Studying the Connections Between Places

1. Studying the Connections Between Places • Why do particular regions become connected to one another at different points in time? (what is the cause?) • What is transferred? (what happens?) • What are the social and environmental results? (why does it matter?) • How and why are global connections similar to or different from those in other times and places? (what broader conclusions can we draw about causes and effects?)

2. Political Outcomes of Spanish-American War (1898) -Puerto Rico, Guam formal colonies of US -Philippines -Philippine-American War (1899-1902) -Philippines becomes formal colony of US -Cuba -granted formal “independence” -Platt Amendment (US controls foreign relations, retains right to intervene) -Reciprocal Trade Treaty (US has preferential trade relationships with Cuba; allows Cuba to export raw materials to US, but not finished goods) -US granted permanent naval base at Guantanamo Bay

3. Imperialism: "A determination to expand geographically and economically, imposing an alien will upon subject peoples and commandeering their resources". Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (Oxford 2007).

4. Map of Cuba

5. The Landscape of Eastern Cuba, from Appleton’s Journal, August 26, 1869

6. How do Americans bring eastern Cuba into the global market? • Military government “regularizes” property titles (Civil Order 62 [1902]) • Government and investors build railroads • -Civil Order 34 (1902) allows military government to expropriate land for railroad construction • 3. Government and investors bring capital and technology

7. Forest Cover in Cuba Year m. ha percent 1812 9.9 89.2 1900 6.0 54 1959 1.5 14 1991 2.2 19.5

8. Henry Frenck, American businessman, on the destruction of forest in eastern Cuba, 1920: “Here vast stretches of virgin forest, often three to five thousand acres in extent, are turned into cane fields in a few months’ time….With machetes and axes which to the Northerner would seem extremely crude—though nearly all of them come from our own State of Connecticut—they attack the immense and seemingly impenetrable wilderness. The underbrush and saplings fall first under the slashing machetes. Next the big trees—and some of these are indeed giants of the forest—succumb before the heavy axes and, denuded of their larger branches are left where they lie….”

9. America in Cuba: Some Environmental and Social Effects Social Effects -radical decline in small farmsshift to large plantations (corporate farms, segregated company towns) -shift from subsistence economy to large, poorly paid, wage labor force, including many imported (male) laborers Environmental Effects -radical change in landuse of eastern Cuba: from mixed ag and dense forests to monocrop of sugar cane -erosion in mountains --as small farmers pushed onto marginal lands -disease (mosaic disease) and declining sugar cane yields after 1915

10. Gifford Pinchot on the advantages of practicing scientific forestry in the Philippines: “The Philippine Government has this great advantage for the preliminary condition in which it is placed, that a majority of eight men can make any law any time they please….The Commission is exceedingly favourable to forest work in the Islands and has done everything it could to help the Bureau of Forestry.” (from a lecture given to Yale forestry students, 16 March 1903)

11. George Patrick Ahern

12. Pinchot to his father, 1902: “This was my first real sight of a tropical forest, and it was…somewhat bewildering to be dropped into the midst of a forest not one tree of which I knew….”

13. Philippine Bureau of Forestry, Annual Report, 1902-1903 Logging Methods in the Philippines, c. 1900

14. Press release written by Major George Ahern, head of Philippine Bureau of Forestry, advertising timber concessions (2 April 1914): “The forestry bureau now has available a number of tracks ranging in size from 30 to 300 square miles, with one or two much larger size awaiting applications….A concession costs nothing…and there is no special form of application for this privilege. A mere letter will suffice. The letter should contain a rough description of the track desired, the amount of capital to be invested, the size and type of plant to be installed.”

15. Introduction of Industrial Logging Methods into the Philippines American-made donkey engine in the Philippines Steam-powered logging railroad in the Philippines

16. Banaue Rice Terraces, c. 1920

17. U.S. forester Barrington Moore commenting on caingins, 1910: “Caingins are a system of shifting cultivation in forest lands, which is destructive in the extreme. To make a caingin, the Filipino moves into a body of fine virgin timber and begins by cutting all the undergrowth….He makes no pretense of plowing, or even scratching the ground, but merely pokes a hole with a stick and puts in the seeds. Neither does he attempt to keep out the weeds. The result is that within a couple of years the area is so overgrown that it has to be abandoned. He them moves on and destroys another valuable piece of forest….At Port Banga, on the Island of Mindanao, it is estimate that from $75,000 to $100,000 worth of timber was destroyed by caingins in a single year.”

18. Studying the Connections Between Places • Why do particular regions become connected to one another at different points in time? (what is the cause?) • What is transferred? (what happens?) • What are the social and environmental results? (why does it matter?) • How and why are global connections similar to or different from those in other times and places? (what broader conclusions can we draw?)

19. Comparing US Imperial Expansion: • North American West • Displacement of native population • Rapid (industrial) resource extraction alongside an settler agrarianism  “settler imperialism” • Cuba • Displacement of native population along with incorporation of natives into wage labor system • Direct importation of foreign wage laborers • Rapid (industrial) resource extraction  “capitalist imperialism” • Philippines (Progressive imperialism) • Control (but not displacement) of native population • Limited industrial resource extraction  “Progressive imperialism”