The Myth of Annexation

Recording of “The Myth of Annexation” presented by Dr. Keanu Sai on Wednesday, November 15, 2023.

"Academics have assumed that when the United States overthrew the Hawaiian Kingdom government on January 17, 1893, it was also an overthrow of the country, being a sovereign and independent State. This conflating of two legally relevant facts stem from Max Weber's theory that the State has the monopolization of power, when it isn't the State but rather its government. Political Science and Law discerns the two and is able to conclude that despite the Hawaiian government having been unlawfully overthrown, the Hawaiian State, as a subject of international law, continues to exist despite the purported annexation of the Hawaiian Islands in 1898 by the US Congress. Just over a century later in 1999, the Permanent Court of Arbitration, The Hague, Netherlands, verified that the Hawaiian Kingdom continues to exist as a State, which has rendered the American annexation as nothing more than a myth."

Speaker: Dr. Keanu Sai is a political scientist and senior lecturer at the University of Hawai‘i Windward Community College, Political Science and Hawaiian Studies, and affiliate graduate faculty member at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa College of Education. He also served as Agent for the Hawaiian Kingdom at the Permanent Court of Arbitration, The Hague, Netherlands, in Larsen v. Hawaiian Kingdom, PCA case no. 1999-01. Dr. Sai received his Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in political science specializing in international relations and law from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.