The political jockeying began in July of 1842, when King Kamehameha III appealed to U.S. President John Tyler (”Tippecanoe and Tyler too”). In his letter to the president, the King complained about the severe encroachment of one Lord George Paulet, Captain of her British Majesty’s ship Carysfort, who by force was attempting to take over several of the Hawaiian Islands, and the King beseeched the president to talk with Britain on Hawaii’s behalf, and press the issue of independence.

This the president did, making note that “The United States Government has for its sole object the preservation of the independence of these islands.”

A Hawaiian delegation was soon dispatched to England, where Lord Aberdeen assured them that “Her Majesty’s Queen Victoria’s Government was willing and had determined to recognize the independence of the Sandwich Islands under their present sovereign.” Aberdeen determined that Paulet had not acted with orders of Her Majesty’s Government and he would withdraw immediately. Paulet did.

After talking with the King of France, Britain and France formally announced that “Her Majesty the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and His Majesty the King of the French, taking into consideration the existence in the Sandwich Islands (Hawaiian Islands) of a government capable of providing for the regularity of its relations with foreign nations, have thought it right to engage, reciprocally, to consider the Sandwich Islands as an Independent State, and never to take possession, neither directly or under the title of Protectorate, or under any other form, of any part of the territory of which they are composed.”

This declaration is credited with opening the doors of diplomacy around the world between more than 93 nations and Hawaii over the next 40 years. Hawaiian diplomatic delegations and consulates were established in everyone of these nations, most of which proclaimed the Sandwich Islands to be free and independent….

…most, meaning all of them except the U.S., which never made any formal announcement, and in 1893 began its takeover of the country once ruled by legitimate monarchs.