Kalākaua's 1881 world tour

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.

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.

[15] 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.

[17] 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.

They were accompanied in California's capital by Governor George Clement Perkins, sugar baron Claus Spreckels, and water engineer Hermann Schussler, who had worked on several projects in Hawaii.

[40] Concern over a possible United States seizure of the Hawaiian Islands motivated Kalākaua to hold a secret meeting with the Emperor to bring Hawaii under the protective aegis of the Japanese empire.

Kalākaua was the guest of Hong Kong's governor John Pope Hennessy at Government House, where the king was honored with a diplomatic reception and banquet.

[54] No labor negotiations took place, although Kalākaua later mentioned in his letter to his brother-in-law Oahu Governor John Owen Dominis that "an exchange of decorations" with leaders in Asian nations potentially opened doors for future talks on immigration.

Their trip across the British India subcontinent was a sightseeing excursion during their last days before sailing to the Middle East, and they stopped to tour the Ellora Caves prior to reaching Bombay.

With no existing treaty with Egypt, they were pleasantly surprised by Khedive Tewfik Pasha's offer of his Cairo palace during their stay, accommodating them with a tour of the Pyramid complex and the Great Sphinx on the Giza Plateau.

[62] Writing to his sister Liliʻuokalani from Cairo, he responded to her letter apprising him of the smallpox epidemic in the islands: "… what is the use of praying after 293 lives of our poor people have gone to their everlasting place.

[71] The Saturday Press in Honolulu was indignant at his association with Kalākaua and their re-connection in Italy, stating that Moreno "… had fought to the last ditch, and has, we hope, tumbled into it and will remain there.

[81] The firm's founder Abraham Hoffnung was attached to the Hawaiian Board of Immigration in London, and had already succeeded in sending Hawaii 751 Portuguese citizens (237 men, 191 women, and 323 children) in 1879.

[88] They had to apologize for the diplomatic slight from the earlier July stopover, and explain the reason why an invitation for the king, received while they were still in London, to attend the Bastille Day celebration as a guest of President Grévy was left unanswered.

After days of visitors, which included world dignitaries and representatives of two different Masonic lodges, Kalākaua and friends attended a performance of Giuseppe Verdi's opera Aida.

Armstrong left for New York City on September 1, as the rest of the party went sightseeing and visited the tomb of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington in St Paul's Cathedral.

[95] In Vienna during the first week in August, Kalākaua had made the acquaintance of The New York Times co-founder George Jones, who noticed the king had an interest in Thomas Edison's work with electric lighting.

On the following day, the party was introduced by the Assistant Secretary of State Robert R. Hitt to the newly inaugurated President Chester A. Arthur, at the home of Virginia Senator John W. Johnston.

"[98][99] After the presidential visit, the royal party headed to Baltimore where Secretary of State William H. Hunt provided a governmental vessel, the USS Despatch, to transport them to Tidewater Virginia.

The king toured Fortress Monroe where General George W. Getty received him before spending the day with Armstrong's brother Samuel at Hampton Normal and Agricultural School.

After a visit to the Old Soldier's Home and a reception at Virginia Hall, the party returned north to Fortress Monroe, where they witnessed a review, and then proceeded to the Norfolk Naval Shipyard.

[105] California friends of the King joined him for a farewell dinner at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco on October 22, just prior to his sailing on the steamship Australia back to Honolulu.

Plans for Kalākaua's homecoming celebration in Hawaii had begun in August, and included every organized civic and labor union group, as well as the student body of every school on Oahu.

Sourced to "a number of the most prominent planters and merchants from the Sandwich Islands",[118] it alleged a scheme by the king and Celso Caesar Moreno to import 1,000,000 Chinese men (but no women), conferring instant citizenship upon them, and reaping a $7 per head tax.

"[94] Dismissing the issue of possible annexation, Judd pinpointed the source as coming from England: "This was thought to be such a serious matter that the British government sent two men of war to Honolulu.

[128] As a followup to goodwill generated by Kalākaua's visit, Curtis P. Iaukea was dispatched to India and England in later years to explore the possibility of Indian immigration for sugar plantation labor.

[134] Thrum's Hawaiian Almanac and Annual for 1883 reported Kalākaua's tour expense appropriated by the government as $22,500,[135] although his personal correspondence indicates he exceeded that early on,[136] and exact tallies of the trip are not known.

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.

[146] 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.

[147] 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.