In the summer of 1874 members of the party attempted a revolution with assistance from the French in dethroning Kalakaua and placing Queen Emma on the throne, which ultimately failed.
The Party was Pro-British, Anti-American, they opposed the Reciprocity Treaty of 1875 with the United States.
[1] Emma had been active in developing relations between Hawaii and Great Britain.
[2] For more than half a century before the creation of the Queen Emma Party there had been a long-standing feud between the two main haole groups, the British merchants and the American missionaries.
In some sense, the Queen Emma Party was a political extension of this feud because it had attracted British descendants to campaign against the Missionary Party which was generally composed of American descendants.