Thurston played a prominent role in the revolution that overthrew the Hawaiian Kingdom to replace Queen Liliʻuokalani with the Republic of Hawaii, with discreet US support for which Congress much later apologized.

[2] On his father's side he was grandson of Asa and Lucy Goodale Thurston, who were in the first company of American Christian missionaries to the Hawaiian Islands in 1820.

Thurston inherited the conservative thinking of the missionaries, which put him at odds with Hawaiian royalty as well as immigrants such as Greek hotelier George Lycurgus whose lifestyles were filled with gambling and liquor.

[9] Voting rights and membership of the legislature were based on property ownership, resulting in effective control by wealthy Americans and Europeans.

In 1892 Thurston led the Annexation Club, later adopting the title Committee of Safety, which planned for making Hawaii a territory of the United States.

Liliʻuokalani and Crown Princess Victoria Kaʻiulani also traveled to Washington to claim the new government did not have the support of the majority of the Hawaiian population.

[11] By July 1898 the annexation formed the Territory of Hawaii and Thurston retired from political office to run his business affairs.

He headed the Hawaiian Promotion Committee (which evolved into the Hawaii Visitors & Convention Bureau), but objected to the hula which he claimed was "suggestive" and "indecent".

[6] His fortunes rose considerably as a result of the 1898 annexation by the United States, since it removed all duties from shipments to the largest market.

He used his newspaper to promote the national park idea and convinced the territorial legislature to fund a group of congressmen to visit Haleakalā and Kīlauea in 1907.

He convinced Governor Walter F. Frear to introduce a resolution supporting the idea, and formed a survey team to propose exact boundaries.

His newspaper printed endorsements of the park by President Theodore Roosevelt (a classmate at Columbia), conservationist John Muir, and powerful senator Henry Cabot Lodge.

[17] The newspaper business was run by his son Lorrin Potter Thurston, whose policy of using the term "Jap" during World War II pleased the military, but not local readers of Japanese descent.

After the war readership declined, until its hostile take-over in 1962 by Lorrin's grandson Thurston Twigg-Smith who changed to a more moderate editorial line.

[18] In 1966, a chapel at Punahou School designed by Vladimir Ossipoff was named after Robert Shipman Thurston, Jr. of the class of 1941 who disappeared in World War II.