Lost Kingdom: Hawaii's Last Queen, the Sugar Kings, and America's First Imperial Adventure
As Americans gained a new belief in their manifest destiny around the globe, Hawaiians lost their country, the first sovereign nation to become a casualty of America’s imperial outreach.
I read about this book in a review of Elizabeth Hand's Hokuloa Road and thought it sounded interesting. It's mostly about Queen Liliuokalani's life, but since Imperial Hawaii was only around for about 80 years, her life covers most of its history. (Hawaii always had ali'i, ruling noble families, but until King Kamehameha I unified all the islands under his rule in 1810 there was no single monarch of all Hawaii.)
It was an interesting book, although I knew a lot of the history already from having read Sarah Vowell's Unfamiliar Fishes. (Looking at the Audible description of that book, holy shit: Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, John Hodgman, Catherine Keener, Edward Norton, Keanu Reeves, Paul Rudd, Maya Rudolph, and John Slattery. I think I'm going to have to get that!) Although there was some stuff about the political rivalry between Louisiana's and Hawaii's sugar planters that I didn't know about and that was fun to find out.
Also I always thought the provisional governor/chief architect of the coup Sanford Dole was that Dole, but apparently that was like his second cousin once removed or something.
Most of the big haole landowners in Hawaii during the 19th century were the sons and grandsons of the Christian missionaries who started coming to what they called The Sandwich Islands in the 1830s, which led to a very wry saying among native Hawaiians that the missionaries "came to Hawaii to do good and did well".