Today in Labor History February 25, 1843: Lord George Paulet, naval captain, occupied the Kingdom of Hawaii in the name of Great Britain. Paulet and his men controlled the islands for five months, until the U.S. sent warships to expel them. Great Britain supposedly never authorized the invasion. The Hawaiian Kingdom was a sovereign state from 1795-1883. King Kamehameha, from the island of Hawaii, created the state by conquering four other Hawaiian islands and unifying them in 1795. The U.S. acted as its “protector” during these years, preventing the UK and Japan from asserting hegemony. However, in 1898, the U.S. annexed the islands, after U.S. businessmen participated in the overthrow of the monarchy in 1893.
The Hawaiian flag, depicted here, is based on Kānāwai Māmalahoe, or Law of the Splintered Paddle, a precept in Hawaiian law, originating with King Kamehameha I in 1797. The law states "Let every elderly person, woman and child lie by the roadside in safety," (i.e., safely protected whenever there is a battle). The law is enshrined in the Hawaiian state constitution, Article 9, Section 10, and has become a model for modern human rights law regarding the treatment of civilians and other non-combatants during times of war. The law was came as a result of an incident when Kamehameha was on a military expedition in Puna and chased after a fisherman. However, Kamehameha's leg got caught in the reef. The fisherman hit him on the head with a paddle in defense, which broke into pieces, but the fisherman stopped after this and spared him his life. Kamehameha later brought the fisherman before him in judgement. Instead of ordering a death sentence on the fisherman, he ruled that the fisherman had only been protecting his land and family, and so the Law of the Splintered Paddle was declared.
