Mark Twain: "... we have debauched America's honor and blackened her face before the world. . . And as for a flag for the Philippine Province, it is easily managed. We can have a special one - our States do it: we can have just our usual flag, with the white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by the skull and cross-bones."
In the Philippine-American War (1899-1902) America crushed Philippine independence, leaving between 200,000 and a million dead. Theodore Roosevelt called it “a war to extend Anglo-American progress and decency”. America ruled the Philippines till the 1940s.
In 1898 America went to war with Spain. It mainly wanted Cuba. But Spain also ruled the Philippines. There America destroyed the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay. President McKinley said it was to protect Oregon and California.
America backed the Philippine Revolution, which overthrew Spanish rule in the countryside. America took Manila.
McKinley said he did not want the Philippines. But then one night in the White House, when he was down on his knees praying to God, it came to him:
- That we could not give them back to Spain – that would be cowardly and dishonorable;
- that we could not turn them over to France and Germany – our commercial rivals in the Orient – that would be bad business and discreditable;
- that we could not leave them to themselves – they were unfit for self-government – and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain’s was; and
- that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God’s grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow-men for whom Christ also died.
In 1899 America made war on the Philippines to prevent the anarchy and misrule of self-government. To uplift and civilize and Christianize the Christians of the Philippines:
- In Samar, American soldiers were ordered to make it a “howling wilderness” and kill “everything over ten”.
- In Batangas province a third of the people, 100,000, died.
- In Caloocan all 17,000 people were killed, wounded or driven off, men, women and children, their houses set on fire. A common practice of the Americans.
- Thousands of ordinary Filipinos died in American “protection zones” (prison camps).
- One reporter saw Filipinos put up their hands up to surrender only to be taken to a bridge and shot down one by one, their bodies falling into the river.
Secretary of War Elihu Root:
The war in the Philippines has been conducted by the American army with scrupulous regard for the rules of civilized warfare, with self-restraint, and with humanity never surpassed.
Black Americans, wanting to fight for their country, got there only to hear White American soldiers call the Filipinos “niggers” day after day. Many white officers called the war “nigger killing business”. One white soldier said:
Our fighting blood was up, and we wanted to kill niggers. This shooting human beings beats rabbit hunting all to pieces.
Some black soldiers, like David Fagen of the 24th Infantry, deserted and fought for the Filipinos.
The Filipinos were outgunned, but they could keep going through guerrilla warfare so long as they had good generals. The last of these, Miguel Malvar, surrendered in 1902. Some fighting continued till 1913 but the war was over.
America teaches a class in civilization. From left to right in the front row: the Philippines, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Cuba.
See also:
Commenting on the picture –
I hear a lot of anger coming from Hawaiian sovereignty supporters (sometimes people not that far left) regarding America “taking” Hawaii under its rule.
I can’t help but wonder what Hawaii would be like without the influx of money/support that’s funneled here. 3rd world? Better? Worse?
Not saying this in excuse of the Philippines example you’ve provided, as I haven’t lived or seen the place personally.
Oh. My. God.
Just how many other atrocities did the U.S. commit internationally? I’m just hearing of this. In K-12 history, the Spanish-American War was…the sinking of the Maine, Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders…The End. If American education were more thorough, there would be a whole lot of others having a Michelle Obama Moment—viz. “Not always proud to be an American.”
abagond,
Could you do a post on the Banana wars next?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Wars
My country tis of who? wth!
@anon: Nice try, but this is about the Philippines
USA has been involved fighting wars in foreign soil from the get go. After all, the whole nation was build on the land taken from the natives, one way or the other.
USA also has been fighting wars abroad at least since Texas and those times. First thing US emissaries to imperial Japan did, was to fire some cannons from the first ship that entered into japanese harbour. Just to get the mood right among those dinks, I guess.
This is very usual thing in the US history but usually it is whitewashed OR totally ignored in the class rooms.
Another US President who got orders from God to go and kill people.
Anglo-American decency indeed.
sick…
I’m liking this current motif of REAL American history.
As a student at a small private liberal arts university who had been educated (or not) K-12 in the public school system, I can definitely attest that I learned NOTHING that might have compromised the American Dream image until I went away to college. Nowadays, the facts just load up one on top of another, and it’s actually amazing to me how much revision happens in the grade school textbook industry.
Let me identify myself as a suburban, middle-class white boy, to illustrate how the propaganda I was taught, went almost completely unchallenged.
“Nigger-killing business.”
Sick indeed…yet wholly unsurprising.
Yeah, the States had their own version of Imperialism. This type of history was one where you had to dig deeper than what was taught in K-12.
So did no other group but the ‘anglo’ race think of global domination in this manner, or was/is it that they were the most successful at it? Were they more stealth? Why were they able pursue world domination of ‘others’ so ‘successfully’? Simply wanted it more, more strategic in battle, more bloodthirsty, cruel, pathological? I do’nt understand, because the chain of thought from white supremacists’realists’ is because of ‘natural’ superiority, and inferiority of filipinos, africans, samoans, Hawaiians, etc…. I do not hold to thatm but simply, guns and germs, means ‘they’ had a plan, were not afraid to murder, rob and cheat to get it.
Shouldn’t it be called the ‘American war in the Philippines’? I’m not correcting you, just correcting the history books.
@oyan: Well, you got the germans, the french, the belgians, and the brittish of course. The italians did not do too well, I think they had their hands full with the ethiopian army who fought them with muskets and camels, but I always toughed that the italians were not that keen to colonize the world. It was more about the elite who wanted to be just like everybody else in Europe, you know, who had all those fancy colonies all over the place. Italians as people were not that enthusiastic. They got some greek islands and some parcels of Africa, but they were more laid back than say, the belgians in Kongo.
Russians of course conquered the whole Siberia which, contrary the popular belief, was populated by many native tribes and nations. So they did pretty much the same as US did with the West, except Siberia was so effin cold that nobody wanted to settle there. So russians made it a penal colony.
The brittish were all over the place particulary before WW1 and usually behaved more civilized than the belgians in Kongo. Not that they could not teach some lessons to the savages and do some massacres, but they prefered more civilized oppression. You know, afternoon tea and cricket, funny shorts and helmets, decent christian morals and values and stuff like that, you savage sambos.
And the romans were of course the Grad Daddy of it all. Unlike, say the huns who just wanted recognition of being rulers and some cash and slaves, the romans wanted to make conquered nations romans. That is why they build those forums, palaces, circuses and demanded respect for their emperors. Also, the conquered had to take up the roman institutions, language and gods.
The jews did not like this, so the romans destroyed them. They did more for the dacians whom they wiped totally off from the planet. They also killed third of gauls, mainly women and children, stole their silver and gold mines, wiped off their history and claimed that the celtic road system in Gaul was actually roman.
They also tried to do that for the germans but, like we know now, the germans had a knack for war and torture and massacres, so they retained their independence of sorts. Like the High Land savages in Albion, in Britain that is.
So, yes, there were other whites in history who did these things but the americans are alone nowadays thinking that they have done only good things and saved the world by going to some foreign land and killing some guys over there. Of course these things were and are done for the big business, which is very american too.
WW1 and 2 we can talk about, but before and since then… Well, lets just say that I don’t know how happy the Filippinos were.
“They got some greek islands and some parcels of Africa, but they were more laid back than say, the belgians in Kongo. ”
i wrote a paper on the belgians colonizing Kongo and making it basically into a slave it…it was pretty damn brutal i gotta say…
i also agree it should be the american war in the philipines
The British were very brutal. There was the Mau Mau revolution in Kenya (Obama’s Grandfather suffered during this time) and also they had experimental concentration camps in India during colonial times to test how little food a human being could survive on while being worked to death.
There was some savage uncivilised animals back in those days but I wouldn’t apply those terms to the Indians , Philippinos or the Africans.
The Italian bombed the hell out of Ethiopia ad wiped out half of Libya’ population.
British, french, german, Portuguese, Italian and belgian colonization in Africa were in no way different. The atrocities of the latter are just a bit better known in the western world.
@dahoman: i was being little funny there. I know what italians did.
@grenda: I used those words as a comical examples of how the thinking went in the heads of the colonial masters.
Abagond Wrote:
“Black Americans, wanting to fight for their country, got there only to hear White American soldiers call the Filipinos “niggers” day after day. Many white officers called the war “nigger killing business”.”
THERE,
This is why Any time someone tries to tell me the N-word is simply a term of enderment between blacks, I can never believe it. Even in 2010 when the word had been misspelled numerous times, gained prowess in pop songs, me and that word cannot get along.
The N-word seems beyond blackness, it simply means worthless sub human, or simply worhtless animal.
Anyway, back to the point:
The picture at the bottom shows Uncle Sam trying to civilize Philippines, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. We know that ppl from these islands don’t generally have black skin. Why would this photo be so intent on showing them with black skin?
How were American soldiers, of whatever color, fighting for their country in the Phillipines?
Regarding the emphasis on black Filipinos in these illustrations, the Moro people of the Phillipines were particularly incensed with the U.S. occupation and among the most active resistors. Beyond that, however, South Sea islanders were generally considered to be “black” at the time. In the 1920s, even anthropologist B. Malinowski was calling the Trobriand Islanders “ni****s” in his diary.
(not to derail intent of thread), but THIS RIGHT HERE ><
@asada…"The N-word seems beyond blackness, it simply means worthless sub human, or simply worhtless animal."
——————————————————————–
And, it is a word specifically meant for 'blacks'. There lies the horror of the intent……
I do 'understand' what some, Black Americans were trying to do with the 'n' word, within the group. However, that is why 'outsiders' uttering the word, never works. Ever. Not even with 'wigger's. Especially.
@ Asada:
At the time of the Spanish-American war, Cuba & Puerto Rico had each only recently abolished slavery (within the last 20 years) and both islands indeed had very large Black & Mulatto populations. As for Hawai’i and the Philippines, both those populations are originally brown-skinned people as well.
I think the point giving them all Black skin was to highlight their differences and their “savagery” relative to white people.
According to one map from 1821 the Philippines were considered by whites to be “half-civilized” – as were India, China, Java, Japan and the Middle East. But in 1899 when America wanted to take them over, Filipinos were often pictured in newspaper cartoons as black savages: spear, ring through nose, grass skirt, etc.
There were primitive tribes in the Philippines – just as there were in Africa. Some of those in the Philippines even looked black (Negritos). But even though most people in either place were not primitives, they were seen that way to excuse American actions.
Notice that McKinley pulled the same trick: most Filipinos were Christians yet he wanted to “Christianize” them, making them seem more backward on the Western scale than they in fact were.
Thank you for the post, abagond. I appreciate it. I first learned about the war in the Philippines through my mother when I was a child. She often talked about how pretty much everyone remembered the Vietnam War, and the war in the Philippines by America was pretty much forgotton.
@Asasa:
Agreed. I really hate that word with a passion. It’s meant to dehumanize a person. I find it offensive no matter how it’s used.
@LexRoux:
Point on. Take these cartoons into account on what they thought of Filipinos back then as uncivilized savages in need of saving.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3282/2810239894_83ba4a3f62.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/McKinleyPhilippinesCartoon.jpg
Oops. I posted the same pic twice. Here’s the other pic I meant to display.
http://en.wikipilipinas.org/images/a/a4/McKinleyPhilippinesCartoon.jpg
Leigh:
OMG: I was looking for a good copy of that first picture. Thanks!
More pictures of Filipinos as black or savage:
http://prof.chicanas.com/images/Filipino.jpg
http://www.princeton.edu/~bsimpson/Spring%202006%20Hist%20102/images/cartoon-5.gif
http://japanfocus.org/data/611-3.jpg
And for comparison, a photograph of the Philippine president, Emilio Aguinaldo:
http://www.hawaii.edu/cps/aguinaldo01.jpg
Notice that McKinley pulled the same trick: most Filipinos were Christians yet he wanted to “Christianize” them, making them seem more backward on the Western scale than they in fact were.
It should be mentioned that Filipinos were Catholic, which to WASP-supremacists of the time like McKinley meant “non-Christian”.
It should also be noted that this war is still ongoing today, in a sputtering, stop-and-start fashion.
I am interested in learning more about this. Could you suggest some reading material for me or tell me your sources? Thanks.
Kim:
http://everything2.com/title/Philippine-American+War
Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States”
http://en.wikipilipinas.org/index.php?title=Philippine-American_War
http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&source=imghp&biw=848&bih=532&q=philippine+american+war+cartoons
Here is a commentary article regarding David Fagen considering him a hero to the Philippine people.
http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20090202-186886/A-black-hero-for-the-Philippines
Sorta like the San Patrícios in the Mexican-American War.
Man, someone needs to seriously do a movie about David Fagen. How has he been missed by black cinematographers? Talk about all of the elements for an excellent film…!
@thad: “It should be mentioned that Filipinos were Catholic, which to WASP-supremacists of the time like McKinley meant “non-Christian”.” very good point.
SMDH. What a disgrace.
So, like, Mark Twain was resolutely against this war. Is he now honorary PoC or something?
What I can’t figure out is why McKinley’s view is more essentially “white” than Twain’s.
Who said McKinley was more essentially white?
Republicans were mostly for the war, Democrats mostly against. Some Democrats were against the war for RACIST reasons: they feared that if Filipinos became part of America it would threaten the purity of the white race. It was bad enough the country had so many blacks!
OK, how is it that McKinley’s view is more essentially American than Twain’s?
I found this pic of a brave, old Filipino woman being tended to after she was shot in the leg for carrying ammunition to rebels. What? The American soldiers couldn’t stop her so they had to shoot her?
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_inwdIe1giWk/RwE2ZhzMOuI/AAAAAAAAD28/704sUfdmkRk/s1600-h/wounded+woman.jpg
If you want to read more about the Philippine-American War, here’s a link which includes very many pics.
http://philippineamericanwar.webs.com/
@Leigh & Abagond
Omg. I never knew much about this before.
It’s always hard learning about these kinds of things, but thank you both for throwing light on it.
This article just reveals so much to me that I didn’t even realize before.
My father had a point about it and I’d never thought about it until now. He said something about how he’d heard stories about the mindset of non-white soldiers in these conflicts. He’d said it’d always been about subjugation non-white people in the name of “civilizing them” or “uplifting them”. In each of these conflicts, non-white soldiers had to choose between their love for their country and their racial identity. But the problem was that they were being told they had to see these people as “savages” all the while being seen as the same back home.
Your being told that you owe your country, you should take down those savages. Yes, you owe the country that regularly dehumanizes you. Your American, so you should be happy to take from other brown people to give to white people who hate you. And so your going overseas to fight in some place you’ve never been. Your told that your “one of us” while your shooting “darkies”, but when you come home your the enemy. In your mind your feeling sick and seeing something familiar. The way they look at those people is the same way they look at you and your children. You’re shooting brown people in the name of folks who’d do the same to you if it were legal.
It’s an interesting dilemma.
See:
http://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/david-fagen/