Republican Imperatives and Imperial Wards:

1. Republican Imperatives and Imperial Wards: U.S. Expansion Overseas in the Late 19th Century

2. The White Man’s Burden? • 1899 cartoon. Uncle Sam balances his new possessions, which are depicted as savage children • The figures are identified as Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Cuba, Philippines, and "Ladrones" (the Mariana Islands)

3. The Question “It would be better to abandon this combined garden and Gibraltar of the Pacific [I.e., the Philippines]… than to apply any academic arrangement of self-government to these children. They are not capable of self-government. How could they be? They are not a self-governing race… What alchemy will change the oriental quality of their blood and set the self-governing currents of the American pouring through their Malay veins? How shall they in the twinkling of an eye, be exalted to the heights of self-governing people which required a thousand years for us to reach, Anglo-Saxons though we are?” --Albert Beveridge to the U.S. Senate, January 1900

5. Expansion • Had its economic engines: • Quest for: • New markets • Coaling stations • Naval bases • In the late-19th Century the U.S. had its close encounters with: • Hawaii, Samoa, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, and Cuba • But…

6. Questions • What would be the political relationship between Americans and the peoples of potential colonies? • Was citizenship thinkable? • If not, could America hold an array of islands in despotic dependency and still remain a free republic?

7. Questions • Where there as Mark Twain asked in 1901, “two kinds of civilization--one for home consumption and one for the heathen market?” • The issues that these questions raised were at once evident among most Americans living at the end of the 19th century.

8. “Fitness” for Government “Many of [the Philippine] people are utterly unfit for self-government, and show no signs of becoming fit. Others may in time become fit, but at present can only take part in self-government under a wise supervision, at once firm and beneficent. We have driven Spanish tyranny from the islands. If we now let it be replaced by savage anarchy, our work has been for harm and not for good.” -- Theodore Roosevelt, 1899

9. Discussions of Expansion and National Policy • Were • “tensely strung between the poles of duty and distrust, of missionary zeal and the missionary’s skepticism toward the prospect of the heathen’s redemption.”

10. The tension was not new: • Expansionism was not new: • Trans-Atlantic migration, settlement, conquest • Trans-Appalachian migration • The Louisiana purchase and Indian Removal • Manifest Destiny • The Mexican War • And the annexation of Texas, California, the Southwestern territories, and Alaska

11. The tension was not new: • By the end of the 1890s, the decade that saw the superintendent of the census declare the frontier “closed,” Americans began to look overseas. • Expansion overseas came into especially sharp focus when the U.S. went to war with Spain in 1898 • The U.S. had already established its first governing presence (along with Germany and Great Britain) in 1890

12. 1898 • By 1898, Spain had retreated from its colonies and U.S. naval and ground forces spread from the Caribbean to the Far East. • U.S. pondered questions of the status and government of: • Hawaii • Whose white elites had been seeking annexation since their coup against Queen Liliuokalani (1893) • Cuba, Puerto Rico, Philippines • Whose liberation from Spain left many questions open

13. Arguments Against Imperialism • There were arguments being made against imperialism at the end of the century • American Anti-Imperialist League • But they came from such a broad cross section of Americans that it was difficult to build any type of coherent opposition: • One anti-imperialist issued a call for all of those opposed to imperialism to “stand shoulder to shoulder” • Republican, Democrat, Socialist, Populist, Gold-man, Silver-man, and Mugwump • Not to mention women reformers and African Americans

14. 1898-1902 • From the debate on the annexation of Hawaii in 1898 to the conclusion of the war against Philippine independence in 1902 • A double edged disdain for the “children of barbarism” • That such “backward” people were fit for nothing but domination by the U.S. who was divinely ordained to carry out its mission • That such “backward” people should be left to their own “savage” ways

15. The Result • Each region (Hawaii, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines) found itself gripped in U.S. possession “only at arms length.” • The U.S. held them • But at a safe distance from anything approximating • Full citizenship • Equality • Sacred workings of self-government

16. Hawaii

17. Hawaii • Somewhat of an exception • Sizable population of European and American settlers who after 1893 held political control and sought statehood • There were Hawaiians, Japanese, Chinese, American, European, and “racially mixed” people living on the islands but • 1894 Constitution made it very difficult for non-whites to participate in government • The franchise was narrowed from 14k to 2,800 most of whom were employees of Dole

18. Hawaii • Before war with Spain in 1898, the U.S. government rejected annexation of Hawaii in 1893 and 1897 on primarily racial grounds • The islanders were not “fit” to be U.S. citizens and the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act forbade citizenship to Asians • With war however, came a heightened sense of Hawaii’s military potential

19. Hawaii • Opposition to annexation cracked in July 1898 • But • Congress extended Chinese Exclusion to the Territory of Hawaii • Limited U.S. citizenship to “all white persons, including Portuguese, and persons of African descent, and all persons descended from the Hawaiian race… who were citizens of the Republic of Hawaii immediately prior to transfer [of sovereignty].” • Property qualifications to hold office • Property and literacy qualifications for franchise

20. Hawaii • Petitions for statehood were rejected in 1903, 1911, 1913, and 1915 • It seemed, at least during the GAPE, that the U.S. was willing to take Hawaii (for military and economic reasons), but not the Hawaiian people • Hawaii would not become a state until 1959

21. Cuba

22. Cuba • U.S. leaders thought that Cubans perhaps even more than Hawaiians were incapable of citizenship • U.S. set about creating a stable, reliable mechanism for Cuba government • Favorable to American interests, not the Cuban independentistas • U.S. limited the franchise to about 5% of the population • But the independentistas still won key municipal and assembly elections in 1900

23. Cuba • Platt Amendment (1903) incorporated into a treaty with Cuba • Annexation of Cuba had been proscribed in the U.S. Declaration of War with Spain, but independence had not • The Platt amendment provided provisions for a territorial government similar to that of Hawaii • It seemed the U.S. was willing to take Cuba, not Cubans

24. Cuba • Platt Amendment (1903) • Forbade Cubans to enter into treaties with foreign powers on their on behalf • Provide for the cession of necessary lands to the U.S. for coaling and naval stations • Granted the U.S. the right to intervene to maintain Cuban “independence,” and the maintenance of a Cuban government adequate for the protection of life, property, and individual liberty

25. Puerto Rico

26. Puerto Rico • Spanish rule came to an end on October 18, 1898 when U.S. Major General John Brooke became the island’s military governor • Initially most military and government officials thought that Puerto Rico would become a territory and then a state and it residents U.S. citizens • But this did not happen

27. Puerto Rico • Ultimately laws stated that Puerto Rican citizens were entitled to the “protection” of the U.S. • Laws also did away with the U.S. Constitution as the legal framework in Puerto Rico and revoked its right to send one non-voting member to the U.S. House of Representatives • U.S. Senate report said the revision of Puerto Rican status was made because Puerto Ricans were • Illiterate, of a wholly different character, and incapable of exercising the rights granted by the U.S. Constitution

28. Puerto Rico • Congress decided to: • “hold the territory as a mere possession” • And to • “govern the people thereof as their situation and the necessities of their case might seem to require.” • Jones Act (1917) granted Puerto Ricans U.S. citizenship, but it imposed requirements that left 70% of the pop non-citizens • One historian - U.S. imposed a system of government that left Puerto Rico less democratic than it had been under autocratic Spain.

29. The Philippines

30. The Philippines • Tensions arose soon after Admiral Dewey’s victory over the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay in May 1898. • For the next several months Aquinaldo vainly pursued U.S. recognition of the Philippine independence movement

31. The Philippines • Hostilities broke out between Aquinaldo’s troops and the U.S. Army on the outskirts of Manila on February 4, 1899, and organized warfare continued in one form or another until the last of the insurgents surrendered in May 1902.

32. The Philippines • Following a brutal, bloody war, the U.S. maintained a tenuous presence in the Philippines as it pursued what President McKinley had called “benevolent assimilation” for the Philippine people. • Philippine Autonomy Act (1916) • Placed in the hands of the Philippine people as large a share of the control of their domestic affairs as can be given them • Set them on the road toward independence