How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States

Initially, the US Navy and the Filipino troops led by Emilio Aguinaldo cooperated during the Spanish-American War. Aguinaldo’s revolt against Spain two years prior was unsuccessful, and he believed the US would guarantee the Philippines’ independence based on Commodore Dewey’s assurances. However, Spain surrendered to the US and not the Philippines, and the US bought the islands from Spain in December 1898. As the new Filipino government began to engage in state-building, tensions with the US grew. President McKinley extended the military government to the entire territory.

In early 1899, a war between the Philippines’ Army of Liberation and the US troops began. The former suffered heavy casualties. The US troops were experienced and well-equipped, while the Philippine army lacked experience and ammunition. As Aguinaldo moved capitals to San Isidro, Cabanatuan, and Tarlac, the US conquered them. The 1900 presidential election solidified America’s imperial trajectory, destroying Aguinaldo’s hope of a change of course. With this election, “The imperial policy was affirmed, and it would never arise as a serious electoral issue again” (95).

After the election, in the Philippines, “[c]aptured insurgents could be killed” and “[t]owns supporting them could be destroyed” (95). At best, the US soldiers viewed Filipinos as “natives” rather than Americans and used racial slurs to describe them. Rural civilians were subject to “reconcentration”—being placed into “fortified towns or camps where they could be more closely monitored” (97). This practice was akin to the Spanish actions in Cuba—ironically, “the one that provoked the United States to ‘liberate’ Cuba in the first place” (97). The US captured Aguinaldo in 1901, who professed allegiance to the US.

In September 1901, Filipinos from Balangiga, in retaliation for the destruction of their food supplies, attacked the US camp, killing 45 soldiers in what came to be known as “the Balangiga massacre.” American interrogations included torture methods such as waterboarding. As the war pressed on, in addition to tens of thousands of Filipinos dying from it directly, many were also killed by cholera, bubonic plague, malaria, and other illnesses. In May 1902, Roosevelt declared that the war was over.

Ethnic and regional differences complicated things. For example, the Moros were a Muslim group in contrast to the Filipino Catholics. The Moros practiced slavery, which was a problem for the US as it had abolished slavery decades earlier. American military leaders treated the Moros differently. Captain John Pershing “proved to be extraordinarily sympathetic,” while General Leonard Wood “abolished slavery, and established a head tax,” which led to hostilities as his “raids killed thousands of Moros” (105). Massacres were not uncommon for the US, including Wounded Knee and Sand Creek, but the 1906 Bud Dajo massacre left no one alive.

In June 1913, Pershing killed somewhere between 200 and 500 Moros, including women and children. That year, Moro Province came under civilian rule after 14 years of martial law. The Philippine War was “after the war in Afghanistan, the longest war the United States has ever fought” (107).

Halfway around the world, the Puerto Ricans “did gather to cheer” (108) for the US troops. They renamed streets to honor George Washington and “believed that they stood to gain by replacing Spain with the United States” (108), such as through access to better markets. Pedro Albizu Campos became important to Puerto Rican politics. He traveled to Vermont on a scholarship and later earned a law degree at Harvard. Albizu was a member of the Hasty Pudding, a “foreigners” club comprised of the “hyper-elite of their home countries” (109). Despite being a pacifist, the young man went on to join the US army to fight in Europe during World War I.

At this time, the anti-imperialists limited America’s actions toward Cuba after the Spanish-American War. As a result, “the threat of continued military occupation as leverage” (113) led to Cubans agreeing to American demands, such as the lease of Guantanamo Bay for American purposes and the protection of its business interests. The Cuban constitution also “contained an astonishing clause granting the United States the right to invade Cuba (which it did, four times)” (113). These actions “gave the United States many of the benefits of colonization without the responsibility” (113). The latter also set Cuba on its own path, distinct from the likes of Puerto Rico.

Similarly, the US “encouraged Panamanian nationalists to secede from Columbia” (113), and then negotiated the canal zone. In the Dominican Republic, the US acquired “temporary control of Dominical finances” without formally annexing the land, and this “ploy was used repeatedly” in the Caribbean (114). Historians called this “dollar diplomacy,” but it is more accurate to return to another term: “gunboat diplomacy” (114). Between 1903 and 1934, the US entered Panama six times, Mexico three times, and Nicaragua three times, along with several other examples. However, the only annexation at this time was the purchase of the Virgin Islands from Denmark in 1917 (119).

Albizu had high hopes for Woodrow Wilson, who seemed to be an anti-imperialist, while the Democratic Party considered imperialism “an inexcusable blunder” (115). In 1916, Wilson replaced some mainland officials in the Philippines with local Filipinos. In 1917, he supported making “Puerto Ricans citizens and allowed them to elect legislators” (115). However, Wilson held racial views which considered people who were not white “‘children,’ requiring ‘training’ before they could rule themselves” (116). Wilson sent “the marines to the [B]lack republic of Haiti to wrest control from the ‘unstable’ government” (117), occupying the country until 1934.

In the context of the postwar world, Wilson’s famous Fourteen Points were vague, and their anti-imperial stance mainly applied to Europe, not the nonwhite colonies. The hopes of many nationalists, from India to Egypt, were “profoundly disappointed” (119). As for Albizu, he was placed in a segregated Black unit while “protesting that he was white” (119). He wanted to meet Wilson but did not make it in time for the Peace Conference. The Japanese request to “insert language about racial equality into the League of Nations covenant” (120) also failed when Wilson blocked it, despite most votes backing it. Albizu “would become the most dangerous domestic anti-imperialist the United States would ever face” (121).

By the 20th century, the United States had amassed the biggest economy in the world and also acquired some of Spain’s colonies. Despite the country’s economic advancements, social inequality was rampant. This period was also one of intense city planning. For example, the popular World’s Columbian Exposition (1893) featured a temporary, modern city made of plaster in the Neoclassic style—Daniel Burnham’s “White City,” with more than 200 buildings.

In 1904, Burnham traveled to the Philippines to design such a White City upon the invitation of Cameron Forbes. Manila had been ravaged by war and disease—“a disaster” that was “from an urban planner’s perspective, an invitation” (126). Burnham, a Chicago resident, had little concern for the needs of the locals, with Burnham only spending six weeks there. William E. Parsons was the architect responsible for designing Manila landmarks such as the white-only Army-Navy Club. Filipinos were “relegated to the sidelines,” while the islands were “places to carry out ideas” (135) for Burnham, without the type of concerns he would face in the mainland.

Another city for Burnham to plan, Baguio, was akin to a “summer capital” in an empire that could be “built, like the White City, entirely from scratch” (129). Baguio became part command center, part retreat. Construction was expensive and, in the end, the city was “a triumph of modern engineering” (131). War still raged in the south, while the Filipinos “were less admiring as they watched money that that been earmarked for postwar reconstruction flow uphill,” fundings amenities for “an unelected government” (132).

Juan Arellano, from an accomplished Filipino family, came to the US mainland and studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. He was a renaissance man who excelled at painting and architecture and won prestigious prizes. Returning to Manila, he was commissioned to create such structures as the Legislative Building, a “rebuke to imperialists like Forbes, who doubted Filipinos’ abilities” (134). Arellano later “became the architect in the colonial Philippines” (134).