Aloha, Claudine Gay

The past several weeks saw two abdications that are of personal interest to us here at History, Rinse & Repeat.  In her annual New Year’s Day address, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, Europe’s longest-reigning monarch, announced that she would leave the throne on January 14, 2024, fifty-two years to the day after she had ascended to it, in favor of her son, Crown Prince Frederik.  Margrethe’s abdication came as something of a shock.  Not only was it unexpected, but it was reported in the press (all right, the Daily Mail) that she, together with the other Scandinavian monarchs, had previously made a pact that none would abdicate the throne before his (or her) death.

There has been much speculation around the reasons behind Margrethe’s stunning decision.  She remains extremely popular in Denmark, and there had been no calls for her to step down, or even a suggestion that she should, except perhaps by rabid opponents of the monarchy itself.  One suspects that, whatever her reasons, she sincerely felt that it was in the best interest not just of the monarchy, but of Denmark in general.

The same likely cannot be said about the person at the center of the other recent abdication spectacle, Claudine Gay, who surrendered her office last week as president of Harvard, and about whom we write with a certain trepidation.  We had agreed, here at the site, that we would not write another word about President Gay, because our parochial interest in her, and in Harvard more broadly, was wearing thin the patience of our subscribers.  Nevertheless, we, or at least this writer, cannot let the denouement of the Gay saga die without one final comment.

It is clear from her public pronouncements that Gay’s abdication, unlike Margrethe’s, was not voluntary, but that, in her view, she was forced from her position by sinister forces who were seeking to destroy her and the institution that she led.  In that regard, although history is replete with abdications, Gay’s abdication calls to mind that of another monarch, a woman who had been an unlikely choice to lead her nation, Liliʻuokalani, the last queen of Hawaii, whose life and abdication were the subject of the book, Lost Kingdom: Hawaii's Last Queen, the Sugar Kings, and America's First Imperial Venture, by Julia Flynn Siler.

The Kingdom of Hawaii

From the moment that the Sandwich Islands, as they were first called by the West, were discovered by Captain James Cook, their strategic importance was apparent to all of the great powers.  Because Cook had been murdered by native Hawaiians on the island of Kauai, Europeans were initially reluctant to venture there.  However, the British government eventually returned, in the person of a former officer on Cook’s last voyage.  The islands had, around this time, been unified under the king, Kamehameha I, also known as Kamehameha the Great, who conquered all of the islands with assistance primarily from British commercial interests.

Because of this relationship, Kamehameha I leaned primarily toward an association with England, incorporating the Union Jack into Hawaii’s national flag.  This association provided protection from other powers who might seek to encroach on Hawaii’s sovereignty, including France, the United States, and even Russia, which established a short-lived colony on the island of Kauai when that island’s local ruler was rebelling against Kamehameha I.  Upon Kamehameha’s death, he was succeeded by his son, Liholiho (Kamehameha II), who died of the measles while visiting London, and thereafter by the latter’s brother, Kauikeaouli or Kamehameha III, who would rule Hawaii for the next three decades.

Kamehameha III was aware, throughout his rule, of the precarious situation his small kingdom was in.  As a Hawaiian counselor and historian, David Halo, wrote at the time:

The ships of the whitemen have come, and smart people have arrived from the Great Countries which you have never seen before, they know our people are few in number and living in a small country; they will eat us up, such has always been the case with large countries, the small ones have been gobbled up.

Because of these fears, Kamehameha III worked hard to ensure his country’s independence.  He established the country’s first constitution, and he sought, through diplomacy, to obtain guarantees from the great powers.  Kamehameha’s fears were not abstract.  In 1839, France had threatened war with Hawaii over the treatment of Catholics there, even sending a warship to the islands.  More seriously, in 1843, Lord George Paulet, captain of a British warship moored in Honolulu harbor, after threatening to bombard the town, seized it for England, raising the Union Jack over the fort that protected the city.

Kamehameha was able to send secret emissaries to the royal court in England, which countermanded Paulet’s actions and signed a treaty guaranteeing Hawaii’s independence.  France signed a similar treaty.  Nevertheless, as Siler writes:

[The Paulet Affair] was a moment that reflected a painful truth for the island kingdom: it was merely an afterthought in the grand plans of the century’s superpowers, as easily snatched up without much thought as put back down and permitted – for the moment at least – its independence.

Indeed, even after signing the treaties, France, in 1849, flexed its great power muscles against Hawaii, sending troops who sacked the city of Honolulu because Hawaii was allegedly hindering French trade and the spread of Catholicism.

One power that did not sign the treaty was the United States, purportedly because approval by the Senate would be difficult to obtain.  This failure was significant, as it would be the United States that would prove fatal to Hawaii’s independence.

Hawaii’s Path to Annexation

The first Americans to seek permanent residence in the Hawaiian Islands were missionaries, who initially arrived in 1820.  They had been preceded the year before by American whalers who utilized the islands’ ports.  Commercial relations between Hawaii and the United States soon boomed.  Whaling ships traded in Honolulu.  According to Siler, at any one time, over 500 American whaling ships would be anchored in Honolulu harbor.  One could cross the harbor jumping from boat to boat.

More significantly, the sugar trade between the United States and Hawaii, fueled particularly by the discovery of gold in California which created a huge demand for sugar, grew exponentially.  The growth in sugar production saw the first importation of Chinese “coolies,” as well as Japanese workers to toil in the sugar fields. Almost all of Hawaii’s sugar was exported to the United States.  The missionaries who had originally come to Hawaii quickly adapted to these new circumstances, trading religion for commerce.  This change inspired a local saying: “They came to do good and did well.”

However, perhaps the biggest catalyst for American influence in Hawaiian affairs was inflicted by Kamehameha III himself.  In 1848, Kamehameha instituted widespread land reform, or mahele.  Previously, all land had been owned by the crown.  The reform enacted set aside one third of the land for the king, one third for chieftains, and one third for commoners.  However, in practice, most of the land was purchased by foreigners, who, by legislation enacted shortly thereafter, were permitted to own land in Hawaii for the first time.

At the end of Kamehameha III’s reign, the kingdom was almost entirely economically dependent upon the United States.  Because of this dependency, and because of pressure from wealthy Americans in Hawaii, the king agreed to a draft treaty of annexation by the United States.  However, before the treaty could be finalized, he died, to be succeeded by his son, Liholiho, or Kamehameha IV.

Kamehameha IV had traveled to the United States when he was a student.  While riding a train, he had been thrown out of his compartment because of the color of his skin.  “A conductor had taken me for somebodys [sic] servant, just because I had darker skin than he had.  Confounded fool. But in this country I must be treated like a dog to come & go at an Americans [sic] bidding.”  This incident left Kamehameha IV with a lasting enmity towards the United States.  The draft treaty with the United States was never ratified, and annexation was postponed for more than another four decades.

Kamehameha IV was succeeded by his brother, Kamehameha V.  However, both died childless, ending the line of succession established by Kamehameha I.  The last king had not named his successor, so the task fell upon the Hawaiian legislature to select the next ruler.  It was this moment that set Hawaii upon the inevitable path toward annexation.

Two candidates emerged.  The first was Kamehameha V’s widow, Queen Emma, who, through her father, was half-British.  Her marriage to Kamehameha V had caused an uproar at the time, as she was the first haole, or Westerner, to marry into the royal family.  Unsurprisingly, given her birth and upbringing, Emma identified strongly with Britain, and was not only supportive of England’s role in the islands, but was strongly anti-American.  The other candidate was Liliʻuokalani’s brother, David Kalākaua, who was supported by American financial interests.  These interests used their financial muscle to ensure David’s election, ferrying legislators from other islands and purportedly plying them with alcohol and money.

When the time came for the legislature to vote, a crowd of mostly native Hawaiians, who supported Queen Emma, had gathered outside the courthouse where the vote was to occur.  When the legislature voted to elect David Kalākaua, a riot broke out, pitting native Hawaiians against Europeans.  Twelve legislators were injured, and one person was killed.  Given these circumstances, Kalākaua’s reign was impaired from the start.  He did much to try to restore Hawaiian identity and culture, but his rule was effectively hamstrung by wealthy Westerners who, although Hawaiian citizens from birth, were effectively American.  This influenced his rule.  For example, he signed a Reciprocity Treaty with the United States, which eliminated tariffs on Hawaiian sugar, tying his country further to the U.S.

Although well-meaning, his rule was beset by financial corruption.  In response, a group of Westerners formed an organization called the Hawaiian League, which was led by Sanford Dole, whose cousin, James Dole, would go on to pineapple fame.  More pertinently, they formed a militia known as the Honolulu Rifles.  This group engaged in what was effectively a coup, forcing Kalākaua to sign a constitution that sharply limited his powers, known as the Bayonet Constitution.  He would leave a weakened monarchy to his sister, Liliʻuokalani, who succeeded to the throne upon his death.

Liliʻuokalani, Her Rule and Abdication

For most of her life, Liliʻuokalani had never envisioned that she would become the ruler of Hawaii.  Although born to a noble family, she was not of royal blood and did not figure in the succession of the Kamehameha line.  It was only by the election of her brother, after she had become an adult, that she was destined to be queen. 

Liliʻuokalani was educated by Westerners, primarily in an elite school run by Amos and Juliette Cooke who, like many early missionaries, exchanged proselytization for commerce, partnering with the Castle family to form the firm of Castle & Cooke which was a power in the Hawaiian economy for generations, and which, until the twenty-first century, owned almost the entire island of Lānaʻi.  She married a haole, and was not only educated, but worldly having traveled to Europe and been received by Queen Victoria.

Immediately upon assuming the throne, Liliʻuokalani sought to rein in the influence of the Westerners and to restore power to native Hawaiians.  Her first act as queen was to dismiss all of the Western ministers that were in her brother’s cabinet.  Even then, however, a showdown with annexationists was not inevitable.  Many Westerners, while jealous of their own prerogatives, were not necessarily in favor of annexation.  Foremost among these was Claus Spreckles, a German immigrant who had come from San Francisco and ended up dominating the sugar trade.  These Westerners thought that United States interests would be satisfied by leasing Pearl Harbor to the U.S. Navy.

However, Liliʻuokalani remained unconstrained.  Thereafter, she proposed to undo the adoption of the Bayonet Constitution, replacing it with a constitution that, most significantly, limited the franchise to native born Hawaiians and naturalized citizens, taking it away from mere residents.  Liliʻuokalani sought to promulgate the new constitution through royal decree, bypassing the legislature.  She reasoned that there was precedent for this, namely the promulgation of the Bayonet Constitution, the very provision which she sought to replace, by her brother.  After much discussion with her cabinet, she was persuaded to postpone her announcement rather than risk a constitutional crisis. However, she refused to waver from her intention to act, and the threat of the constitution was too much for the annexationists. 

With the assistance of a detachment of U.S. Marines, who had been summoned by the U.S. Minister to the Kingdom and who had deployed outside the palace, and with the backing of the Honolulu Rifles, Sanford Dole mounted the steps of the royal palace and declared the end of the monarchy and the installation of a provisional government.  Liliʻuokalani turned over authority to the provisional government, under protest, in the hopes that, following the example of the Paulet affair, the U.S government, under President Grover Cleveland, would countermand the measures taken.  Unfortunately for Liliʻuokalani, while Cleveland had no interest in annexation, he refused to intervene.  After a planned counter-revolution was uncovered, Liliʻuokalani was charged with treason, along with 183 of her supporters and close allies.  She was convicted and sentenced to five years of hard labor.  Sensing that the spectacle of a deposed queen doing hard labor would damage the new government, Dole commuted her sentence.  However, her supporters were threatened with much harsher punishment, including death.  To obtain leniency for her supporters, Liliʻuokalani agreed to abdicate.  After a period of house arrest, she was given a full pardon.  She departed the island, but was allowed to return years later, just days before Hawaii was formerly annexed by the U.S.  the catalyst for which was not the efforts of the provisional government, but the war against Spain, which rendered the islands strategically crucial to any war in the Pacific.  Liliʻuokalani died in Hawaii.

Claudine Gay’s Abdication

It is likely that Claudine Gay views her own abdication in a light similar to that of Liliʻuokalani’s.  Like Liliʻuokalani, Gay was initially an unlikely choice to govern Harvard.  Once appointed, she perceived herself as faithfully serving her university, supported by her people (in this instance, the faculty and students), and reforming, if not Harvard’s constitution, its educational mission and purpose, only to be undone by reactionary outsiders, with powerful financial advantages, if not the Honolulu (or Cambridge) Rifles, who were furthering their own malevolent agenda.  Gay saw herself undone, like Liliʻuokalani, by her refusal to waver or compromise.  Gay announced that, like Liliʻuokalani, she only resigned because, as she put it in her letter to the Harvard community, it was “in the best interests of Harvard for [her] to resign.”

Upon closer examination, however, any comparison between Claudine Gay and Liliʻuokalani quickly breaks down.  While Gay has always had her critics, particularly among conservative circles, there was no Harvard version of the Hawaiian League – a Cantabrigian League -- seeking her ouster.  Most donors who eventually did, such as Bill Ackman, a long-time Democratic donor, had for years docilely donated to her vision and agenda, happy to entrust their funds to further them.  It was only after her refusal to denounce forcefully antisemitism in her testimony in Congress that these donors turned against her.

Moreover, she was not ousted by the Cambridge Rifles; Bill Ackman did not mount the stairs of University Hall to declare the Gay regime over.  Gay was ousted by her most fervent supporters, the Harvard Corporation, whose members were as invested as she was in her success.  When the first allegations of plagiarism were revealed, the Corporation zealously defended her, calling the accusations meritless and threatening litigation.  It was only after other examples of plagiarism cascaded that the Corporation determined that it was necessary for Gay to leave her position.  To suggest that the Corporation, who knowingly selected her to be President in order for her to inject DEI into the Harvard campus, subsequently “trafficked,” not in “reasoned argument,” but in “tired racial stereotypes, is foolish.

Thirdly, it is unlikely that Gay resigned in the interests of Harvard.  Given the reports that she had retained her own counsel, it is far more likely that she traded her resignation in exchange for keeping her position as a full professor, with its $900,000 salary, notwithstanding the fact that the allegations of plagiarism have not even been addressed, let alone rebutted. Thus, if history has been repeated, it is only in Claudine Gay’s mind

Finally, and most importantly, no Bayonet Constitution has been imposed upon Harvard, nor any annexation of the university by the malevolent forces of Ackman et al.  To the contrary, once the Gay furor has died down, it is most likely that Harvard will carry on as before.  For Harvard, that is a tragedy far greater than Liliʻuokalani’s.