U.S. Interests and Power in Oceania, from 1840 to 1875

EMPIRE and OCEANIA

U.S. Interests and Power in Oceania, from 1840 to 1875

Hawaii's King Kamehameha III had been interested in trade with the Americans, and Americans had been interested in Kamehameha maintaining the kind of stable government that was conducive to commerce. Kamehameha responded with a Bill of Rights in 1839. In 1840 a constitution was created that provided for the king sharing power with a legislature. And on December 19, 1842, the United States recognized the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Hawaii.

Meanwhile, in 1853, President Fillmore had sent Commodore Matthew Perry to Japan. Some supporters of the mission wanted this to be more than an opening of trade with Japan. They wanted to see an extension of U.S. naval power in the Pacific. Perry was interested in coaling stations and the island of Okinawa and Chichi Jima in the Bonin Islands. The Department of Navy and Congress opposed such "imperialist" acquisitions, and Okinawa and the Bonin Islands fell to the Japanese in the 1860s.

The Navy was trying to protect U.S. citizens and trade. In 1858 it went to the Fiji Islands in response to the murder of two American citizens there. In 1859 a U.S. naval force landed in Shanghai. In 1866, U.S. forces responded to an assault on the American consul at Newchwang (today Yinkou) on the Yellow Sea in Southern Manchuria. In 1867 a naval force landed in Taiwan in response to the murder of the crew of a wrecked American vessel. And, in 1868, U.S. forces landed in Japan during a civil war there, to protect American interests.

By 1872, the U.S. Navy Department was interested in a coaling station in the Pacific, to supply new steam-powered ships. It believed Pago Pago (pronounced pango pango) on the island of Tutuila in Samoan Islands was available. A German company based in the Samoan Islands, at Apia, looked askance at the U.S. interest, and so too did some New Zealanders, but they were unable to get their governments to move to make the islands a protectorate. The United States won the friendship of the Samoan chieftain in the Pago Pago area, and in 1878 a treaty was signed. Pago Pago became became a station for the U.S. Navy -- the beginning of what would become American Samoa.

The U.S. economy was benefiting from a decline in transport costs, an expansion of trade and a rising standard of living. By the 1870s Hawaii's sugar exports were more than thirteen times what they had been in 1860, with steamships providing faster transport between Honolulu and San Francisco. The Hawaiians were Christianized, and missionary families were well established and still citizens of the United States, with foreigners having the right to own land, to vote and to serve in government.

In 1875 the United States signed a "treaty of reciprocity" with the Kingdom of Hawaii -- free trade. There were complaints from southern congressmen about injury to the sugar and rice producers in their area, and complaints were made that cheap rice from Asia would enter the United States duty-free by way of the Hawaiian Islands.

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