CURRENT PROJECT: To Lose a Kingdom: Power, Statecraft, and the Fall of the Hawaiian Kingdom

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║ UPDATE: TO LOSE A KINGDOM ACCEPTED ║

║ FOR SEPTEMBER 2027 PUBLICATION ║

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To Lose a Kingdom: Power, Statecraft, and the Fall of the Hawaiian Kingdom is the result of John Tsukayama’s decades-long inquiry into one of the most consequential questions in Hawaiian history: Why did the monarchy fall in 1893 without an organized armed defense, and why was it not restored? The book examines these questions within a century of royal efforts to consolidate authority, preserve independence, and navigate the ambitions of stronger foreign powers. It asks how strategies that helped successive rulers sustain the kingdom also shaped the choices available at its final crisis.

Drawing on his training in political science and international relations, as well as twenty-six years of investigative experience, John brings several analytical approaches to the historical record. Realist theories of international relations illuminate the kingdom’s struggle within an unequal international order. Theories of coups and political power help examine control of institutions and the organization of force, while scholarship on perception and misperception offers ways to understand decisions made under uncertainty. His investigative approach emphasizes reconstructing sequences of events, comparing accounts, examining competing explanations, and distinguishing what the evidence establishes from what remains uncertain.

The book builds on the substantial scholarship devoted to the Hawaiian Kingdom and its overthrow. Its intended contribution is to connect developments often examined separately: the monarchy’s early consolidation of power, its diplomatic strategies, changes in its capacity for armed resistance, and the political confrontations of its final years. By tracing those relationships across a century, John develops an explanation of the overthrow that considers both immediate events and the longer history that made them possible.

For John, a Native Hawaiian and Kamehameha Schools graduate, these questions carry personal as well as scholarly significance. The overthrow and the loss of sovereignty remain sources of grief, anger, and enduring debate among Native Hawaiians. Careful examination of royal decisions does not diminish the pressures imposed on the kingdom or the injustices its people experienced. To Lose a Kingdom seeks to deepen understanding of that history, approaching its leaders as people making consequential choices within difficult and changing circumstances.