This week, we celebrate the 50th main episode of the podcast. And what better way than to pay tribute to the 50th and most recent us state? But why did it become a state? What makes it so unique? And how is its culture being preserved or appropriated since its incorporation into the US? In this episode, I'm asking, what is the history of Hawaii? Welcome to America, a history podcast. I'm Niam Heffernan, and every week we answer a different question to understand the people, the places and the events that make the USA what it is today. To discuss this, I am joined by an american studies scholar and us historian from the University of exit, whose work focuses on the United States tropical and semi tropical frontiers of California, Florida, and, conveniently, Hawaii. Welcome to the show. Henry Knight Lozano thanks, Liam.

Thanks very much. And thank you for the invitation to come on your podcast.

No, thank you so much for joining me for this one. There was really no more obvious topic to cover on the 50th episode than Hawaii. And you're from Exeter, which maybe isn't quite as sunny as Hawaii, but it's still a lovely part of the UK. What's the weather like down there in mid October as we record this, as.

You might expect, it is miserable and wet and grey. So, yes, we can talk a bit about Hawaii and maybe imagine Hawaii, but, yeah, very different here.

We will long for the tropical lifestyle as discuss Hawaii. I'm really keen in this episode because, you know, this is a US History podcast. And of course, Hawaii's history extends far back before the days that it became a state. But I am really interested to look a bit more specifically at its relationship with the US. So when did that first start?

Yes, and yeah, you're quite right to point out that obviously there is a much longer history, a native hawaiian history that would go back well over a millennium in terms of the settlement of the hawaiian islands, in terms of the relationship with the United States, it's essentially as old as the US. So almost concurrent with the formation of the United States in the late 18th century, you get the first US ships with the Columbia docking in Hawaii. And that's part of us efforts to develop its maritime trade in the Pacific. So along the kind of Pacific Northwest coast, Russia and Alaska, and the fur trade, and they're looking to go across the Pacific to China. In many cases, Hawaii becomes important to that as a stopping place, but also as it becomes a place to add cargo. So you see us merchants, for example, paying hawaiian chiefs for sandalwood, which is desirable in China. And then from those kind of early commercial or kind of economic ties, you begin to get religious kind of missionary elements and then political ties as well. In the 19th century, we're actually going.

To be talking in a bit more detail in a future episode about religion in the south, which I guess is where it's more commonly associated in the US. But tell me more about that sort of missionary presence in Hawaii. What was the goal there?

So the missionary presence or project, I mean, I guess it begins in part out of those early commercial ties because you get some native Hawaiians who travel with the merchant ships back to New England. So there's one in particular known to the Americans as Henry Ubukaya, who converts to Christianity while in Connecticut. And the American Board of Commissioners for foreign missions in the early 19th century become interested in this idea of sending missionary couples to the hawaiian islands. And Hawaii is not unique in this sense. You know, you have us missionaries being sent to other places. Of course, even, you know, the west coast places like Oregon become sites of missionary activity as well. So you get couples like Asa Thurston, I mention Asa Thurston because we might come back to his family, his grandson, Lauren Thurston, later in the 19th century. But Asa Thurston and his wife are among these couples who go out in 1819, 1820, and. Yeah, with a, obviously a remit to convert native Hawaiians to Christianity. You know, they come to a place where power does reside with the native hawaiian kings and chiefs. And I think that's important to recognize that they are reliant on the support of native Hawaiians, but at the same time, they are seeking to preach, obviously, their beliefs and also to introduce other western style schools, medicines into native hawaiian culture, which they are often critical of in other ways in terms of things like native hawaiian practices and beliefs.

Yeah. And I mean, as two white british men talking on the podcast, we can probably a test on behalf of our ancestors that people don't tend to appreciate too much us rocking up and calling the shots. So how was the sort of native response to this with, you know, american missionaries sort of just turning up and acting like they own the place, for one of a better phrase?

Yeah. Well, I mean, I think, firstly, I think there's probably important recognition that they don't own the place that, you know, this is, you know, this is a. The hawaiian islands have been unified by this point under King Kamehameha I. And, you know, they are. So the missionaries are coming into a, in a sense, a quite established, unified people and nation. But I suppose, yeah, there are a range of responses here. So I mean, it's important to recognize, I suppose, the impact not just of the missionaries, but of sailors and merchants in the introduction of diseases, both epidemics and venereal diseases, which means there is a crisis within native hawaiian society in the early 19th century that don't have immunity to many of these introduced diseases. And so there's obviously quite a lot of trauma with that. But there's also an important factor in the uptake of Christianity among native Hawaiians, partly in response to what's happening. You know, this is what the hawaiian historian Osorio calls the great dying, this kind of devastation among the native population. And then you would also have hawaiian leaders, hawaiian elites who begin to rely on foreigners, including missionaries, as political advisors, people that they would talk to about things like developing, ultimately, the hawaiian constitution in. So the kingdom becomes a constitutional monarchy in 1840, and there's a written constitution and the kind of missionaries that generation are important to that political development, but it does remain very much a native hawaiian kingdom.

Do you think the geography of Hawaii really helped to the islands to preserve that native culture in a way that maybe states that bordered other us states maybe weren't able to do as well?

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a, that's a, that's an important point. I mean, when we're talking about the us presence in Hawaii through the first half of the 19th century, we are only talking about hundreds, you know, hundreds of Americans. We are not talking about thousands. And, you know, whereas if you look at, you know, you could look at many examples within the continental United States in the 19th century where you have effectively, floods of settlers coming in or with things like the gold rush, you have a tide of Americans pouring into these places, and that can be a demographic catastrophe for Native Americans. Hawaii, to some extent, because of its distance, doesn't experience that kind of incursion of Americans. You know, it is. It does still suffer from the kind of, if you like, the biological colonialism that's playing out here where because of that relative isolation, if I can use that word, you know, they suffer when, you know, you get sailors and merchants coming in and making Hawaii part of their journeys.

Yeah. And there must still be the, the same risks as well when, when foreign settlers come in, in that they bring diseases and certain infections and various things that are just not native to the island, and that creates a whole heap of other issues. And I'm going to assume a certain degree of resentment as well.

Yes, certainly. I think there is. We can see very early in the process, if you like, of the US involvement in Hawaii that there is concern among native Hawaiians at. At various levels of society at this kind of. Yeah, this foreign presence, this, you know, foreign presence which is seeking to at once kind of preach christian beliefs, but also has ambitions in terms of the. The land in Hawaii, for example, which is so in native hawaiian culture, the concept of aina, which relates to land, but also the act of living through the land, the stewardship of the land, and that this bonded the hawaiian people in a kind of. There's a kind of social hierarchy here with a king chiefs or a monarch chiefs and the common people, but it's connected through how they live on the land. And you begin to see through, particularly through the mid 19th century, changes in how land is organized and the fact that land, for the first time, can be bought and sold in the kind of us or western style model. And there is profound, you know, concern and resentment among native Hawaiians about that because it's transforming their relationship to the land, to the place that is their home.

There's sounding like some real parallels there to the native american experience as well, in that sense. And I'm really keen to sort of paint a. A bigger picture here for context in when this is all happening, what is the current state of the US?

Yeah. So I think a useful way to think about this is the impact of the annexation of California and the gold rush that happens where you have the mexican american war in the late 1840s, and the US annexes purchases California out of that in 1848. Almost simultaneous to that, you have the discovery of gold in northern California and this influx of Americans. So Hawaii's previous connection to the US was very much out of New England, partly because of the missionaries, but also the kind of traders they would travel around Cape Horn out to Hawaii. So, you know, part of a maritime west, you might think of it. What changes at mid century is with, you suddenly have a large us presence on the west coast, which is, you know, considerably closer in a lot of ways, obviously, spatially, but also in terms of how people on the West coast begin to think of Hawaii, excuse me, as, you know, potentially another extension of the American west. This could be something that, you know, you could continue going west and. And there's a lot of discussion about that, that sort of Hawaii's destiny will be to become part of the United States.

I guess, off the back of that, I'm wondering if there. If there is a sort of a public perception piece around this, particularly as the decades continue and Hawaii's statehood starts to become more of a reality, how important is it to get the people on the side?

Well, I mean, that's a good question. I think it does depend in terms of. I mean, obviously, the United States talks a good game about that and the idea of the consent of the governed, that this is a nation that is founded on republican democratic principles. At the same time, and going back to the earlier where you were talking about native Americans, obviously, we see numerous examples in us continental expansion where there is no consent of the people who are inhabiting these territories with indian removal policy and reservation policy later in the sort of plains west. So it does depend. I mean, I think in the case of Hawaii, there is in part because of the sort of demographic decline of the native hawaiian population. You get an argument being made by Americans that Hawaii will fall to some kind of imperial power, whether it's Britain, France or the United States. And therefore the United States must act almost a kind of defensive expansionism to protect it from falling to other powers. Of course, that's quite a self serving argument, but it's used to kind of make the case that this will happen. And it's also argued that this will somehow benefit native Hawaiians. And you see that, again with some of the rhetoric around Native Americans, that in order to protect them, they must somehow be, quote, civilized and brought alongside kind of western practices. And you see that with land, you know, things like the Dawes act in the continental United States seeks to kind of create individual allotments for Native Americans on the grounds that this is what they will need to survive in a modern America. And, of course, this is. Yeah, in the case of Hawaii, this is resisted by. By many native hawaiian rulers who. Who do not agree that annexation or statehood is where Hawaii should go or what is best for the hawaiian people.

So I guess taking out just whether or not it's a state, you mentioned the british and french empires and the potential for a land grab from one of these dominant players at the time. But I'm just wondering what the main economic or perhaps strategic benefits were at this point to the US in caring so much about Hawaii.

Yeah, it's a good question. So I think if we break it apart a little bit into those different elements. So, I mean, if we think economically. So after those kind of the changes in the land laws in Hawaii in mid century, you see a growing us economic influence in the growth of its sugar industry. So foreigners, but many of them Americans, begin to buy up land. Some of the missionary generation as well, and their families are part of this and develop large sugar plantations, shipping their sugar to San Francisco and then onto the US market. So this certainly strengthens the economic bonds between Hawaii and the US, particularly the west coast. Although it's worth noting briefly here, I think that doesn't necessarily foreground statehood in an easy way, in part because the planters, the sugar planters in Hawaii, they have persistent issues with finding laborers, finding people to work on the sugar plantations. Native Hawaiians are not especially keen on working these long, brutal shifts on the sugar plantations. And the planters turn to Asia, so they turn to importing kind of contract laborers from China and then Japan. And all this is happening at a time where California and the west coast of America becomes virulently, kind of anti chinese in its sentiment. So. And that leads to ultimately a chinese exclusion act. So Hawaii becomes economically close to the US, but also seen as racially, industrially quite different from it. And then you mentioned kind of strategic military interests, and that's very much a part of it, too. So, for example, in the 1870s, there's a period of turmoil around the hawaiian monarchy following the death of lot and the us warship, the California goes from San Francisco to Honolulu carrying us military officials who feed back to the secretary of war about the value of acquiring Pearl harbor as a fuelling point and a naval base. But native hawaiian opposition to this remains strong and it doesn't happen. But there is interest in Hawaii as this kind of strategic outpost in the Pacific.

Yeah, and we'll definitely come on to Hawaii as a military base in a second. But, you know, you mentioned about the sugar plantations, and I do wonder how or if slavery made its way to Hawaii, because this is all happening around the mid 18 hundreds. Right. So it's a bit of a contentious issue anyway, but with the proliferation of the sugar trade, you know, was there any hint of slavery in Hawaii?

It's a very good question. So the hawaiian constitution at mid century that prohibits slavery. So there is a. Slavery is made illegal at that point, however, and this is bound up in the kind of questions around the sugar industry. Sugar is an industry that is reliant on pretty brutal labor conditions. And you see that in parts of the Americas where slavery, of course, is enforced. What develops in Hawaii instead, if you like, is this contract labor system where you have primarily immigrants coming over from China under very strict labour contracts, where they, you know, they are expected to work for three years or so or five years, and often expected to return to where they came from, and many do. But some stay on in the islands of. And they have limited freedoms in that sense. They are, you know, they are restricted in a lot of what they can do. And again, if we think about how the United States is viewing Hawaii, and particularly after the civil war, with the end of slavery in the United States, you have discussions of Hawaii as somewhere that has, quote, coolie labor. So this idea of kind of contract labour versions of unfree labor and white labor unionists in California, for example, argue that the US should never annex Hawaii because it is a kind of unfree tropical colony almost that doesn't fit with the United States in that sense, going.

Back to the sort of the military point that you made earlier. So I think when most people internationally think of Hawaii, they think of Pearl harbor. And therefore Hawaii is like a strategic military base. When did this start? And why, why does a little island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean actually become such an important military base for them?

I think in part because the hawaiian archipelago is, you know, there is nothing equivalent to it nearby. You know, that space sort of 2000 odd miles west of California, this stopping place or, you know, point, not quite a midway point, but certainly a kind of point as you cross the Pacific Ocean. And, you know, the US from its inception as a nation and, well, up, obviously up to, up through the 20th century, has profound interest in, you know, the Pacific, in Asia, and that's in terms of trade, but also in terms of military ambitions and concerns. So Hawaii is often, from the US perspective, interpreted in that sense of this is at once an extension of the american west or the west coast and also a vital outpost towards, you know, Asia Pacific, if you want to think of it like that way. And. Yeah, you, I mean, you see discussions of this at numerous points in the 19th century as the US relationship with Hawaii continues to develop and sort of efforts to. Yeah, I mentioned the Pearl harbor example. You see that well before annexation, there are efforts to secure kind of Pearl harbor as a US naval base. But again, it's resisted strongly by native hawaiian elites who see the kind of cession of Pearl harbor to America as a very, would be a very worrying step for hawaiian sovereignty.

Yeah. I mean, we mentioned about, you know, the impact of just settlers and missionaries coming over to Hawaii, but setting up an entire sort of military base, that must have been a very disruptive period, particularly for an area that at this point hadn't even been annexed. Right?

Yes, of course. So you have, you know, in this sort of talking about the late 19th century, by this point you have different discussions about the relationship between Hawaii and the United States. So one thing that does happen is a reciprocity deal where the two countries will trade certain duty free items and sugar is important to this. But annexation is another thing altogether, of course. And the idea that the US would hold sovereignty over Hawaii is resisted and rejected by native hawaiian leaders. And, yeah, you have the military question here where if you have a growing us military presence in the islands, then that poses a threat. I mean, that poses a threat to native hawaiian independence. And we see that play out really in the revolution in 1893.

Yeah, I mean, tell me more about that 1893 coup. What was it and what was the fallout from that?

Sure. White Americans in the islands, sometimes called Howleys, begin, really begin to agitate for annexation in the late 1880s and the 1890s. And this comes to a head when Queen Liliukalani, who comes to the throne in 1891 after the death of her brother Kalkaua, she shares her brother's faith in the native monarchy as the protector of the hawaiian people and she seeks to restore powers to the crown. And these are powers that have been stripped away by that point, by what's often called the bayonet constitution in 1887 and that involved Lauren Thurston. I mentioned his grandfather a little bit earlier, Asa Thurston, Lauren Thurston and allies kind of foist this constitution on Kalekauer. It diminishes the monarchy's kind of powers. It adds property and educational qualifications that disfranchise most native Hawaiians and all Asians and it expands the suffrage for whites. So Liliukalani proposes a new constitution, one that will restore powers to the monarchy that have been stripped away. And this is a catalyst for the coup in January 1893 in which Samford Dole, Lauren Thurston and others who formed this group called the kind of Hawaiian League, forced the queen to abdicate. The us minister to Hawaii, a man named John Stevens, who was an avid annexationist, who believed that Hawaii should be annexed. He supported the coup insofar as he called us marines onto the streets of Honolulu, ostensibly to protect american owned property. That's the argument. But it acted to quell potential native armed resistance. Certainly that presence of us marines and Liliuokalani abdicated, but in the hope that the United States would restore her authority. So she is in part to protect as well native hawaiian lives. She agrees to this, but only in the expectation that it will be be overturned by the us government. The US president, Grover Cleveland, actually isn't supportive of the coup. He's kind of deeply troubled by what's happened in Hawaii and sends out his own representatives to investigate further and seeks some kind of restoration of the monarchy, but ultimately doesn't really follow through on it in a serious way. Sanford Dole and the. The men behind the coup essentially reject this and instead form their own hawaiian republic, which exists from 1894 to 1898, during which they continue to seek and petition, if you like, for annexation. Native Hawaiians, meanwhile, are protesting against this. So they collect thousands of signatures that they send to the US Congress to oppose what's happened and to make clear that this is not with the consent of the native population. Liliukalani herself goes to Boston and Washington, DC and campaigns for her cause. Ultimately, it takes another president coming in, William McKinley, and then the outbreak of the Spanish American and the Philippines War to create a. A situation where the McKinley administration are able to push through annexation. And they do so over fierce kind of native hawaiian opposition, but also quite strong opposition from within the US. It's far from a kind of clear support for this for a number of reasons, but because of the war, because of the kind of military strategic arguments as well, they are able to pass what's called a joint I resolution, which requires only a majority rather than a two thirds vote. And, yeah, that's how Hawaii is annexed in the summer of 1898.

So with all of this going on, I mean, it doesn't feel at this point like there's a sort of unanimously agreeable way forward. So what were the main reasons for Hawaii actually becoming a state?

So Hawaii becomes a state 60 years after this, after what I've just been talking about in 1959. So I think that's, firstly, that's important to recognize this. This takes a long time, if you think about it, as the trajectory from a us territory to a state. There's a long debate, I guess there's a long historical debate about statehood for Hawaii. I mean, you see that in the 1850s, you see that in the 1890s, and then you see it through the 20th century. One of the issues here is that Hawaii, by that point, has become essentially a significantly asian population by the 1890s. So the US is annexing a territory which is racially, demographically quite different from any other. And that's one reason there's opposition to even annexing Hawaii. But then the question of statehood, well, if you give statehood, then you are giving, you know, a voting presence in Congress to this place and to this population, and there is strong opposition to that. So Hawaii becomes a, what's called an incorporated territory, and is that for a very long time. And then we see some substantial shifts, I guess, more in the mid 20th century. There are economic factors here, things to do with how hawaiian sugar is classified, which means the sugar planters who have opposed statehood now begin to see the benefits of it. But then, crucially, things like the Second World War and the Cold War begin to change some of the dynamics and the discourses around Hawaii and statehood that ultimately leads to it being accepted as a state, if you like, in the late 1950s.

Yes. Then what did that process look like after all of that, with the second World War? And what was the process of then making Hawaii a state? Was it quite a popular decision or was there some pushback in Congress?

It is a quite drawn out process. After the second World War, let's say, through the late 1940s and the 1950s, numerous statehood debates, committees, reviews of this and the arguments being made by. So, in Hawaii, you have the Hawaii Statehood Commission, which is a collective of different people and groups who are making the case for Hawaii statehood. One of the arguments they make is that it's sort of time that it's due, that Hawaii has, you know, matured, if you like, and is should become a state. You have, going back to what we talked about a minute ago, you have the continued expanded military importance of Hawaii, which has spiked during the second world War. And obviously with the Cold War context, you have the argument that Hawaii is a bridge to Asia. And again, with the cold war, the US fighting for, you know, hearts and minds in Asia, Hawaii might symbolize something quite important there. You also have a decolonising world, and there are criticisms that Hawaii is a kind of colony of the United States, and therefore statehood can be presented as a democratic gift, a kind of reward for Hawaii that brings it alongside other us states. But you do have a lot of opposition to it. And I think one example is a lot of congressmen from the US south are opposed to the idea of this very multiracial, multicultural territory and population becoming a state. So, race, even though we're beginning to see, you know, some of the changes playing out in the post war era, race remains a undeniable issue for, you know, statehood proponents. They have to make the case that actually Hawaii represents something new and important about America and how America is changing, but that doesn't win over everyone.

Yeah, and I think it's really important that you use the word gift, like, as if, you know, it sort of was seen as a gesture of goodwill to Hawaii to make it a state, because there's a lot of other us territories even today. You know, Puerto Rico is one example that always springs to mind and, you know, it feels like it's kind of a win win for the US to have territories, right. Because they have a say in how that that territory is governed, but that territory doesn't get the reciprocal representation in the us government. So it kind of begs the question as to if Hawaii was gifted this statehood, why not other areas like Puerto Rico? Because surely there's still a benefit there, right?

Yes, I mean, it's very. It's a very good question. I think it's a complex question in the sense that, you know, different territories, islands that the US have annexed, you know, have their own specific, I suppose, contexts and histories. What's, I think, important here. One thing to think about here is both Hawaii and Puerto Rico are annexed in the context of the spanish american war. So they do happen very similar time in 1898. But then there are quite long discussions within the us government about how these will be brought into the fold, so to speak, and they passed the organic acts around the turn of the century, which Hawaii is an incorporated territory and Puerto Rico is called an unincorporated territory, which reflects the fact that Puerto Rico is not considered as somewhere that will be a potential state, whereas Hawaii could. Now, there are a number of reasons for that, but one that's given at the time is that Hawaii has this long history of a us presence, going back to the missionary generation, that there is a kind of historic connection and lineage which seems to suggest Hawaii is different from Puerto Rico or indeed somewhere like the Philippines, which is a colony, a formal kind of colony of the US. So I think there are distinctions made there, although they might be, you know, somewhat artificial. And it's kind of ironic because Puerto Rico is much closer, you know, to the us mainland, if you like, than Hawaii is. So some of the, you know, the rationales here, you know, are quite uneasy. And I think you're right that it's a very important question because it means with. With somewhere like Puerto Rico, the question of statehood, of representation, continues and remains a very prominent issue today when they had the hurricane there. And there's questions about, well, how is Puerto Rico being represented in the corridors of power? Well, not to the same degree as if it were a state.

Yeah. And I think that's definitely a bigger conversation for another day. But it's interesting. Outline those differences there between the two, as you did. And I just wonder, doing a bit of a whistle stop tour of the sort of 60 plus years that have followed, how has statehood changed Hawaii culturally, politically, economically? I realize that's a lot to throw at you.

It is. I mean, it's a big question. I'll probably just pick up a few things to say there. I mean, I think one thing statehood certainly does is it enhances or exacerbates some of the trends that were already happening in Hawaii under us rules. So, for example, something like tourism. So tourism is emphasized very early after annexation. So you get an organization called the Hawaii Promotion Committee in 1903 that realizes very early on that kind of selling Hawaii to tourists is going to be an important way to get Americans to the islands of what statehood does is in the 1950s, combined with things like the jet age and people being able to travel there much quicker and cheaper in many cases, is the tourist numbers just spike. I think you have about 250,000 around the time of statehood, and that's gone up to 1.7 million ten years later to, you know, millions and millions, obviously now in the 21st century. And that has a dramatic impact on Hawaii as a place when you have significant numbers of people coming in who see and interpret and experience Hawaii fundamentally as a tourist destination, as a kind of this idea of an island paradise. And with that has come, obviously, forms of economic growth, probably, certainly rising land values and so on. But native Hawaiians have tended not to see many of the benefits of that growth. So you have a place where, while it is sort of selling and packaging a kind of native hawaiian image and culture, the actual native hawaiian people have not really seen the benefits of that as well as, of course, the older issues around their loss of sovereignty. So I think Hawaii, it's become this very iconic tourist destination, but that can obscure much of the. The history of it.

Do you then think that the people of Hawaii would define themselves as Americans or would they still consider themselves hawaiian?

So I think that's a. That's a good question. In a way. It's a tricky one to answer because Hawaii is a very multicultural population. So it would be important, I think, to think about who are we talking about here. For example, you will have generations of asian, chinese, japanese settlers, their children, in terms of how would they identify as american, as Hawaiian? I think for many Native Hawaiians, certainly they would identify as hawaiian rather than necessarily american. And that's partly because we've seen, again, sort of since statehood, but particularly since the 1970s, a growing kind of hawaiian sovereignty movement and a renaissance of native hawaiian cultures, languages, languages that have been outlawed, for example, under the Hawaiian Republic, and an environmental movement. So there have been issues around wildfires in Hawaii, but also the use of how the US military uses lands in Hawaii. There have been protests about that by native Hawaiians, which often position themselves, as, you know, Native Hawaiians opposed to the US sometimes what's called the US occupation of Hawaii. The idea that the US holds Hawaii as a kind of, you know, under a kind of military occupation.

Yeah, that's really interesting. And I think, you know, it's sort of quite clear to me from our discussion that although there's been clear benefits to Hawaii statehood on both sides, that it's still. There's still that division there sort of culturally and in how people sort of identify that, I think maybe will never be fully resolved because Hawaii feels still like such a unique state. When you look at all 50, there's just something about Hawaii that just feels very distinct. I don't know if you agree.

Yes, I think there is something to that. And I think it's important to recognize that Hawaii in the 19th century, for example, was an internationally recognized nation. It held treaties with all the major powers of the world. And I think, in that sense, legally, politically, some of its relationships with the US. And today, some of the contestation around kind of the us ownership of Hawaii comes back to that point, which is, you know, that Hawaii is a separate case from some of the, you know, continuing issues, for example, that Native Americans face with the United States and the US government. Hawaii's case connects to that, but it's also. It's different in some ways because of these, you know, the fact that it was a separate nation that was internationally recognized and yet became, through the annexation period, became part of the United States. So, yes, I think Hawaii, you can think of it in that sense as a kind of specific case study that needs to be considered on its own terms.

Yeah. And it's been a fascinating conversation, sort of learning a bit more about that journey from independent nation to US state. Just a final question, which I'm going to throw a complete curveball at you. If you were president for a day and you had the power to pick absolutely anywhere in the world to be the 51st state, what would it be?

Wow. Okay, I'm trying to think. I think a problem with a question like this is wherever I pick, there are presumably going to be people living there who might not be, might not be best pleased with becoming the 51st state. I mean, I suppose somewhere like Canada would spring to mind, but I don't think the Canadians would be too happy about that. Where would you pick, Liam?

Oh, I asked that question without having any thought to it myself, but, yeah, no, Canada feels like the obvious one. Right. But I think I'm a big lover of the US, but I also love the Caribbean, so I'd probably yoink a place like Jamaica and just make that part of the US.

Okay. Okay. Interesting.

Not sure the king will be too happy about that.

All the Jamaicans.

Right? Henry, thank you so much for chatting to me on this episode. I think it's been a really great discussion, and there's definitely more to sort of take from this that we can have sort of further conversations about in future episodes. But for anyone listening, if you have enjoyed this, this conversation, we've left some links in the show notes so you can continue learning and finding out more. So check out those. And Henry, if anyone wants to connect with you directly, where can they do that?

I'm on LinkedIn and I am on X, although sparingly. But yes, I am. I'm on both those, but LinkedIn probably would be would be better.

Wonderful. And yeah, I'm still loitering on X as well, so you can find me there if you want to. And on LinkedIn too. Just search for my name. And if you are listening to this and enjoying the podcast, please do take 10 seconds out of your day to leave a rating and a review, because it does bump us up the algorithms and help people find us, which makes us really happy. So do go ahead and do that, and also click follow so that all future episodes appear magically in your feed. Thank you so much for listening and goodbye.