Hawaii's fate changed forever on January 16, 1893 when, motivated by influential naval officer Alfred Thayer Mahan and the US Ambassador to Hawaii - with support from an expansionist US Congress wishing to extend its military presence into the Pacific - US troops landed on Oahu in violation of Hawaiian sovereignty and over the protest of both the Governor of Oahu and the Kingdom of Hawaii's Minister of Foreign Affairs.
One day later, six ethnic European Hawaiian subjects, including Sanford Dole and seven foreign businessmen, under the name the "Citizen's Committee of Public Safety," with the protection of the US military, formally declared themselves to be the new provisional government of the Hawaiian Islands - effectively a bloodless coup.
