Evaluating a Historical Argument78
n early 1899, many Americans could agree with Secretary of State John Hay that the just-concluded conflict with Spain was “a splendid little war.” The previous summer, the United States had defeated Spain in a matter of months. Fewer than four hundred American troops died in combat in the Spanish-American War. The American experience in the Philippines seemed especially splendid. In May 1898, Commodore George Dewey’s fleet steamed into Manila Bay and sunk the entire Spanish fleet without suffering a single casualty. American troops now occupied Manila and it appeared likely that the former Spanish colony in the Far East—recently ceded to the United States by a defeated Spain—would become a permanent American overseas possession.
Before the war, most Americans cared little about this distant place across the Pacific. In fact, most probably would have had difficulty locating it on the map. Few knew much more about it when the war ended. But with American forces in possession of the country’s principal city, many influential Americans began calling for the United States to keep the entire Philippines—a sprawling chain of some seven thousand islands. The matter would be settled in February 1899, when the Senate voted on the treaty signed with Spain two months ear- lier. After a fierce debate in and outside the halls of Congress, the Senate made its decision: The United States would annex the Philippines and, in effect, turn it into an American colony in the Far East.
Few Americans foresaw the consequences of this decision, even though some Filipinos had already turned their guns from the Spanish to the American occupation forces. For the next two years, the United States would be tied down in a bloody conflict with Filipino nationalists that was marred by atrocities on both sides. Certainly, there was nothing splendid about American operations in the Philippines, which claimed more lives than had the Spanish-American War itself. By 1902, more than 126,000 American troops had been committed to the Philippines and more than 4,200 had died. Meanwhile, perhaps as many as 200,000 civilians had perished. Although President Theodore Roosevelt declared the fighting over in the summer of 1902, Filipino Muslim fighters actually continued their armed opposition to American occupation for more than a decade. Their resistance was finally quelled, but American military forces would still be in the Philippines four decades later when invading Japanese troops drove them out and took over the islands at the start of World War II. In fact, only after this war would the Philippines finally achieve independence. Long before the Stars and Stripes were finally lowered, historians sought explanations for the American deci- sion to establish an overseas empire at the end of the nineteenth century. At the beginning of another century, that search goes on. As the United States continues to assert its power around the globe, few topics from the turn of a previous century could be more timely.
I
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Setting 79
S E T T I N G
Historians have been drawn to the decision to annex the Philippines for several important reasons. When the United States took control of the country, it broke with its own revolutionary past and anti-colonial ideals. The decision for empire also provides a powerful case study—for some, a cautionary tale— regarding the unintended consequences of intervening in foreign lands. In this case, of course, that consequence was a prolonged, bloody military struggle far from American shores. Finally, Philippine annexation occurred just as the United States had arrived as a great power, a status it holds more than a cen- tury later. To many historians, then, American imperialism at the turn of the twentieth century represents an important key for understanding the rise of the United States as a global power.
If historians do not dispute the importance of Philippine annexation, they do not necessarily agree about the reasons for it. Often, their explanations reflect conflicting views about the most important influences on foreign policy. Some scholars argue that democratic or popular influences play an important role in shaping policy; others contend that elites dominate decision making. Still others insist that American foreign policy has been shaped primarily by power- ful ideas and cultural forces. For the better part of a century, explanations for Philippine annexation have reflected these competing views about influence. The result has been a fierce debate among historians not only about the forces propelling American imperialism at the turn of the twentieth century, but also about the nature of foreign policy in a democratic society.
One argument, an extension of President William McKinley’s own explana- tion at the time, emphasized a humanitarian impulse behind American over- seas expansion at the end of the nineteenth century. In this view, the decision to go to war with Spain so as to liberate Cuba from the oppressive Spanish rule naturally spilled over to a desire to keep the Philippines once the war was over. Annexation would “uplift” the Filipinos and prevent another oppressive power from seizing an independent but weak Philippines. Proponents of this view maintain that the American empire was thus “accidental” in nature. An unthinking response to events in Cuba and the Philippines, it was carried out without forethought or assessments about American strategic or economic in- terests. In other words, the decision for empire was an “aberration” that was unrelated to the needs of America’s expanding industrial economy.
That view did not long go unchallenged. In fact, early in the twentieth cen- tury many historians believed that the search for overseas markets explained both the war with Spain and the subsequent decision for empire. In the 1930s, for example, historian Charles Beard argued that McKinley’s decision for war reflected his close ties to expansionist business leaders. This interpretation was especially popular during the Great Depression, when economic issues were on the minds of many people. Americans generally held business responsible
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Chapter 4 Evaluating a Historical Argument80
for the country’s economic ills, and “war profiteers” were under investigation by the U.S. Senate for their role in World War I. At the same time, historian Julius Pratt argued that another influential, elite group was more responsible for American imperialism than profit-minded businessmen. In Expansionists of 1898 (1936), Pratt concluded that many prominent business leaders actually opposed going to war with Spain. Vocal and well-placed officials such as As- sistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt, Navy Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, and Senator Henry Cabot Lodge pushed McKinley to war with Spain. Only when these expansionists pressed for retaining the Philippines, Pratt con- cluded, did the business community finally join the annexationist chorus.
Later, many historians rejected arguments about the responsibility of these elite groups for American overseas expansion. Reminded by World War II of the powerful effects of mass hysteria, in the postwar years they emphasized the emotional or irrational nature of American overseas expansion at the end of the nineteenth century. In their view, McKinley and the Congress were swept toward war and colonialism by a public whipped to a frenzy by so-called yellow jour- nalism—the sensationalist coverage of Spanish oppression in Cuba. The deci- sion for war, then, was an “unthinking” response by political leaders to popular passion. As historian Ernest May argued in Imperial Democracy (1961), William McKinley was simply unable to withstand the tide of public opinion and “led his country unwillingly toward a war that he did not want.”1 A little later, historian Richard Hofstadter extended this thesis when he concluded that Americans were suffering from a collective “psychic crisis” in the 1890s brought on by economic depression and social turmoil related to industrialization. Increasingly frightened about their own prospects at home, Hofstadter concluded, Americans were es- pecially susceptible to manipulation by the yellow press, which offered them the prospect of overseas conquests as a cure for their own frustrations. As in the humanitarian-impulse interpretation, America’s unthinking decisions for war and empire were aberrations that had more to do with popular influence on the government than with concerns for overseas markets.
It was not long before some historians questioned these conclusions too. By the 1960s, the Vietnam War had created doubts among many Americans about popular influence on government policy and the motives of elite pol icy makers. At the same time, William Appleman Williams and other “New Left”* historians began to emphasize the economic influences on American foreign policy and the expansionist nature of capitalism. These historians downplayed the role of the yellow press and public opinion. They pointed instead to the desire of American leaders to find commercial outlets abroad. In The New Empire (1963), for instance, Walter LaFeber argued that American leaders realized the economic benefits of overseas expansion and led the nation to war with Spain to build a commercial empire. Historian Thomas McCormick agreed in China Market (1967), which concluded that the acquisition of the Philippines was essential to realizing profits in China— potentially a huge market for American goods in the Far East.
*The label was applied to distinguish these historians from the “Old Left” of the 1930s.
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Investigation 81
In the last decades of the twentieth century, many historians stressed the important role of culture in shaping the past, even in the field of foreign rela- tions. These historians emphasized the ideological, rather than purely economic, motives behind American overseas expansion, in particular the belief in the duty of the “Anglo-Saxon race” to uplift “uncivilized” peoples. In Spreading the American Dream (1982), for instance, Emily Rosenberg argued that assumptions about the superiority of Anglo-Saxons and of American political, religious, and economic institutions propelled American expansion at the turn of the century. In Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy (1987), historian Michael Hunt likewise argued that an ideological stew containing generous portions of chauvinism and racism led many Americans to assume that they could simply remake other societies.
This emphasis on the cultural roots of expansionism has given rise even more recently to a renewed focus on changes in late nineteenth-century American society, especially those affecting Americans’ own views about themselves and their nation. In The United States and Imperialism (2001), for instance, histo- rian Frank Ninkovich argues that agrarian unrest, immigration, and labor un- rest helped to create a national “identity crisis” in the late nineteenth century. To many influential Americans, the cure was for the United States to become a leading player in a new “global community” by adhering to a European “stan- dard of civilization”—one that emphasized the need to “civilize” the “back- ward” areas of the world. Other recent historians such as Paul A. Kramer and Kristin Hoganson have focused on the way ideas about race or gender influ- enced American expansion and, in particular, the American colonial experi- ence in the Philippines. Often writing from a transnational perspective, recent historians like Kramer and Matthew Freye Jacobson have traced the ways that American colonialism, in turn, influenced ideas about race and society at home. By emphasizing mass psychology, the role of elites, and the idea of cultural uplift, such explanations are in some ways an extension of older ar- guments about American expansion. They serve as reminders that historians build on the work of those who came before them and that their interpreta- tions are not necessarily mutually exclusive. By pointing to developments far from the steamy jungles of the Philippines to explain the presence of American troops there, they also remind us that studying American involvement in other countries promises to tell us much about our own.
I N V E S T I G A T I O N
Unlike the previous chapters, this one presents a secondary source—the work of a historian—as well as the usual set of primary sources. You will be able to use the evidence from the primary sources to evaluate the argument in the secondary source. The main question presented by the secondary and primary sources is why the United States annexed the Philippines follow- ing the Spanish-American War. Like many contemporary historians, the au- thor of the secondary source traces the roots of American expansionism at the
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Chapter 4 Evaluating a Historical Argument82
turn of the twentieth century to an aspect of American culture—in this case, late nineteenth-century conceptions about masculinity. First determine the argument presented in this source, paying attention to the evidence it presents to support it. Then assess what light the primary sources shed on the argument offered in the secondary source. A good analysis of the American decision for annexation will address the following questions: