I've been reading the Wikipedia pages on the Kingdom, and somethings don't make sense to me. The monarchy was overthrown by a European militia with the support of US Marines and a US warship- a sizeable force compared to a native army at the time... but Hawai'i wasn't any native state- it's mentioned that they had two modern naval shipyards which added to a fleet of
"29 Dreadnoughts, 9 cruisers, 3 British cruisers and 11 ships from the wooden era".
And the army was reformed with-
"Several Gatling guns were purchased, a cavalry was established and the infantry was modernized. All major ports in Hawaii received a pair of guns to defend the port, Honolulu Fort was also rearmed".
Additionally the Queen had been doing a whistle stop tour of the Kingdom finding out if she had support for a more assertive constitution and apparently found that the native population was massively supportive. Why did they submit so easily to the US- when the US wasn't even especially powerful in the pacific at this point?
So what's going on? How did such a powerful force get overthrown by untrained settlers and few dozen marines?
I suggest you read Stephen Kinzer's Overthrow: America's century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq. The overthrow had a fair amount of buildup to it. When Americans like Samuel Castle (of Castle & Cooke) began to buy land to have their sugar businesses, they still had levied prohibitive tariffs on imported sugar to deal with. When these planters tried to get Hawai'i to join the U.S. during the 1850's they weren't taken that seriously on either side of the ocean.
In 1876 the sugar industry grew to a point where the US was the only country allowed to maintain commercial and military bases there. From there King Kalakaua signed the "bayonet constitution" in 1887. This shows just how manipulated the monarchy was already, ten years prior to the overthrow you talk about. The sugar trade took a huge dive and the King died in 1891. In 92, a man who helped write the 1887 constitution: Thurston founded the annexation club. When the club sent him to D.C. to discuss the proposed take over, Washington was on their side.
When the Queen proposed to have a new constitution which angered the white/American minority, the U.S. sent a cruiser, the Boston. To sit menacingly outside of Pearl Harbor. The new constitution wasn't made, especially considering troops were soon landing from the Boston among other ships arriving. (162 soldiers to be exact) It turned into a surrender on the monarchy's part. Hope this answers your question, it wasn't really an abrupt transition of power.
Have a look at the editing history of that article. The part you're quoting was added a few days ago, and is entirely fictional. HMS Dreadnought itself was only launched in 1906, no one had "29 Dreadnoughts" in the nineteenth century.
