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Bu-lat-lat (boo-lat-lat) verb: to search, probe, investigate, inquire; to unearth facts Volume 3, Number 15 May 18 - 24, 2003 Quezon City, Philippines |
America's
Forgotten Empire: What 50 Years of Imperialism By
Mark Lewis Back
to Alternative Reader Index
May
2 - In these heady days of incipient empire, Rudyard Kipling's 1899 poem
"The White Man's Burden" - written as advice to Americans following
our seizure of the Philippines - is enjoying an unlikely revival. In
Empire, Niall Ferguson quotes from it at length while urging Americans to accept
their long-prophesied destiny in Iraq and elsewhere. But in last Sunday 's New
York Times Magazine, Ferguson notes a problem with American empire: Too few
Americans are willing to make imperialism a full-time career. "Send forth
the best ye breed," wrote Kipling, "in patience to abide." That's
how the Brits managed to run much of the world for more than a century. The
Yanks? No staying power, says Ferguson. IT'S
TRUE: Americans today have little interest in running the world, except by
remote control. But that may be because we've already learned our lesson. Speaking
as the son, grandson, and great-grandson of Americans who answered Kipling's
original call, I'm obliged to point out that we've already tried the British
Empire approach at least once before, in the Philippines - not for days or weeks
but for half a century. Thousands of Yanks eagerly donned pith helmets and
ventured east of Suez, hoping to remake the world and perhaps to make a buck or
two in the process. Recalling the results of this grand experiment might give
pause to some of today's empire enthusiasts. FAMILY
HISTORY On
May 1, 1898, my great-grandfather Charles "Bud" Tomlinson signed up
with the 1st Montana Volunteer Infantry, eager to avenge the USS Maine and fight
for Cuba libre. On
the same day, Commodore George Dewey steamed into Manila Bay, annihilated a
Spanish squadron, and established the United States as a world power, to the
astonished delight of the folks back home. As a result, Bud never made it to
Cuba; he was shipped off to Manila to help plant the Stars and Stripes in Asia. A
brief but intense vogue for empire swept the nation: Congress annexed the
Philippines, and Bud helped subjugate the Filipinos in a nasty but successful
war. Bud
soon went home to Montana. But many ex-soldiers remained in the islands, hoping
to strike it rich. They were joined by thousands of idealistic nation-builders
from America who came out by the boatload to teach school, build roads, and
preach the democracy - and - capitalism gospel. For the Filipinos the results
were mixed, but the impact on both nations was considerable. The
first U.S. governor-general was William Howard Taft, whose success in Manila
diverted him from a judicial career and put him on the fast track to the White
House. The governor-generalship was a high-profile job: Among Taft's successors
were such political heavyweights as Leonard Wood and Henry Stimson. For
the U.S. military, the Philippines functioned as a proving ground for the future
commanders of World Wars I (John J. Pershing, Peyton March) and II (George
Marshall, Chester Nimitz, and Douglas MacArthur, among many others). EMULATING
THE BRITISH EMPIRE Our
Philippines colony consciously emulated the British Empire, complete with sepoys
(the Philippine Scouts), a Hill Station (at Baguio, laid out by no less than
Daniel Burnham), and a tame maharajah (the Sultan of Sulu). For awhile, the
American Raj stuff played well back home. Bud
Tomlinson's daughter Thelma (my grandmother) was reared on stirring tales of his
" Road to Mandalay" adventures. Decades later, she (along with her
husband, Bryan Kerns, and their young daughter Karen) fled Depression-era
America for the Philippines. Bryan found work as a mining company accountant,
while Thelma happily took up the life of a pukka memsahib. Alas,
by then America's enthusiasm for empire had faded. As it turned out, there was
relatively little money to be made in the Philippines, and the Filipinos seemed
less than entirely grateful for the decades of tutelage. So Congress voted to
cut the islands loose, after a suitable period of transition. Full independence was scheduled for 1946. Still, my grandparents
loved their life in the islands – so much so that they ignored the war clouds
and were still there on Dec. 7, 1941. As a result, they and my mother spent the
war in a very unpleasant internment camp, just like the one in Empire of the
Sun. That
was the biggest problem with America's Philippines empire: Its acquisition put
us on a collision course with Japan that led directly to
Pearl Harbor. Hawaii was merely raided; the Philippines were invaded and
conquered, the worst defeat ever suffered by an American Army. The surrender of
Bataan and Corregidor was a searing national humiliation. Then came the infamous
Death March, and MacArthur's "I shall return"
vow. In
due course he waded ashore at Leyte, as pictured in the famous photograph. What
followed was the biggest U.S. land campaign of the Pacific war. Thousands of GIs
died to recapture an empire Congress already had decided to abandon. The
surviving Bataan POWs were rescued in the commando raid celebrated by Hampton
Sides in Ghost Soldiers. Less well-remembered are the thousands of
U.S. civilian captives who were on the verge of starvation when they,
too, were rescued by GIs, in a daring mission into the heart of occupied Manila.
A photograph in the Time-Life book Return to the Philippines shows my
grandfather among a crowd of liberated internees, all gazing adoringly at
MacArthur. END
OF EXPERIMENT That
was pretty much the end of America's grand colonial experiment. Manila was
destroyed in the battle to retake it from the Japanese. There was little to stay
for, so the Kernses and their fellow internees were shipped home to San
Francisco on troop transports. They got a nice welcome but nothing spectacular.
Ex-colonials were old news in 1945 - especially in San Francisco, then getting
ready to host the conference that would establish the United Nations, set up by
the United States to lead the world into a post-colonial future. (Unilateralists
in those days were almost as scarce as imperialists.) The
Philippines got their independence right on schedule in 1946. We kept some
military bases, but the notion of formal empire was abandoned, and the American
Raj in the Philippines was dismantled. Then it was forgotten When
GIs returned to the islands last year to help chastise Muslim separatists,
journalists dutifully filed dispatches from Zamboanga recalling the days of
Pershing and MacArthur. These stories failed to ring the mystic chords of
memory. America's original Philippines empire was an epic mistake, so we prefer
not to remember it. Now, Kipling's 1899 message to America is being revived,
minus the politically incorrect bits. LESSONS
FROM HISTORY Ferguson
and others invite us to go abroad and make the world a better place. Well,
perhaps we will. Our problematic experience in the Philippines need not
discourage us from taking on greater international responsibilities - or even
from giving empire another shot, if necessary, to establish a beneficial Pax
Americana. But before we embark on so ambitious a project, it might be useful to
make a closer study of our earlier imperial adventure and its unintended
consequences, some of which were quite severe. Some,
in fact, are still with us. The still-festering Muslim separatist movement in
the southern Philippines, for example, is a legacy of American empire. Before
1898, these Moros largely governed themselves. Then we came along and conquered
the entire archipelago, creating a unified nation and establishing a putative
democracy in which the Catholic majority would inevitably dominate the restive
Muslim minority. Now in 2003 we're about to send GIs back to the Philippines yet
again, to help deal with Moro issues that Pershing supposedly
resolved almost a century ago. Just something to think about, as we set out to
design a new, improved Iraq. Mark Lewis is a staff writer at Forbes.com. Bulatlat.com We want to know what you think of this article.
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