiians tend to consider what happened post-coup as a form of genocide.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-confronts-cultur...

Sure, but the point was that the US is all about taking by force. We even have a very nice term for it: "Manifest Destiny"

The argument generally is the case in Hawaii was particularly egregious, as Hawaii had an organized government with formal diplomatic relations with many countries, including embassies in Great Britain and France.

Hawaii, along with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, are examples of areas of significant escalation of the U.S. expansionist history through the overthrowing of recognized governments. It's all bad, but these are just a different type of bad.

Does diplomatic relations make the difference? Seems like splitting hairs. Read about what happened to the native populations which had established hierarchies and relations with each other throughout the continent and it looks no different to my eyes than what happened to the Hawaiians.

Yes, having formal diplomatic relations in the late 19th century with major Western powers to other nations is a significant difference. This is very different than say, France having tribal relations in an influence fight with British Colonial expansionism 150 years prior to the overthrowing of the Hawaiian Kingdom.

Again, it's all bad, this is just a different kind of bad.

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