Kalākaua's 1881 world tour facts for kids
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The 1881 world tour of King Kalākaua of the Hawaiian Kingdom was his attempt to save the Hawaiian culture and population from extinction by importing a labor force from Asia-Pacific nations. His efforts brought the small island nation to the attention of world leaders, but sparked rumors that the kingdom was for sale. Critics in Hawaii believed the labor negotiations were just an excuse to see the world. The 281-day trip gave Kalākaua the distinction of being the first monarch to circumnavigate the globe; his 1874 travels had made him the first reigning monarch to visit the United States and the first honoree of a state dinner at the White House.
Tour summary
Kalākaua met with heads of state in Asia, the Mideast and Europe, to encourage an influx of sugar plantation labor in family groups, as well as unmarried women as potential brides for Hawaii's existing contract laborers. While in Asia, he tried to forestall American ambitions by offering a plan to Emperor Meiji for putting Hawaii under the protection of the Empire of Japan with an arranged marriage between his niece Kaʻiulani and a Japanese prince. On his visit to Portugal, he negotiated a treaty of friendship and commerce with Hawaii that would provide a legal framework for the emigration of Portuguese laborers to Hawaii. The king had an audience in Rome with Pope Leo XIII and met with many of the crowned heads of Europe. Britain's Queen Victoria and the splendor of her royal life impressed him more than any other monarchy; having been greatly affected by the ornate trappings of European sovereigns, he would soon have Hawaii's monarchy mirror that grandeur.
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The king traveled with no security guards; only a small group of personal friends made the journey with him. Except for land transportation in cities, and two loaned ships in China and the US, his modes of transportation were seldom reserved exclusively for him. He shared regularly scheduled steamships and rail transport with fare-paying passengers. On the Red Sea, he played cards and danced with other passengers. Like other tourists, he visited the white elephants of Siam, the Giza pyramid complex in Egypt, tourist sites in India, and museums in Europe. Along the way, he exceeded his original budget, shopping regardless, and sent letters back home.
President James A. Garfield died four days before they arrived back in the United States, and Kalākaua paid a courtesy call to newly inaugurated President Chester A. Arthur at the White House in Washington, D.C. There were no public or private appearances for the king in New York, only a day at Coney Island. Before leaving the eastern US, the king met with Thomas Edison to see a demonstration of electric lights, and visited Virginia's Fort Monroe. He toured Hampton Normal and Agricultural School, and shopped for horses in Kentucky. The royal party boarded a train to California, where they were house guests of Claus Spreckels at his estate in Aptos (near Santa Cruz), and spent a few days seeing the sights before sailing back to Hawaii. Kalākaua was successful in jump-starting new immigration, the first transplants arriving in Hawaii less than a year later. In the years that followed, he began emulating the lifestyles of European royalty with expensive furnishings in Iolani Palace, a public coronation for himself, and a two-week public celebration of his birthday.
Background
No other sovereign ruler had ever accomplished the feat of circling the globe, but Kalākaua, the last king of the Hawaiian Islands, had previously set other records. He was the first reigning monarch to visit the United States during his 1874 visit to Washington, D.C. for negotiations on the Reciprocity Treaty of 1875. The state dinner in his honor hosted by President Ulysses S. Grant was the first White House state dinner ever given. According to the personal writings of Queen Dowager Emma, a political opponent of his, Kalākaua supposedly had the intention in 1874 of making a world tour "for his personal gratification and vanity".
The islands were officially the Hawaiian Kingdom but had generally been known as the Sandwich Islands since the 1778 visit of Captain James Cook. The estimated population of Native Hawaiians when Cook arrived was 800,000. With the arrival of whaling ships and missionaries in the early 19th century, the Native Hawaiians were exposed to diseases for which they had no immunity and began dying in large numbers. The official 1878 census showed only 44,088 individuals who claimed Hawaiian ethnicity. The sugar plantation work force in the islands and the dwindling population of the Hawaiian race had been Kalākaua's ongoing concerns. On December 24, 1880, he signed an act of the legislative assembly acknowledging corruption in the immigration system and authorizing Minister of the Interior Henry A. P. Carter to take charge of licensing immigration brokers.
Immediately following the signing of the legislation, he visited each major island in the kingdom for a personal look at how the reciprocity treaty had affected his people. In a speech before an audience of Native Hawaiians at a Congregational church on Kauai, Kalākaua related his concerns, "I will speak to you of one of our great questions, which is the supply of people, not only to meet the requirements of all our industries but to assist in the increase of a Hawaiian population." He wanted to bring in immigrants from Asia-Pacific nations, as well as Europe and the United States, to save the declining population of the Hawaiian race from completely dying out. Prior labor immigration had been mostly unmarried men, and he hoped to attract unmarried women as potential wives for them, as well as bringing in family groups.
Kalākaua appointed William Nevins Armstrong as Attorney General in December. Armstrong had been born to Presbyterian missionaries Clarissa and Richard Armstrong in Lahaina. He had known Kalākaua since their early days at the Chiefs Children's School on Maui where he and classmate Charles Hastings Judd became friends with the future king. He graduated from Yale University and became a successful lawyer before returning to Hawaii. Judd had been on Kalākaua's staff since he was elected king, soon after becoming part of his Privy Council, as well as being his chamberlain and private secretary.
Years later Armstrong remembered the invitation to join the tour as having arisen in a casual conversation, during which he did not believe the king was serious. He realized the proposed tour was not just idle conversation when the king informed his Cabinet of his plans and chose Armstrong, Judd, and his personal cook Robert von Oelhoffen as his only traveling companions. At a state dinner held by Kalākaua and his ministers a week before departure, Armstrong spoke of their youthful dreams of sailing around the world finally being brought to fruition.
Minister of the Interior Carter issued a Bureau of Immigration Ordinance on January 14, 1881, stipulating the terms and conditions under which new immigrants would be allowed into the islands. On January 17, Kalākaua appointed Armstrong as Royal Commissioner of Immigration; Carter became acting Attorney General until their return. Armstrong had instructions to return with a feasibility study indicating which nations were likely to provide "a desirable population" for the Hawaiian labor force. William L. Green, Minister of Foreign Affairs, followed up with a communique to Hawaii's consulates stating the goals for the tour.
Kalākaua's sister and heir-apparent Liliʻuokalani was to act as Regent during his absence. She devoted a chapter of her 1898 book Hawaii's Story to her brother's tour. Her assertion was that the "missionary party" tried to exert its control by insisting that she only be allowed to be in charge of a temporary council and that all decisions in the king's absence were to be made by the entire council. She balked at the suggestion and demanded that her regency have full royal power; he agreed.
Farewell receptions were held for the king by the Catholic and Protestant communities in Honolulu on the eve of his departure. John Mākini Kapena, a member of the House of Nobles, spoke to the assembled well-wishers gathered at Kawaiahaʻo Church, stating "…The great nations now look with respect on this little Kingdom and will have still more, when they see our king traveling among them for information to benefit his people, Let us all pray every day for the king's health, and safe return to his people." Throughout the night, his subjects serenaded him with traditional oli (chants) and mele (songs) outside the palace.
Kalākaua's Masonic ties as Master of Lodge Le Progres de L'Oceanie would give him a global brotherhood in his travels. He and his chosen companions boarded the steamship City of Sydney at 6:30 a.m., January 20, bound for San Francisco. As the king made his way onto the ship, many in the crowd at the dock reached out to touch him. Major George W. Macfarlane, his aide-de-camp, would accompany them as far as California. The king traveled as Aliʻi Kalākaua and as Prince Kalākaua, rather than in his capacity as head of state. The intent was to give the impression of a personal vacation, thereby avoiding the large costly retinue required for official business. The Royal Hawaiian Band, the Hawaiian army, and a large contingent of well-wishers bid them farewell as the City of Sydney sailed out.
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Not everybody was enthusiastic about Kalākaua's journey. In Hawaii's Story, Liliʻuokalani defended her brother's efforts against those who she felt "grossly misjudged and even slandered" him. She gave no names, but said there were those who believed, or wanted to persuade others to believe, that Kalākaua was using labor immigration as a cover story to gratify his selfish desire to see the world.
The 1881 year-end retrospective of the Pacific Commercial Advertiser was focused on Kalākaua's journey. The newspaper took a wait-and-see attitude about what the impact of the tour would be, but looked optimistically towards the kingdom having a more secure future as an independent nation. It gave much credit to Liliʻuokalani for rising to the occasion as a capable ruler who gained respect for her performance as temporary Regent. Kalākaua was acknowledged as having brought Hawaii to the forefront of the world's attention. He was praised for his personal qualities of leadership and personality, as well as for his positive interaction with global leaders. A smaller section in same day's newspaper noted that since the journey, there had been a global increase of literary publications pertaining to Hawaii.
Thrum's Hawaiian Almanac and Annual for 1883 reported Kalākaua's tour expense appropriated by the government as $22,500, although his personal correspondence indicates he exceeded that early on, and exact tallies of the trip are not known. Any non-government private expenses or debts would not necessarily have become public. In a letter to Liliʻuokalani in June, the king stated they were already in danger of running out of funds to complete the trip, and that money was owed to Italy for the education of the young men who had been entrusted to Moreno. The many awards and decorations he bestowed during the trip cost the kingdom more money.
The elaborate style of European monarchies left a favorable impression on Kalākaua. Construction on Iolani Palace had begun in 1879, and was ongoing when Kalākaua was touring the world, with an appropriation from the legislature of $80,000. Even though it was not fully completed until December 1882, the king was living there prior to his departure on his world tour. The influence of European palaces was reflected in the interior design and expensive furnishings. The final cost was $343,595. Immediately upon completion, the king invited all 120 members of Lodge Le Progres de L'Oceanie to the palace for a lodge meeting.
Electric lighting did not come to Honolulu for another 31⁄2 years, when Iolani Palace led the way with the first electric lights in the kingdom. The monarchy invited the public to attend the first-night lighting ceremonies, and 5,000 people showed up. The Royal Hawaiian Band entertained, refreshments were served, and the king on horseback paraded his troops around the grounds.
His expenditures in trying to remold Hawaii's monarchy into the European model added to the public debt, helping to increase the kingdom's expenditures on the monarchy by 50%. Kalākaua decided to have the coronation he had previously been denied due to the political climate when he was elected. On the 1883 anniversary of his 9th year in office, an elaborate public coronation ceremony was held at expenses exceeding $50,000. Kalākaua crowned himself. In 1886, Kalākaua's two-week 50th birthday Jubilee added more expense, reported by Harper's Weekly to be $75,000.
These expenses were not the sole cause of the 1887 Constitution of the Hawaiian Kingdom, which Kalākaua was forced to sign, but representative of a pattern of excessive spending and grand schemes, under the helm of Walter Murray Gibson, that did lead to it. Gibson was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs for two non-consecutive terms, on May 20, 1882, and again on October 13, 1886. He became Minister of the Interior and Prime Minister of Hawaii on June 30, 1886. Gibson encouraged and approved the king's excessive expenditures, and is thought to have been the driving force behind some of them, not the least of which was the $100,000 purchase of a state steamboat for travel to the Kingdom of Samoa as part of Kalākaua's plan to form a Polynesian Confederation.
