University of Hawaii at Manoa Library

Student Equity, Excellence, and Diversity Grant Request 2001
The Annexation Of Hawaii:
A Collection Of Documents On The World Wide Web

Introduction
Goal
Objectives
Methods and Projected Budget
Evaluation
Conclusion
Final Report


Questions and comments: speccoll@hawaii.edu


INTRODUCTION TO PROJECT

The legitimacy of the annexation of Hawaii by the United States has recently emerged as a significant area of inquiry in Hawaiian studies. In addition to the issue of the legality of the annexation, the question of the role of the United States in the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom in 1893 is being reexamined by historians and included in Hawaiian studies curricula. This project seeks to support these inquiries by providing electronic access via the world wide web to documents of primary importance to these discussions: the reports popularly known as the "Blount Report" of 1894, and the "Morgan Report" of 1893-1894, the Hawaiian anti-annexation petitions of 1897 and the following documents in both Hawaiian and English: Queen Liliuokalani's protest of the 1897 proposed treaty of annexation, the (Hawaiian) Citizens' Committee protest of the same, and the joint resolution of the Hui Aloha Aina and the Hui Kalaiaina protesting annexation after the passage of the Newlands Resolution, and the Congressional debates on the Organic Act of Hawaii, 1899-1900.

GOAL

The goal of this project is to contribute to the diversity and equity initiatives of the President of the University of Hawaii by addressing the need for greater accessibility to information, by encouraging dialog between individuals and groups, and by providing increased opportunity for scholarship and research conducted at the University and elsewhere.

This project will contribute to the recovery of a fuller Hawaiian history, in support of studies that provide alternatives to the dominant narratives used in the teaching of Hawaiian and U.S. history. These efforts are of great importance to the Hawaiian sovereignty movement, a critical issue for all of the peoples of Hawaii. For students at the University of Hawaii the discussion is both an academic one, debated in the classroom, and a personal question, discussed in the broader community, whether one is of Hawaiian descent or not. Within this context, this project will address the diversity dimensions of national origin and race.

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OBJECTIVES

The project's objectives are to digitize reports and debates from the late 19th and early 20th centuries on the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom and the annexation of Hawaii, and to provide electronic access to these materials beyond the walls of the University.

These documents are presently available in libraries and archival depositories in limited numbers. Students, scholars, and the general public must physically go to a holding library in order to read the documents. Often they are not able to borrow copies. Document access on the web will increase their availability to a broader audience who may be unable or even unwilling to travel to libraries. Online access also allows for multiple users at any given time, whereas a publication or microfilm reel can only be read by one individual at a time.

Conversion of document pages into text files will enable people to search for keywords and names within the documents. Keyword searching provides a powerful tool that enhances the use of traditional print indexes such as those found in the back of published volumes. The document pages will also be presented as image files, to maintain visual coherence.

While information access is of primary concern in this project, a corollary benefit is the preservation of 100 year old documents, often in fragile condition. In the early 1990s the University of Hawaii Library began its efforts to preserve these documents. The Library's Preservation Department created bound photocopies of the Blount Report, which were made available to libraries and individuals at cost (approximately $200). These limited copies are no longer available for purchase, at a time when sovereignty issues continue to be widely discussed and studied.

Blount Report

In 1893 U.S. Congressman James Blount was sent to Hawaii by President Grover Cleveland to investigate the circumstances surrounding the takeover of the Hawaiian Kingdom and how the Hawaiian people felt toward the newly installed provisional government. His report concluded that the takeover was a conspiracy by descendants of U.S. citizens in collaboration with the U.S. Minister, and persuaded President Cleveland not to annex Hawaii. Portions of the Blount Report were mounted on the world wide web in 1996 (http://www.kohala.net/blount/). However the report was retyped rather than scanned, and is not fully indexed nor available in its entirety.

Morgan Report

At the end of December 1893 the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations conducted hearings on the political situation in Hawaii. Senator John T. Morgan, chair, authored the Morgan Report, which concluded that no one except Queen Liliuokalani was to blame for the takeover.

Anti-annexation petitions

In 1897, U.S. President McKinley submitted a treaty of annexation of Hawaii to the U.S. Senate. The Hawaiian political group Hui Aloha Aina organized a massive petition drive to demonstrate that the people of Hawaii opposed annexation. At the time Hawaii had an estimated population of 40,000 people. In less than two months, traveling between five islands by ship (two circuits, one to distribute the petitions, one to retrieve them), the hui reached over half the population to gather 21,000 signatures. Today, for many Hawaiian people, the petition serves as a powerful symbol of resistance, and grounding for their continuing involvement in the struggle for sovereignty.

Important and little-known protest documents by Native Hawaiians will also be digitized, including Queen Liliuokalani's official protest to the U.S. against the 1897 treaty of annexation, and the (Hawaiian) Citizens' Committee's protests against the treaty and the Newlands Resolution. Hawaiian and English versions of these documents will be digitized.

Congressional Debates on the Organic Act of Hawaii Despite the overwhelming opposition by the Hawaiian people to annexation, Hawaii became a territory of the United States when the Organic Act of Hawaii was passed by the U.S. Congress in 1900. The debates that preceded the passing of the Act offer insight into the impetus behind the move to annex, and present a complex image of the U.S. at the time.

A mockup of the website at which these documents will be made available can be viewed at

http://web.archive.org/web/20071109052454/http://libweb.hawaii.edu/digicoll/annexation/annexation.html [current site is: http://libweb.hawaii.edu/digicoll/annexation/annexation.php].

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METHODS OF PROJECT AND PROJECTED BUDGET

Qualifications of principal investigator
Martha Chantiny, principal investigator of this project, is a senior systems librarian and digital projects coordinator at Hamilton Library. She has coordinated two federally funded digital projects, two UH funded projects, and one project funded by the Hawaii Committee for the Humanities. She is the head of the Library's Desktop Network Support Department. Associate investigators are Dore Minatodani, Hawaii specialist librarian at Hamilton Library's Hawaiian Collection, and Dr. Noenoe Silva, researcher in Hawaiian history using Hawaiian language sources and assistant professor at UHM's Political Science Department.

Items to Digitize
The length of the individual documents are shown below. They will be scanned to image files, converted to text files, and electronically indexed. Both the image and text files will be mounted on the world wide web. The anti-annexation petitions will not be converted to text files for this project, but will be indexed by island and place name.

Blount Report: 1455 pages
Morgan Report: 773 pages
Anti-annexation petitions and accompanying documents: 660 pages
Debates on organic act: 322 pages
TOTAL 3210 pages

Equipment and Software
Computer equipment for scanning and digitizing is presently available in Hamilton Library. OCR software "Finereader" to convert the image files into text files is also available in the Library. Server space will be provided by the Library.

Personnel
The project will hire and train students to scan and optically enhance images, operate OCR software, load files onto web, and link web page to appropriate library and Hawaiian resources on the Web.

Total amount requested
800 hours at $ 8.75 per hour = $7,000.00

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EVALUATION

Evaluation will include collecting and analyzing data about and from users of the digital resources by means of a web-based survey form. In addition, ongoing evaluation of the progress toward completion of the tasks will be conducted.

Appropriate instructional faculty, libraries, and educational and Hawaiian organizations will be notified of the availability of the documents on the web. Appropriate web indexing services, listservs and online groups will be notified.

CONCLUSION

This collection of primary documents will create a core of research materials for the exploration of annexation issues. The digitized resources will become part of the UHM Library's "Digital Archive Collections" website (http://library.manoa.hawaii.edu/research/digicoll.php), and help to build a digital library of Hawaiian and Pacific resources. In this way the project will provide access to important source materials for use on local, national, and international levels and participate in the University's initiative to spread diversity on a global scale.

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