THE EMPIRE AND THE PEPOLEThe Spanish American War and the Filipino Insurrection

The Path of EmpireSome Useful Vocab Words

1. Jingoism: extreme chauvinism or nationalism marked especially by a belligerent foreign policy.

Expanded under Captain A. T. Mahan, US Navy. Says that the countries with the biggest navies will inherit the earth. “Americans must now begin to look outward.

2. Yellow Journalism: the type of journalism that relies on sensationalism and lurid exaggeration to attract readers.

“You furnish the picture, I’ll furnish the war.” – William Randolph Hearst

Arguments for US Expansion

3. Latin America and the Orient (China) were areas the US should claim for open markets

4. After the frontier closes US business needed new opportunities.

5. Mass production called for new markets

6. US needed to enter the global scramble for colonies.

From William Appleman Williams The Tragedy of American Diplomacy

Why expansion?

“This national argument is usually interpreted as a battle between imperialists led by Roosevelt and Lodge and anti-imperialists led by William Jennings Bryan and Carl Schurz. It is far more accurate and illuminating, however, to view it as a three-cornered fight. The third group was a coalition of businessmen, intellectuals, and politicians who opposed traditional colonialism and advocated instead a policy of an open door through which America's preponderant economic strength would enter and dominate all underdeveloped areas of the world.”

The Path of Empire – Destination: Cuba To John Quincy Adams and others, Cuba had "become an object of

transcendent importance to the commercial and political interests of our Union.”

“In the interests of our commerce . . . we should build the Nicaragua canal, and for the protection of that canal and for the sake of our commercial supremacy in the Pacific we should control the Hawaiian islands and maintain our influence in Samoa . . . and when the Nicaraguan canal is built, the island of Cuba . . . will become a necessity. . . . The great nations are rapidly absorbing for their future expansion and their present defense all the waste places of the earth. It is a movement which makes for civilization and the advancement of the race. As one of the great nations of the world the United States must not fall out of the line of march.”

–Henry Cabot Lodge, (R) MA.

A new consciousness seems to have come upon us -- the consciousness of strength -- and with it a new appetite, the yearning to show our strength. . . . Ambition, interest, land hunger, pride, the mere joy of fighting, whatever it may be, we are animated by a new sensation. We are face to face with a strange destiny. The taste of Empire is in the mouth of the people even as the taste of blood in the jungle…

-Washington Post Editorial (1898)

The Path of Empire When the United States did not annex Hawaii in 1893 after

the combined missionary and pineapple interests of the Dole family set up their own government, Roosevelt called this hesitancy: "a crime against white civilization."

And he told the Naval War College in 1897: "All the great masterful races have been fighting races… No

triumph of peace is quite so great as the supreme triumph of war.”

Fear that Cuba might become 2nd non-white controlled Republic “A grave danger represents itself. Two-fifths of the insurgents

in the field are negroes. These men… would, in the event of success, demand a predominant share in the government of the country… the result being, after years of fighting, another black republic.”

– Winston Churchill, on Cuban independence, The Saturday Review, 1897

The Sinking of the Maine On February 15, 1898 the USS Maine, stationed off the coast

of Cuba in order to protect US business interests there, exploded and sank, killing nearly ¾ of the crew.

William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer begin to capitalize on nationalist sentiments.

In order to maintain a non-imperialist stance Congress passes the Teller Amendment: pledges that the United States will not attempt to annex Cuba.

The Sinking of the Maine

The Sinking of the Maine

The Sinking of the Maine

Walter Lafeber writes…“The President did not want war; he had been sincere and tireless in his efforts to maintain the peace. By mid-March, however, he was beginning to discover that, although he did not want war, he did want what only a war could provide; the disappearance of the terrible uncertainty in American political and economic life, and a solid basis from which to resume the building of the new American commercial empire.

-Professor emeritus at Cornell University

Spanish American War The Spanish were defeated within three months. When they

surrendered:1. No Cuban was allowed to confer on the surrender, or sign it.

2. No rebel armies were allowed to enter Santiago.

3. Rebel leaders were told that the old Spanish civil authorities would remain in charge of the municipal offices in Santiago, not Cubans.

By the end of the occupation in 1901 it’s been estimated that at least 80% of the export of Cuba’s mineral were in American hands, mostly Bethlehem Steel (Charles Schwab’s)

The Platt Amendment: Gave the US "the right to intervene for the preservation of Cuban independence, the maintenance of a government adequate for the protection of life, property, and individual liberty. . . . " It also provided for the United States to get coaling or naval stations at certain specified points.

Cubans protested the amendment. General Leonard Wood, head of the occupation forces assured McKinley “The people of Cuba lend themselves readily to all sorts of demonstrations and parades, and little significance should be attached to them.”

Cuban Constitutional Convention replies to the U.S. Platt Amendment“For the United States to reserve to itself the power to determine when this independence was threatened, and when, therefore, it should intervene to preserve it, is equivalent to handing over the keys to our house so that they can enter it at any time, whenever the desire seizes them, day or night, whether with good or evil design.

And:

“The only Cuban governments that would live would be those which count on the support and benevolence of the United States, and the clearest result of this situation would be that we would only have feeble and miserable governments . . . condemned to live more attentive to obtaining the blessings of the United States than to serving and defending the interests of Cuba. . . . The report termed the request for coaling or naval stations "a mutilation of the fatherland."

It concluded:

“A people occupied militarily is being told that before consulting their own government, before being free in their own territory, they should grant the military occupants who came as friends and allies, rights and powers which would annul the sovereignty of these very people. That is the situation created for us by the method which the United States has just adopted. It could not be more obnoxious and inadmissible…”

The Path to Empire: Cuba After several Cuban refusals, US pressure, the military

occupation, and the refusal to allow Cubans to set up their own government until they passed it, the Platt Amendment was adopted.

General Leonard Wood, head of the occupation, writes to Roosevelt in 1901: “"There is, of course, little or no independence left Cuba under

the Platt Amendment.“

Aftermath, December 1898: The US receives Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines from

Spain for $20 million. Puerto Rico by force of arms Hawaiian Islands by missionaries and agribusinesses (Dole Family) Wake Island was occupied.

The Path to EmpireJustifications of American Expansionists

1. The US had a duty to spread its superior institutions to less civilized peoples (Ethnocentrism)

2. Strong nations were destined by natural law to dominate weak ones (Social Darwinism)

3. A strong navy was the key to becoming a great nation, and colonies would serve as bases for such a navy (Mahan’s jingoism)

The Filipino InsurrectionFebruary, 1899: Roughly a year after the US received the Philippines from Spain, they rose in revolt against American rule. Emilio Aguinaldo: Filipino leader, who was used by the US

to fight against Spain, became leader of the insurrectos against the United States.

It takes three years to crush the rebellion, using 70,000 troop – 4x as many as in Cuba.

Sen. Albert Beveridge (R) IN speaking in January 9, 1900:

“Mr. President, the times call for candor. The Philippines are ours forever. . . . And just beyond the Philippines are China's illimitable markets. We will not retreat from either. . . . We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustee, under God, of the civilization of the world…”

The Filipino InsurrectionSen. Albert Beveridge (R) IN, continues…:

“I have a nugget of pure gold picked up in its present form on the banks of a Philippine creek. . . .

“My own belief is that there are not 100 men among them who comprehend what Anglo-Saxon self-government even means, and there are over 5,000,000 people to be governed.

“It has been charged that our conduct of the war has been cruel. Senators, it has been the reverse. . . . Senators must remember that we are not dealing with Americans or Europeans. We are dealing with Orientals.”

The Caribbean Insurrection?Christopher Columbus reporting back to the Spanish Crown:

“Hispaniola is a miracle. Mountains and hills, plains and pastures, are both fertile and beautiful ... the harbors are unbelievably good and there are many wide rivers of which the majority contain gold. . . . There are many spices, and great mines of gold and other metals....”

“They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane... . They would make fine servants.... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Columbus reported, "are so naive and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say no. To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone....“ He then promised "as much gold as [the crown] needed ... and as many slaves as they ask.” “"Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold."

The Filipino Insurrection - Sentiments A Marine major, Littletown Waller, was accused of shooting

11 defenseless Filipinos, without trial on the island of Samar. Other Marines described his testimony:

“The major said that General Smith instructed him to kill and burn, and said that the more he killed and burned the better pleased he would be; that it was no time to take prisoners, and that he was to make Samar a howling wilderness. Major Waller asked General Smith to define the age limit for killing, and he replied ‘Everything over ten.’”

A volunteer soldier from Washington writes in his war journal:

“Our fighting blood was up, and we all wanted to kill ‘niggers’… This shooting human beings beats rabbit hunting all to pieces.”

The Filipino Insurrection - Sentiments From 1889 to 1903: Two blacks were lynched by mobs –

hanged, burned, mutilated. Because of Filipino appearance – brown-skinned, physically

identifiable, strange-speaking and strange-looking to Americans – there was thus added the factor of racial hostility. Early on Filipinos are depicted as Filipinos, but as the

insurrection continues they are gradually depicted as rough looking savages with bones through their nose and spears and shields.

The Anti-Imperialist LeagueThe League was made-up of an odd collection of peoples, from Andrew Carnegie to Mark Twain to ethnocentric racists.

Their Reason’s for Opposing US Imperialism

1. Imperialism was immoral and runs against America’s pledge of human freedom (Twain)

2. Empires costs money, armies, and alliances (Isolationists)

3. Returning soldiers may bring Filipino wives back to the States, thus polluting American society (Racists/Ethnocentrists).

The Anti-Imperialist League“We have pacified some thousands of the islanders and buried them; destroyed their fields; burned their villages, and turned their widows and orphans out-of-doors; furnished heartbreak by exile to some dozens of disagreeable patriots; subjugated the remaining ten millions by Benevolent Assimilation, which is the pious new name of the musket; we have acquired property in the three hundred concubines and other slaves of our business partner, the Sultan of Sulu, and hoisted our protecting flag over that swag.”

“And so, by these Providences of God -- and the phrase is the government's, not mine -- we are a World Power.”

- Mark Twain

Teddy’s Big Stick“Speak softly and carry a big stick, and you will go far.” Roosevelt’s Big Stick Policy (Roosevelt Corollary to the

Monroe Doctrine) advocated that military power should be available for retaliation.

1. US would continue to block European influence in Western Hemisphere

2. US has right to intervene in Latin American conflicts

3. US will act as global police

4. Latin America is hub for US commercial interests.

Main Events Illustrating the RC

5. US intervention between Germany and Venezuela

6. US takeover of tariff collections in Dominican Republic

7. Intervention in Panama (Panama emergence as a client, construction of Panama Canal).