MICRONESIAN JOURNAL OF THE HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES

Vol. 3, nº 1-2 December 2004

LESSONS LEARNED: The Micronesian Quest for Independence in the Context of American Imperial History

Glenn Petersen City University of New York

In the course of their efforts to bring an end to US trusteeship over their islands, Micronesian leaders looked to Ameri- can colonial history for the lessons it might provide them. This article draws upon both contemporaneous documentary sources and more recent interviews with the leaders who negotiated with the US, describing and analyzing the specific historical cases and patterns upon which the Micronesians drew, and focuses in particular upon the land and land rights problems experienced by native Hawaiians and American Indians. The Micronesians’ insistence upon full autonomy and sovereignty was grounded in their understandings of these historical lessons.

To anyone studying them closely, the Micro- tions in, for example, Puerto Rico and Guam, nesians’ negotiations to end American or the 60 years Hawaii remained a territory, the trusteeship over their islands seemed at the extraordinary fact that most Micronesians time to proceed agonizingly slowly. The pro- achieved independence, rather than closer po- cess began in 1965 with the founding of the litical integration into the US, is matched by Congress of Micronesia and the convening of the speed with which it was accomplished. its committee on future political status. The There are several reasons for this, perhaps the beginnings of a respectable degree of self- single most important being United Nations government came with the establishment of oversight. Another element of enormous sig- the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), Re- nificance, however, was the Micronesians’ own public of the Marshalls, and Republic of Belau consciousness not only of what sorts of politi- governments in 1978, and autonomy can be cal relationships with the US they would find dated to the implementation of the compacts acceptable, but of what arrangements they of Free Association with the US in 1986.1 The found unacceptable. This awareness of what United Nations Security Council voted to ter- they would not countenance rested in part minate the trusteeship agreement in 1990 and upon their own indigenous notions of what the General Assembly welcomed the FSM and constitutes good government, but also in good the Marshalls as members in 1991; the Micro- measure upon their grasp of American history nesian governments have dated their status as in general and the history of American expan- independent nation-states to that time.2 When sion in particular. In this article I first analyze we consider still festering political status ques- relevant elements of that history, then report

This is a peer reviewed contribution. Received: 16 Nov 2004; Accepted: 27 Dec 2004 © Micronesian Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences ISSN 1449-7336 Letao Publishing, PO Box 3080, Albury NSW, Australia 45 46 Lessons Learned: The Micronesian Quest For Independence and discuss Micronesian leaders’ recollections Americans. That experience, coupled with about the lessons they learned from it. knowledge of American territorial expansion The Micronesian leaders who negotiated and the decolonization efforts of other Pacific with the US had all experienced the ravages islands, convinced them that their best hope visited upon their islands by World War Two, for survival as a people lay in establishing a as the Japanese resisted the American drive firm but distant relationship with the US. through the Micronesian islands, which lay Ivan Musicant’s Empire by Default, a cen- along the key routes both to the Japanese tennial account of the Spanish-American War, homeland and to the reconquest of the Philip- describes “an American empire, acquired al- pines. The great majority of them, moreover, most by default” (1998:655). Only his lack of shared common elements of an American edu- historical reflection allows Musicant to claim cation. But as peoples who had been subjected that this episode demonstrates a sudden awak- to the vagaries of four different colonial re- ening of America’s interest in world affairs and gimes within the course of 50 years, their “an acceptance of America’s newfound over- interpretations of American history differed seas responsibilities” (1998:34). Likewise, he is significantly from those responsible for pro- fundamentally wrong when he refers to the viding them that education. While most United States’ “attempt to construct an empire, Americans have great difficulty perceiving their but one that differed from the colonial chattels country as a colonizing power, or themselves of the European powers—an altruistic export as colonialists, this perspective is not so alien of American politics, ideals, and morality” to those whom Americans have deprived of (1998:656). More to the point, in The Edge of their lands or of sovereignty over their lands. Paradise, an account of “America in Micro- In particular, this essay seeks to preserve nesia,” P.F. Kluge speaks of “America's Micronesians’ perspectives on the relevance of accidental presence in Pacific” (1991:234). In American history as they struggled to regain a point of fact, the US had been engaged in em- real and substantial measure of autonomy over pire building from the earliest days of the their homelands. After decades of research in republic and both its practices and its rhetoric Micronesia, I began working in Puerto Rico, in largely matched, and often exceeded, that of an effort to compare its political status pro- the European imperial powers. To suggest cesses with those of Micronesia. In 1996 I otherwise is to deny the reasons for the strug- returned once more to the FSM and inter- gles of those who have sought—some viewed many of the surviving leaders who had successfully, some not yet so happily—to put negotiated the Compact of Free Association an end to American rule over their lands. with the US, and worked my way systematically through the FSM archives, studying the records AMERICAN MOVEMENT TOWARD THE of the political status process. My research in PACIFIC AND MICRONESIA Puerto Rico persuaded me that the Micro- American interests in the Pacific long precede nesians’ achievement of independence had World War Two and the Cold War, and the been relatively expeditious. I was also con- shift in major-power tensions that has followed vinced that many Micronesians understood in the wake of the Cold War’s demise should that in other American territories the longer not be expected to markedly alter those inter- the peoples have been under American rule, ests. Throughout the nineteenth century, the more difficult it has become for them to Americans actively cultivated ties in Micro- choose to end it. Although I found that this nesia, particularly in the Marshalls and Eastern awareness did indeed play a role in Micro- Carolines. Whalers and missionaries came first; nesians’ outlooks, I also discovered that a far later the quest for guano would draw the at- more significant factor was their leaders’ com- tention of both American commerce and mon experience as students in Hawaii, where government. This latter episode had a signifi- they saw first-hand what had happened to Pa- cant but largely forgotten impact on American cific islanders who lost their lands to interests in the area. In March 1859 a letter ap- Lessons Learned: The Micronesian Quest For Independence 47 peared in the New York Daily Tribune listing 48 we may consider the writings of Frederick islands claimed by American companies and Jackson Turner and Alfred Thayer Mahan, individuals; for years afterward this list was among the most influential American histor- cited as an authority for American possessions ians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth in the area. In an 1859 article in the German centuries and foremost apostles of expansion. geographical journal Petermann’s Mittheilungen, Turner’s celebrated “frontier thesis” (1893) two new maps of the Pacific demarcated vari- exalted continental expansion, while Mahan’s ous zones of sovereignty, including a large area The Influence of Sea Power upon History (1890) entitled “Amerikanisches Polynesien,” covering trumpeted the call for American expansion much of that part of Micronesia now known as abroad. Kiribati (the Gilbert Islands), with a legend “For nearly three centuries the dominant reading in part, “i.e., von den Vereinigten Staaten fact in American life has been expansion,” beanspruchte....” (Stommel 1984:44-48).3 Turner observed, and then went on to argue The US had in fact been driving toward the that with the so-called close of the frontier at Pacific and China trade since at least Jeffer- home in 1890, American attentions turned son’s presidency; access to the western coast of abroad: “the demands for a vigorous foreign North America and ports directly opposite policy, for an interoceanic canal, for a revival China had certainly factored into his rationale of our power upon the seas, and for the exten- for engineering the Louisiana Purchase. The sion of American influence to outlying islands war with Mexico was likewise prosecuted with and adjoining countries are indications that the a view to securing California. With naval out- movement will continue” (1896/1994:73-74). posts in Samoa (basing rights there date from A few years later he reported that “the expan- 1878) and Hawaii (1887), the US government sion of the United States politically and was cautiously expanding in the same direction commercially into lands beyond the seas” was as the country’s commercial and religious sec- proof that, “having completed conquest of the tors. Despite considerable American interest in wilderness...we are beginning to consider rela- Micronesia, however, the forces of attraction tions of democracy and empire” were not yet strong enough to draw the gov- (1903/1994:79-80). ernment decisively into what remained for the In formulating strategy for the triumph of time being autonomous territory and would American sea power abroad, Mahan explained later in the century become a European baili- that “Colonies attached to the mother-country wick. afford, therefore, the surest means of support- Expansionism has been as fundamental to ing abroad the sea power of a country” American political culture as democracy; in- (1890:83); these colonies would form the deed, Jeffersonian democracy was organized “foundation-stones” of sea power (1890:345). around what was known at the time as the Unfortunately, to Mahan’s mind, “Such colo- “Empire for Liberty,” that is, the proposition nies the United States has not and is not likely that equality and freedom could only be guar- to have” (1890:83). Unless a radical change was anteed to all Americans as long as there was effected in its international outlook, the US ample territory into which to expand (LaFeber was doomed to second rate status. 1994:60; Tucker and Hendrickson 1990). This “Having therefore no foreign establishments, either movement was by no means directed exclu- colonial or military, the ships of war of the United sively toward the west, however. After States, in war, will be like land birds, unable to fly annexing the Floridas, American leaders fre- far from their own shores. To provide resting-places quently contemplated taking Cuba and others for them, where they can coal and repair, would be of the Antilles, there was considerable agitation one of the first duties of a government proposing to for the absorption of all of Mexico, and Central itself the development of the power of the nation at America was eyed as well. To call upon but two sea (1890:83). important examples of expansionist propa- ganda from the close of the nineteenth century, 48 Lessons Learned: The Micronesian Quest For Independence Among those whose understandings of by the US long enough for it to put into place history were shaped by Turner and Mahan was political institutions guaranteeing American su- Theodore Roosevelt, who wrote a glowing re- zerainty without ultimate social or political view of Sea Power for the Atlantic Monthly integration (Perez 1986). In the current con- shortly before he was appointed assistant text, a key question is why only Guam was secretary of the US Navy (Brands 1992:10-24). acquired along with the Philippines, when in- clusion of all the Marianas and Carolines was INTO THE PACIFIC being called for in the American press and was It was Roosevelt, of course, who sent Admiral certainly among the prerogatives the US con- Dewey steaming for Manila even before the US sidered implementing at the time (Millis 1989). had decided to declare war with Spain over al- It is no exaggeration to point out that the in- leged provocations in Cuba. Following the tensity of the mid-twentieth century American capture of Manila, Mahan and Roosevelt, insistence upon absolute dominance over among a host of other jingoes, insisted upon Micronesia is in many ways a direct conse- acquisition of all the Philippines. Whitelaw quence of the 1898 decision to forgo Reid, a former Republican vice-presidential acquisition of the Carolines and Marianas. candidate and member of the US commission The issue of greatest interest to the Ameri- sent to Europe to negotiate the terms of set- can public and its political leadership during tlement with Spain, wrote excitedly of this new the peace settlement of 1898 “was not whether outpost located “directly in front of the Chi- the Marianas and Carolines should be annexed nese Colossus, on a great territory of our own.” as well as the Philippines, but rather which, if The US, he exclaimed, now commands “the any, of the Philippines themselves” (Pomeroy ocean that according to the old prediction, is to 1951:6). For purposes of establishing coaling bear the bulk of the world’s commerce in the and cable stations naval leaders contemplated twentieth century” (Stephanson 1995:94). acquisition of some of the Carolines and Prominent anti-imperialists such as Carl Marianas, particularly Guam. Commander Schurz, former US senator, Interior Secretary, Stockton, who had previously spent time in and editor, would continue to insist that an- Micronesia, described the Marianas as “step- nexation of populated territories abroad could ping stones....five days easy steaming from all not be made consonant with American values: ports of Japan, Korea, Shanghai and Hong “the United States, in order to preserve its Kong” (Gleaves 1925:280). Commander Brad- basic nature, could not take in territories as ford, whom the navy detailed to Paris to advise dominions but only as full members to be; but the American peace commission, explained to if one did bring such alien spaces and popula- them that the Carolines would be especially tions in as full members, the essential character dangerous in unfriendly hands. The Naval War of the country would change anyway.” Others Board (of which Mahan was the most influen- marshaled a variety of arguments opposing any tial member) concluded, however, that a move to annex the Philippines, including ob- station in Guam would suffice, “for naval sta- servations that they would prove strategically tions, being points for attack and defense, more costly than any benefits they might ren- should not be multiplied beyond the strictly der, that the US had “no bureaucratic necessary” (cited in Pomeroy 1951:14,9). Ma- machinery to deal with colonial peoples,” and han had at the time seen the problem as a that “Americans had a very bad record taking matter of reconciling the imperative of con- care of wards domestically, as evidenced by centrating one’s forces with the necessity of blacks and Indians” (Stephanson 1995:101- maintaining overseas stations, but within a few 102). All of these proved to be telling, even years he saw the German acquisition of Micro- prescient, observations. nesia as a threat, and acknowledged that he had As it turned out, the Philippines, like Cuba, erred in opposing annexation of the Carolines which had an equally well-developed domestic and Marianas (Pomeroy 1951:23). As a conse- independence movement, would be governed quence of this perceived lapse of diplomatic Lessons Learned: The Micronesian Quest For Independence 49 and strategic judgment, Theodore Roosevelt Marshall, and Marianas Islands at the same would describe the American position in the time we shouldered the responsibility for the Philippines as the country’s “Achilles Heel,” Philippines amounted to one of the most costly too far forward and cut off from Hawaii by politico-military mistakes that any nation has foreign occupied territory to be properly de- ever made” (1948:115). If the cry of no more fensible (Pomeroy 1951:23,27). Munichs would provoke the American inter- Strident demands for annexation of Micro- ventionism in Southeast Asia that characterized nesia were coming from politicians and the the 1960s, “Remember Pearl Harbor!” has missionary establishment, which Pomeroy de- been the guiding principle of America in scribes as having had as much if not more Micronesia for the past six decades. impact than naval interests. One influential Pomeroy (1951:167) cites commentary from editorial of June 1898 pronounced it “our im- every sector of American leadership in the mid- perative duty to turn the Spaniards out of the 1940s regarding the imperative of retaining Caroline Islands and to restore and guarantee Micronesia. Perhaps the testimony of Admiral the happy conditions which had been pro- Ernest King, commanding officer of the US duced by many years of noble American effort Navy during the war, best captures this out- before the Spaniards laid their blighting hand look. upon that island group.” Senator Henry Cabot These atolls, these island harbors will have been Lodge informed the navy that because the paid for by the sacrifice of American blood.... Carolines and Marianas were dependencies of Failure to maintain these bases essential for our the Philippines, American claims to them were own defense raises the fundamental question—how as good as its claims to the Philippines them- long can the United States afford to continue a selves (Pomeroy 1951:11-12). cycle of fighting and winning and giving away, only In the end, however, the US opted not to to fight and build and win and give away again? annex Micronesia, and Spain then sold the (King 1945). islands to Germany. The War and Navy De- partments immediately began developing plans, Any lingering doubts about Micronesia’s known as War Plan Orange, for moving across strategic significance for the US had been Micronesia into the Philippines in case of hos- finally erased. Even if they would not all be de- tilities with Japan (Honan 1991). Although veloped as bases, the importance of strategic Japan occupied Micronesia at the outset of denial was now established. James Forrestal, World War One and was later awarded the who was Navy Secretary and then appointed islands as a League of Nations Mandate, the the first US “Defense” Secretary, explained in US military in 1918 importuned President Wil- the New York Times son to acquire all of Micronesia (Pomeroy “Single island positions cannot be considered 1951:69). strong bases. Selected islands can, however, to- With the end of World War Two the US gether with Guam, form a far-reaching, mutually military was no longer to be denied. Having supporting base network, although each alone twice failed to obtain territory that was known would fall far short of being an impregnable bas- most commonly by the sobriquet “stepping tion” (9/24/46, p.28). stones,” and believing that it suffered the ig- The Departments of State and Defense de- nominy of its losses at Pearl Harbor as a bated what the exact character of Micronesia’s consequence, the US military insisted upon the relationship with the US would be, finally outright annexation of Micronesia. “Never agreeing that it should become a United again!,” cried one senator, Thomas Hart, who Nations trust territory, but with a unique as a captain in 1918 had worked on naval plans “strategic” status that placed it under Security for peace negotiations with Germany (cited in Council, rather than Trusteeship Council, over- Pomeroy 1951:170). In the Annals of the Ameri- sight (Louis 1977). Franklin Roosevelt’s can Academy of Political and Social Science, Hart avowed opposition to colonialism was no wrote, “Our failure to acquire the Caroline, 50 Lessons Learned: The Micronesian Quest For Independence match for the combined weight of the military be purchased rather than simply seized, for ex- and Congress. ample, played a significant part in his exile American possession of the keystone to the Joint from the Massachusetts Bay colony and the Chiefs of Staff Pacific strategy was assured. The founding of Providence Plantation. price had been high. During the war the adminis- Gitlin observes that in Spanish New Mexico tration had quietly dropped plans to use trusteeship a royal official, the protector de Indios, was to end colonialism. Now it had all but eliminated charged with preventing fraudulent land trans- hope that the residents of the trusteeships could use actions and that in Spanish Louisiana trusteeship to win independence (Foltos traditional Indian land tenure was protected by 1989:335). law. By way of contrast, Indian communities in British THE LESSONS OF LAND EXPROPRIATION America had no standing in the empire.... There AND IMPERIALISM simply was no mechanism for including Indian Having set the historical stage not only for the communities in the fabric of state. British imperial Americans’ presence in Micronesia but for the ideology did not sanction inclusion, and British military’s insistence that the US retain the colonists did not desire it (Gitlin 1992:74-75). islands, I can now turn to a more specific The new republic simply replicated an al- problem in comparative history. What were ready well-established pattern. As Prucha Micronesians able to discern in patterns of observes, “The conflict between the whites and American history that enabled them to negoti- Indians that marked American Indian relations ate as effectively and successfully as they have was basically a conflict over land” (1986:44). with the US? There are, of course, many rel- When Chief Justice Marshall decided in favor evant elements, but it seems to me that in this of the Cherokee in the precedent-setting context the two most salient are to be found in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia and Worcester v. Georgia a range of issues revolving around land and as- cases, President Andrew Jackson refused to en- pects of imperial geopolitics. force it, famously stating that “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.” Land expropriation As a consequence, Americans charged with ne- In recognizing how integrally survival was tied gotiating with Indians found themselves to an ability to retain their land, Micronesians confronting “the necessity of convincing the demonstrated a keen grasp of the relevant les- Indians of the government’s good faith in sons to be learned from American history. order to keep them in a proper frame of mind Paula Marks has stressed the absolute centrality for some impending treaty at which more con- of land in the American Indians’ struggle to re- cessions of land were to be sought” (Prucha sist European usurpation from its earliest 1986:47). stages. “The natives knew that its ownership While “the rate and form of land taking” was crucial to autonomous survival,” and did varied in response to local conditions, “every- whatever was necessary to hold onto it (Marks where Europeans came up with one device or 1998:13). British American colonial policy was another for denying Indian claims to land” overwhelmingly dedicated to the project of (Cronon, Miles, and Gitlin 1992:14). Pretexts stripping Native Americans of their lands. such as the Indians’ supposed savagery ration- “The greatest distinguishing feature of English alized these seizures. Turner’s celebrated relations with the Indian groups was replace- “frontier thesis” is built upon the notion that ment of the Indians on the land by white American expansion across the continent was settlers” (Prucha 1986:4). As in most historical made possible by the existence of almost un- cases, of course, there were notable exceptions limited “free land,” systematically denying the to this pattern, but for the most part they sim- existence and rights of its original inhabitants, ply prove the rule. Roger Williams’s proposal but the notion was hardly original to him. As that the Indians’ prior claims to possession early as 1751 Benjamin Franklin drafted a were entirely legitimate, and that lands should Lessons Learned: The Micronesian Quest For Independence 51 pamphlet, Observations Concerning the Increase of come to terms with an aspect of American life Mankind, Peopling of Countries, Etc., in which he that Carleton Beals phrases directly and suc- projected that a high American birth rate cinctly: “Our acquiescence in Indian would result from “an abundant supply of va- dispossession has molded the American char- cant land waiting always just beyond the acter” (1939:63-64). frontier,” and that this “free land will con- stantly attract laborers from the cities and thus Imperial geopolitics keep wages high” (Smith 1970:7). Late twentieth and twenty-first century Ameri- Likewise, the practical implications of the cans have been systematically taught that theirs free land thesis came as no surprise to the US is not an imperial state—indeed if they have military, even if others chose to ignore them. learned anything, it is that their government “Indian warfare absorbed 80 percent of the has been at the forefront of anti-colonialism. entire federal budget during George Washing- D.W. Meinig’s extraordinarily comprehensive ton’s administration and dogged his successors account of American expansion develops this for a century as a major issue and expense. Yet point in a variety of ways. He examines the di- most of our textbooks barely mention the lemma facing American leadership at the outset topic” (Loewen 1995:108-109). In 1885, just a of the nineteenth century: “how to have ‘ex- few years before Turner first presented his pansion with honor’; that is, how to dispossess “frontier thesis” at the Chicago World’s Fair, the Indians of their lands with a clear con- the army dispatched a military expedition to science, how to get such people out of the way the Copper River region of south central without affronting the moral opinion of man- Alaska. Its orders noted that “the conflicting kind” (1993:78). Regarding the treaties the US interests between the white people and the government repeatedly signed and abrogated, Indians of the Territory may in the near future Meinig observes that “the gross difference result in serious disturbances between the two between the promise and the performance in races.” Its mission was to locate resources the matter is of course one of the great scan- upon which any military units dispatched to the dals in American history” (1993:99). He quotes area could rely. Although the local population Josiah Royce’s 1886 observations about the “had heretofore been entirely peaceful in their conquest of California: “The American wants dealings with Americans, the United States was to persuade not only the world but himself that planning for violence” (Cronon 1992:41). he is doing God service in a peaceable spirit, When the US achieved United Nations ap- even when he violently takes what he is deter- proval for its control of Micronesia, the mined to get” (Royce 1886/1948:119). In government transferred responsibility for the concluding his chapter on “the management of trusteeship from the Navy to the Interior De- captive peoples,” Meinig describes the United partment, where it was paired with Indian States as “an unusually severe imperial power,” affairs. Limerick suggests that in Cold War not only driving groups off their lands but America essentially similar attitudes “influ- pressuring them to abandon “their identity as a enced Indian affairs as well as foreign policy” people.” And in the context of how nine- (1987:209). And Burt refers to “a bloc of con- teenth-century imperialists treated the servative congressmen known as populations they subordinated he concludes terminationists who advocated an end to trust that “the United States was the most massive arrangements and any remaining tribal sover- and systematic case of its time and notable as eignty” (1982:4-5). well for enveloping the whole drastic process Micronesians often spoke of their frustra- with assurances to the people involved and to tion at being included within the Interior the rest of the world of its special virtues and Department, rather than being treated as for- noble intentions” (1993:193). eign peoples whose affairs lay more properly Processes of land expropriation and im- with the State Department. But perhaps this perial expansion obviously went hand in hand. venue more speedily enabled Micronesians to The early American republic, in the years im- 52 Lessons Learned: The Micronesian Quest For Independence mediately following the conclusion of the war we will be in less than thirty days of Canton and for independence, found itself simply assuming other parts of China” (quoted in Meinig as its own Britain’s previous North American 1993:159). rivalries with French and Spanish empires. In Congressional debates in the 1840s repeat- later years, contests with British and Russian edly invoked Americans’ duty to spread their empires would be added, even as France government’s “blessings over the entire conti- dropped out of the picture. Conflict with Spain nent” (Fuller 1936:22-23). Legislators “had been in progress for generations before introduced resolutions to begin negotiating the Revolution. It merely entered upon a new with Spain for the annexation of Cuba, and phase when the thirteen colonies of British Santo Domingo was eyed as well (Fuller North America won their independence” 1936:28-30). When the US government was (Whitaker 1927:1). Much of this dispute cen- seriously considering annexation of Mexico’s tered on rights to navigate the Mississippi and Yucatan province, it was argued that the penin- access to the port of New Orleans, but in fact sula’s position adjacent to Cuba and Florida the Spanish frontier with the United States ran meant that it would present a grave threat to from the Atlantic shore bordering Georgia in a American peace and security if it were to be- great arc reaching to Canada. come a colony of a European power. Its Given the profoundly expansionist charac- position, moreover, guarded passage to Cali- ter of early America, this borderland was no fornia via the isthmus of Panama and was stationary frontier; it was contested, actively deemed essential to the safety of American and consciously, from the outset. “Interest in shipping (Meinig 1993:154-155). acquiring Mexican territory had been a factor Manifest destiny, as it was dubbed at the in American history since the close of the time, was a complex matter: it was a response Revolution” (Fuller 1936:12). Fuller quotes a to commercial interests seeking harbors on the 1786 article in a Philadelphia publication pro- Pacific, strategic interests seeking to prevent moting “conquest of the richest country in the further European imperial expansion on the world” by sending two thousand or so Ameri- continent, and to calls “to bring the blessings cans to Natchez and thence to West Florida of enlightenment and democratic principles of and Louisiana; following conquests there the government to the benighted peoples of the filibusters “would carry the war into the very continent” (Fuller 1936:38). All of these argu- heart of Mexico” (1936:12-13). ments were to be marshaled in 1898 and again Arguments on behalf of this westward drive in 1947, when the US pondered how best to into Spanish/Mexican territory were of the sort absorb Micronesia. still encountered in present-day geopolitical The web of continuity running from the discussions. Occupation of the far west was years preceding the American Revolution “essential for the perfect security of Western through the complex course of American ex- and Southern interests and those interests will pansionism is not seamless, but it is consistent be greatly promoted” by gaining title to the Pa- enough to confound any claims that the US has cific shore, and would thereby permit the US not been an imperial actor, deeply concerned to “secure a sufficient number of good Har- with geopolitical advantage. In this context, it bors on that Ocean,” ran an 1844 letter from a is difficult to credit commonly made distinc- justice of the Ohio Supreme Court to Sen. tions between continental and overseas John Calhoun (Fuller 1936:21). President Polk expansion. The march west was always viewed exulted to Congress, after it ratified the treaty in terms—including national security, commer- marking the end of the war with Mexico: cial advantage, and humanitarian ideals—that “By the acquisition of these possessions, we are are identical to those employed in justifying brought into the immediate proximity with the west expansion abroad. In Henry Nash Smith’s coast of America, from Cape Horn to the Russian formulation possessions north of Oregon; with the islands of the Pacific Ocean, and, by a direct voyage in steamers, Lessons Learned: The Micronesian Quest For Independence 53 The early visions of an Empire embody two differ- There are, to be sure, significant differences ent if often intermingled conceptions. There is on between what appears in the Congress of the one hand the notion of empire as command of Micronesia’s (CoM) archival records and what the sea, and on the other hand the notion of empire former CoM leaders now recall in interviews. as a populous future society occupying the interior In the 1960s and ‘70s, these men rarely spoke of the American continent (Smith 1970:12). directly about their fears concerning the United States’ intentions in Micronesia. It is not that MICRONESIANS APPLY THE LESSONS OF there are no remarks in the records, but rather AMERICAN HISTORY that they tend to be made in passing. Only Among the experiences shared by Micronesian rarely does the real character of their fears pour leaders—who come from islands spread across out at length and with intense clarity. It would three thousand miles of the open Pacific be easy to conclude, reading only the written Ocean and which by no means constituted record, that these occasional outbursts were anything like a heterogeneous group—was the not so much representative of deeper feelings extraordinarily destructive violence, depriva- or understandings as they were a calculated ne- tion, and helplessness visited upon them by gotiating ploy. World War Two, much of which was fought Likewise, if one had access only to present- on and around their islands. The US position in day commentary from these leaders, it would Micronesia was unarguably geopolitical, and be possible to think that the awareness of therefore imperial, in nature, and yet the American historical precedents they readily ac- Micronesians were consistently told by the knowledge today was freely expressed during Americans that they were acting largely out of the original negotiations. In comparing the two humanitarian noblesse oblige. That gap be- types of sources, we can see that the Micro- tween what American leaders said about their nesian leaders knew what they wanted at the intentions and what the Micronesians could time, but rarely vocalized it in direct terms. observe for themselves played a significant role This is in keeping with the character of Micro- in shaping the Micronesians’ analyses of what nesian political performance style. their future was likely to bring, and what their When the Congress of Micronesia first course ought to be. They had learned the truth convened in 1965, many of its original mem- of what de Tocqueville observed about bers had been students together at the America’s Indian policy 150 years earlier: “It is University of Hawaii. Tosiwo Nakayama, who impossible to destroy men with more respect would in time become the CoM Senate’s Presi- for the laws of humanity” (2000: vol. 1, 325). dent, President of the original Micronesian Micronesians in general and their leaders in Constitutional Convention, and the first Presi- particular were forced by circumstances to con- dent of the Federated States of Micronesia front both the imperial legacy with which they (FSM), was still a Hawaii student when he was were being endowed and the Americans’ ina- first elected to the Congress. Members and bility—or unwillingness—to acknowledge it staff of the early Congress vividly recall the in- themselves. Looking back now, the Micro- tensity that marked their time at the university. nesian leaders who took responsibility for Some of them suggest that the most important negotiations with the US recognize that they political lessons they learned were gained out- quickly perceived the pivot upon which turned side the classroom, an opinion shared by Prof. the downfall of other peoples colonized by Norman Meller, who taught them political sci- America. This was land: loss of land meant for- ence. Bethwel Henry, who served for years as feiting not only one’s subsistence and Speaker of the CoM’s House of Representa- livelihood, but a people’s identity and the con- tives and is one of the most theoretically crete base upon which they might anchor their sophisticated of those who led the negotia- claims to and pursuit of sovereignty (Petersen tions, qualifies this recollection, however, by 1999a). explaining that their basic unfamiliarity with American political institutions and ideas meant 54 Lessons Learned: The Micronesian Quest For Independence that they could not help but learn a great deal Decolonization (also known as the Committee in every context in which they found them- of 24), the existence of which had not been selves. contemplated when the trusteeship system was Whatever the sources of their education, it initially devised, had begun to move Micro- is clear that when these young scholars arrived nesian affairs from out of the shadow into in Saipan to take up their congressional re- which they had initially been cast. Once a sponsibilities, they brought with them the change in status had been effected, Micronesia excitement, intensity, and ideas they had shared would lose that patronage and whatever safe- in Hawaii. That is, the first crucial turning guards it afforded them. The United States had point in the history of Micronesian efforts to made it abundantly clear that it would brook reclaim self-government was shaped not only no interference by the UN in what it con- by the Micronesians’ common colonial and war sidered its internal affairs, resolutely insisting experiences, but by a mutual commitment to that none of its other overseas possessions considering the trajectory of American history were colonies and that all therefore lay outside and its relevance for contemporary Micronesia. the UN’s purview. This latter charge entailed examination of both At the same time, however, many Micro- the rhetoric of America’s struggles for inde- nesian leaders also believed that the status quo pendence and equality and the relentless drive was itself fraught with far too much uncer- of American territorial expansion that has dis- tainty. The “strategic” qualifications attached to enfranchised, pauperized, and destroyed many the trusteeship agreement enabled the US to of the minority peoples in its path. keep the United Nations at bay if it chose to by The Congress almost immediately created a prohibiting its representatives entry into the committee responsible for exploring Micro- territory (and the US had indeed done so dur- nesia’s future political status; among the very ing the trusteeship’s early years). The danger first projects it undertook was systematic con- Micronesians perceived in the almost absolute sideration of the other American territories and power the US wielded in Micronesia was not their respective political histories and relation- simply inherent in the power itself but also in ships with the United States. Members were what they saw in the attitude of the US gov- already well acquainted with the situation in ernment—especially the Congress—toward Guam, which is geographically part of Micro- Micronesia’s future. There was widespread nesia’s Marianas Islands but politically separate understanding among Micronesian leaders in and relatively more integrated into the Ameri- the 1960s that to the extent that the US was can system, and in their years in Hawaii they aware of Micronesian status issues at all, it was had been able to study its transition from ter- operating entirely upon assumptions both that ritory to statehood (which occurred in 1959), the islands would with all certainty be absorbed but they wanted to survey the character of and integrated into the American system and American rule and local conditions in Puerto that the Micronesians themselves were, to the Rico, American Samoa, and the Virgin Islands, degree that they were even aware of the issue, including economic, political, social, and cul- eager to become permanent possessions of the tural developments. US. The most critical lessons Micronesian Any change in their relationship with the leaders absorbed came from the following US would have potential drawbacks, they contexts: Hawaii, American Indians, political knew, because they recognized that Micronesia, status arrangements, and land rights. unlike every other territorial acquisition in America’s history, was to a degree protected by Hawaii United Nations oversight. As the UN’s sole As Micronesian leaders understood the history “strategic” trust territory, Micronesia’s affairs of other American territorial acquisitions, their fell within the purview of the Security Council, peoples had all experienced a steady diminu- rather than the Trusteeship Council, but the tion of local self-sufficiency, self-reliance, self- activities of the UN’s Special Committee on respect, and as a consequence, local autonomy. Lessons Learned: The Micronesian Quest For Independence 55 Nowhere was this more evident than in the nesian Congress indicate that these issues were Hawaiian Islands, where native Hawaiians have on the minds of its members from the outset occupied the lowest rungs in the islands’ social, of their negotiations with the US. Micronesian economic, and political class systems, but political style calls for moderation and under- Micronesians were also quite conscious that statement, and Micronesian responses to this was what had happened to American Indi- American pressures to accept the outright an- ans as well. Those who survived did so at the nexation of Micronesia were only occasionally margins, on lands that were minuscule frac- made in public contexts. tions of what they had once possessed, or Roman Tmetuchl, one of the most influen- without lands at all. tial Belauans, both within the Congress and in Most members of the Congress of Micro- Belau, predicted that in a Micronesia fully ab- nesia in its first few years had spent time sorbed into the American polity Micronesians studying at the University of Hawaii’s main would be next in a long line of minorities, and campus in Honolulu’s Manoa Valley. A former would experience not only the dispossession of FSM president recalled that Micronesian stu- the Hawaiians and Indians but the marginaliza- dents in Hawaii in the 1950s and ‘60s talked tion of Blacks and Puerto Ricans. Micronesians with one another not only about Micronesia would become citizens, he said, but they would but about what they were seeing around them. be second class citizens (Congress of Micro- It was clear to the Micronesians, he said, that nesia 1971 I:49).4 Amata Kabua, who would go the native Hawaiians had “lost everything to on to become the first president of the Mar- whites, and we were determined not to let that shall Islands, pointed to the experiences of the happen in Micronesia.” These students con- Hawaiians, Guamanians, Puerto Ricans, and cluded that their identity as Micronesians was Filipinos and marveled at the “agility” of the critical to their survival: as part of the US, they US in applying the principles of self- would be no more than a tiny minority and determination (CoM 1971 I:52). would inevitably lose their land and their iden- Heinrich Iriarte, a high-ranking Pohnpeian tity. chief as well as a member of the Congress, Bethwel Henry spoke of both his high cited the history of Hawaii, Guam, and Puerto school experiences on Maui and his years at Rico. The peoples of those islands gave into Manoa. The native Hawaiian activists he knew American pressures, he said. It is now too late and spent time with explicitly told the Micro- for them. Do we want to be like them, he nesian students what they thought they should asked, or do we intend to retain our cultures be doing to defend their interests. The Micro- and identity? (CoM 1971 I:55). Francisco Pala- nesians recognized, however, that despite the cios, of the Marianas, summed up the feelings very relevant historical parallels, their political of many of his colleagues regarding the course situation was not the same as the Hawaiians’ of the negotiations with the US when he as- and that their options were significantly differ- serted that “If we continue, we’ll lose our lands ent. But he did begin to see the web of like the American Indians and the Hawaiians relationships between a people’s loss of their (CoM Senate 1969:354).” land and problems of losing their identity. Ob- serving the continuing marginalization of American Indians Hawaiians and, on his visits to the mainland, Bethwel Henry vividly recalls a youthful trip seeing the position of Black Americans made across the United States with a fellow Micro- him highly conscious of what it would mean to nesian student, and a helpful Kansas City cab be a minority people in the United States. driver who was trying, unsuccessfully, to find Henry’s recollections mirror those of many them a hotel where they might spend the night. others with whom I spoke. It might be argued Finally, he radioed his dispatcher, asking where that his perspective has been shaped by thirty there was a hotel that would put up “a couple years of reflection and experience, but the of colored boys.” The experience was a revela- journals from those early years of the Micro- tion. On that same trip he made a visit to the 56 Lessons Learned: The Micronesian Quest For Independence Navaho Reservation, but found the situation in trust territory as a commonwealth. As a current the middle of the southwestern desert so totally high-ranking FSM leader, who was a young foreign that he came away with few insights. congressional staffer in those early days, ex- Other leaders, however, saw striking similari- plained to me in 1996, the US negotiators ties. Lazarus Salii, the Micronesian Senate’s believed that the trust territory was passing chief negotiator, feared that Micronesians through precisely the same stages as other would become America’s “newest, smallest American territories had, and therefore as- non-white minority, like American Indians,” if sumed that what Micronesians wanted was for the commonwealth status the US was propos- their islands simply to move on to the next ing were approved (CoM 1971:25). stage toward full integration into the US. There Representative Atalig likened the consequences was, he said, absolutely no awareness in of a close relationship with the US to Custer’s Washington of what the Micronesians were Last Stand, “with us as the white men” (CoM attempting to achieve. A 1970 report from the 1971 II:8). CoM Political Status Committee notes that the Many Micronesian leaders pointed to the US negotiating position was based entirely on Interior Department’s long history of admin- previous experiences with other American ter- istering American Indian affairs. In general, ritories (CoM 1970:45). The US wanted initially Micronesians wanted to see their relations with to confer upon the trust territory the same un- the US government channeled through the incorporated status held by Samoa and Guam, State Department, partly because of Interior’s but in light of the active role the Micronesian record with the Indians, but also because they congress was playing, it was now ready to allow wanted to be recognized as sovereign peoples the islands to move on to the commonwealth who should be dealing on a government-to- status achieved two decades earlier by Puerto government basis with the US, rather than as Rico. its wards. US Congressman Lee Aspinall, one of the most influential of the American negotiators, Political status arrangements believed it was necessary for Micronesia to Micronesian congressional leaders and staff follow the same slow evolutionary route made visits to both American territories and to through the political status process that other some of the Pacific island possessions of other territories were taking. He did not want to see colonial powers, evaluating a wide variety of the trust territory assigned higher priority than political status arrangements. They initially Guam and Samoa. When the Micronesians thought that “commonwealth,” as it is defined tried to explain that what they were seeking in Puerto Rico, would be the most appropriate was their own constitutional convention, immediate goal for Micronesia. It is clear from Aspinall made it clear that what they were their recollections and from the congressional going to receive from the US was an organic journals, however, that they soon realized that act. Hawaii’s Senator Hiram Fong, highly influ- while both the US government and the Micro- ential as a representative of the adjacent former nesian leadership viewed commonwealth status US island territory, was at this same time pro- as transitional, they held absolutely contrary posing to have Micronesia wholly incorporated views concerning the political status toward into the state of Hawaii (Dorrance 1975:185, which such a transition would ultimately lead. 196). Micronesians assumed that it was to be a stage A number of Micronesian leaders who on the route to complete autonomy and inde- traveled to Puerto Rico drew largely the same pendence; for the Americans commonwealth conclusions. Bethwel Henry recalls that he and was a step toward eventual full integration into Petrus Tun, probably the most influential Yap the US. leader in those days, did not think Puerto In 1968-1969 US negotiators modified Rico’s situation was especially relevant to Guam’s Organic Act and then presented it to Micronesia because of its much greater size the CoM. This would have “organized” the and particularly because it is so much closer to Lessons Learned: The Micronesian Quest For Independence 57 the US, but they were impressed with the de- Land rights gree of local autonomy they encountered there. At its core—as the axis around which nearly They initially thought commonwealth of the every aspect of the Micronesians’ consider- sort the Puerto Ricans had achieved would ations of political status turned, the nexus provide them with considerably more self- linking all the multiple strands of the negotia- government than either Guam or Samoa tions—the question of Micronesia’s future was seemed to have. That opinion did not last long, about land: to whom did Micronesia’s land however, because it was not long after that trip belong and to whom would it ultimately revert? to Puerto Rico that a Micronesian delegation to And because of land’s singular importance in the Cook Islands was struck by the significantly the status process, the historical experiences of greater degree of autonomy that” free associa- American Indians and Native Hawaiians were tion” with New Zealand afforded the Cooks.5 seen as perhaps of greater relevance than the The Micronesians’ ultimate interest was in the rest of America’s colonial history. It was not maximum degree of self-government that simply a matter of these peoples’ current could possibly be achieved, and not merely an statuses but also of the policies that have accommodation with the US. brought about these conditions. A long-term leader of Pohnpei state’s legis- The magnitude of the role land played in lature echoed aspects of this outlook. He shaping the course of Micronesia’s status ne- recalled that he was not especially interested in gotiations is immediately apparent in both Puerto Rico when he traveled there on a US present-day recollections of that earlier time State Department leadership tour, but what he and in contemporaneous documents. A former did discover while talking to people there was FSM president explained to me just how clear that they wanted not only continued close ties it had been to him that as part of the United with the US and American financial support, States, Micronesians would lose their land and but also their autonomy. He was struck by the that without their land they would swiftly lose fact that they faced the same choice between their identity: they would no longer be Micro- closer and more distant ties with the US, and nesians. Another leader explained that in seemed not at all sure which direction they Micronesia one’s sense of oneself comes from should head in. one’s family history, which in turns derives It is important to note in this context that from the family’s land. Our land, he said, can- Micronesians have always recognized that they not be understood in terms of a piece of paper face precisely this same choice. In 1975, when (that is, a land deed). Our land is about the the trust territory’s peoples voted in a referen- history of our people. P.F. Kluge quotes for- dum on what their future relationship with the mer president Nakayama on why he pursued US should be, Pohnpeians explicitly framed the independence for Micronesia: choice between independence and free asso- If you ask me what motivated me to stay as far ciation with the US as being between away from the US, it was people’s attitudes. That “breadfruit or rice.” Breadfruit, the local staple and the fear of the loss of land. These islands are foodstuff, represented independence; imported god-given. Who are we to give them away? (Kluge rice represented free association. A majority 1991:108). voted for breadfruit (Petersen 1975, 1979). Bethwel Henry points out that Micro- That is, Micronesians have always found them- nesians’ anxieties about loss of their lands did selves facing the same choices as the peoples of not begin with the American occupation. His other American territories, and found it diffi- generation lived first under Japanese rule and cult to decide among them, but in the end a had seen the alienation of vast tracks of Micro- majority of them have opted for less American nesian lands. (Some 69% of the trust territory’s financial support and more autonomy. lands were claimed by the US as “public lands” because they had been alienated by the Japa- nese.) Henry, too, linked the potential loss of 58 Lessons Learned: The Micronesian Quest For Independence Micronesian lands to what would inevitably be A Contemporaneous American Perspective the loss of Micronesian identity. The Micro- The American negotiating team, which in- nesians’ land, he said, serves not simply as a cluded representatives from the Departments source of food but also as a source of their of State and Interior, was in fact tacitly run by sense of themselves. Beyond this, however, he the military establishment. It considered itself spelled out the logical syllogism that underlies firmly bound to a requirement that the US re- the essence of Micronesian fears not only tain eminent domain over Micronesian lands, about losing their land but about what its sub- in order to ensure access to sites for military sequent possession by the US would bring. “If bases, and the US Congress’s legislative over- the US were to have ultimate authority over sight re-affirmed this position. Every proposal Micronesian land,” he explained, “then it the Micronesian negotiators put forward faced would have ultimate authority over Micro- the test of whether it legally preserved Ameri- nesians.” “We recognized,” said another of the can ascendancy over Micronesian lands and key architects of Micronesia’s political status, rights to establish bases wherever the US de- “that Micronesian independence could only be sired to place them. achieved as long as we were able to keep con- The Micronesian leaders’ grasp of this trol of our land.” fundamental American policy was accurate. In Congressional journals and documents John Dorrance, the US State Department’s from the late 1960’s and early ‘70s land sur- Micronesian expert and member of the United faces again and again as one of the principal States’ negotiating team, prepared a compre- objects—if not the principal object—of the hensive review of the Micronesian political congressional representatives’ concerns in their status situation in an 800-page report for the dealings with the Trust Territory’s American National War College. Because this study was administration. There are repeated discussions completed in March 1975, four months before of and challenges to the US administration’s the Micronesian Constitutional Convention got claim that it possessed the right of eminent underway in Saipan, and because Dorrance domain (for example, CoM House of Repre- was, by virtue of his position, intimately fa- sentatives 1967:22-24, 72-76; CoM Senate miliar with both the course of the negotiations 1968:330-31, 354). The American High Com- and the Micronesian leaders engaged in them, missioner vetoed congressional legislation his account provides us with an astute analysis attempting to terminate the administration’s of the entire process from a contemporaneous eminent domain (CoM House of Representa- American perspective. tives 1968:196-198). Amata Kabua explained to At the outset he noted that “It can be ar- people that the purpose of a particular piece of gued that the US has had an overriding focus of congressional legislation was to restrict the interest in Micronesia’s lands.” “That interest,” he American government from “taking your fa- continued, “has translated into a basic political ther’s land” (CoM Senate 1968:171). objective, a perceived requirement for political Palacios stated the case most plainly, argu- relationships with Micronesia which assure US ing that many of the land tenure problems and access to Micronesian lands for bases, and de- disputes people were experiencing came about nial of Micronesian lands to others” (1975:3-4, because the American administration was try- emphasis added). Gen. Lewis Walt, at the time ing to solve Micronesian land issues with Deputy Commandant of the US Marine Corps, “Anglo-Saxon methods and procedures.” “If had unofficially informed Micronesian leaders, we continue to let this administering power Dorrance reported, “that the US could and if handle our land situation, we will lose our lands necessary would seize lands for US defense as the American Indians and the Hawaiians lost purposes” (1975:193). their lands.” (CoM Senate 1969:354) In summary, Dorrance’s study lays out the US military’s initial operating assumptions that it must retain Micronesian lands for bases and that the Micronesians would pose no obstacles Lessons Learned: The Micronesian Quest For Independence 59 to the military in achieving its goals. Analyzing The Marianas, Belau, and Marshalls dis- the earlier context in hindsight, he recognizes tricts, for a variety of reasons, most that by the end of the 1960s the CoM’s actions prominently having to do with financial and were reflecting Micronesian fears that the US ethnic factors, had seriously been considering would pre-empt the Micronesians’ claims to the possibility of entering into separate nego- their lands. While other aspects of the status tiations with the US. There can be no doubt negotiations between the US and the Micro- that some of their rationales sprang from local nesians had been resolved by the early 1970s, causes and conditions, but it is equally the case land issues remained intractable. Most Micro- that they were exacerbated by American poli- nesians, Dorrance deduces, had come to cies. By the time of the 1975 Micronesian believe that the US government was unable to Constitutional Convention in Saipan, the fault comprehend their concerns. In part this was lines had become dramatically visible. The because American negotiators had come to be- Marianas had already agreed to a separate lieve that the Micronesian leaders’ insistence on compact of commonwealth with the US, many gaining and retaining ultimate control over in the Marshalls were boycotting the Conven- their lands was no more than a negotiating ploy tion, and Belau was using its readiness to bolt and thus did not represent the aspirations of in order to extract major constitutional conces- the Micronesian populace in general. The CoM sions (Meller 1985). insisted that it could not commit Micronesian While multiple local factors inclined these lands without local consent; Dorrance inter- districts to pursue their separate ways, it must prets this as reflecting what he describes as immediately be noted that the US engaged in almost universal hostility and suspicion toward one of very few substantial partitions of colo- the US regarding any and all matters having to nial territory ever to take place in the post-war do with land. Negotiations stalled when the wave of decolonization, and the only one to CoM insisted that the US return to Micro- carve four different polities out of a single col- nesian hands the so-called “public lands,” and ony (with a population of barely 100,000 that it do so through the agency of the Micro- people, moreover). By dealing directly with the nesian Congress. When the Secretary of the leaders of districts receiving or slated to receive Interior insisted instead that the US would deal the largest amounts of US funding, the US separately with each of the Trust Territory’s six sought to break down the resistance of the districts, the CoM leaders saw this as a flagrant Micronesian Congress. While negotiations sub- example of divide-and-conquer tactics. They sequently fractured along precisely these lines, walked out of the negotiations at just that the US may in fact have managed to do no point, in December of 1974. more than win a battle even as it was losing the war. LAND AND POLITICAL STATUS The character of the negotiations them- Negotiations were almost entirely derailed as selves, in the end, convinced Micronesian various tacks were explored by both sides. leaders (that is, all but those from the Most obvious was this American attempt to Marianas) that the only way they would be able negotiate land issues with the Trust Territory’s to survive as Micronesians was to pursue com- districts on an individual basis.6 This strategy plete autonomy. Anything less would require met with overwhelming rejection and even out- them to acknowledge ultimate US suzerainty rage on the part of both the Micronesian and thus see them simply repeat the sorry his- Congress and much of the populace. When it tory of America’s other subject peoples. became clear that this approach would not suc- The Compacts of Free Association finally ceed, the US began instead to negotiate agreed upon between the US and the Micro- political status accords with the districts that nesian governments have finessed the issue of had been showing less interest in preserving US basing rights by making them part of an some form of Micronesian unity. appended mutual defense agreement, which states that the US can pretty much do as it 60 Lessons Learned: The Micronesian Quest For Independence pleases in Micronesia, as long as it claims that it the Pacific. The US claimed denial rights in the is doing so for “security” reasons (Petersen Hawaiian islands long before it annexed them. 1995). I emphasize this point in order to draw at- Whether one considers contemporaneous tention to a contradiction that helps explain the Micronesian documents, the present-day re- self-defeating features of American rule in collections of the Micronesian leaders who Micronesia. The US has throughout its history negotiated with the US, or Dorrance’s in- been an expansive, imperial power. At the formed account of the American position, it is same time, however, there has been a marked clear that land lay at the focal point of the ten- tendency for Americans to deny that this is so. sions between the two sides. The US insisted One finds ample reference to this psychologi- that it retain definitive control over Micro- cal or intellectual form of denial immediately nesian lands; the Micronesians insisted that following the US occupation of Micronesia at they regain control of their own lands; ulti- the end of World War Two (Petersen 1999b). mately the dispute was resolved via ambiguity. In the course of discussions about how to ad- It is equally clear, however, that as the minister the islands, there are continual Micronesians began the process of negotiating references to America’s lack of a colonial tradi- for autonomy from the US they consciously tion and, as a consequence, its unpreparedness and deliberately turned to an examination of to administer the area, never having developed America’s previous history regarding the politi- a colonial service corps along the lines of the cal status of indigenous peoples in US European powers. occupied territories. They learned that retaining It was the American government’s denial of control over their lands was not merely vital to what it was doing in Micronesia, as much as their physical survival but absolutely essential anything else, that determined the course of the to their survival as distinct peoples. Ironically, status negotiations between the US and the as they came to grasp this truth and attempted Congress of Micronesia. There can be no to put it to use, the US government responded doubt that the Americans’ intention was to re- by insisting unremittingly that it, and not the tain Micronesia in perpetuity, no matter what Micronesians, would possess ultimate authority contemporary official claims might have im- over Micronesian lands. And, of course, the plied to the contrary. The evidence is to be more the US insisted on controlling their lands, found in the record of the struggle that ham- the more the Micronesians were convinced that mered out the strategic trusteeship concept. It unless they successfully resisted they would re- can be seen in the record of the commission peat the history of the American Indians and President Kennedy sent to Micronesia to de- Hawaiians. termine how best to convince the Micronesians to agree to political integration into the US CONCLUSION (known as the Solomon Report) and the poli- The doctrine that spells out the American cies intended to implement it (McHenry 1975). presence in Micronesia is known as “strategic It is acknowledged by the State Department’s denial,” that is, the US has always sought to permanent representative on the American ne- deny access to Micronesia to any other power gotiating team (Dorrance 1992). And it was that might possibly seek to use it for strategic delicately referred to in the course of the nego- (i.e., military) purposes. This is an ancient prin- tiations themselves. ciple in the armory of international relations, The American position was no mystery to and is not even new in Micronesia: it charac- Micronesians: they understood it perfectly well, terized the long Spanish occupation of parts of as indeed, they were meant to. At the same the area and Spain’s claims to most of the rest. time, however, Micronesians were consistently It is an old American stratagem as well—the instructed that the US was an anti-colonial Monroe Doctrine is one of strategic denial. power, that it was in Micronesia for the Micro- Nor is it even new to the American presence in nesians' own good, and that self-determination was of paramount political value. The contra- Lessons Learned: The Micronesian Quest For Independence 61 dictions were—and remain—palpable, yet the American emphasis on these points, the starker American administration was unable or un- did its own perfidy—its own unwillingness to willing to acknowledge them; in its behavior practice what it preached—appear to those en- the US it made it abundantly clear to the gaged in seeking autonomy. Micronesians that they could not rely upon My own initial understanding, based upon American assurances about their rights to self- my previous knowledge of the Micronesian ne- determination, self-government, and retention gotiations and the Puerto Rican experience, of their lands. Rather, Micronesian leaders had was that many, perhaps most, Micronesians to ground their approach to the negotiations realized that the longer they remained directly on America’s historical record. And that told subject to and politically (as well as economi- them, in very much the same sort of terms that cally) dependent upon the US, the less able the arrogance of the US Congress, the military, they would be to be to sever the bonds, and and State Department was making clear to the less likely they would be to achieve real them, that relatively small populations of autonomy by establishing themselves as inde- darker-skinned people who lay in the path of pendent peoples. While this was indeed the American expansion have always been deemed case, my more recent work has convinced me expendable. that there was a more effective and immediate America’s liberal traditions and rhetoric factor at work here. This was their awareness meant that the removal, marginalization, forced of the historical trajectory that describes the assimilation, and disenfranchisement that ac- demise of so many peoples made subject to the companied and effected this process were soft- US. Loss of land results not only in the loss of peddled and denied, or, more conveniently, ex- livelihood and thus a people’s physical means plained as being in the best interests of those of reproducing themselves, but in the loss of a who were being eradicated by them. Continued place in which to root their identity—not sim- attempts to saddle Micronesia with some sort ply as individuals within an American nation, of organic act, in order to organize it as a ter- but as distinct peoples with values, customs, ritory, and insistence that it remain under the and desires that run counter to the American purview of the Interior Department, with its notion that the course of civilization runs in- history of administering Indians, rather than exorably in the direction of becoming having Micronesian affairs lodged with the Americanized. The Americans’ unwillingness State Department, which would have recog- and inability to grasp this central aspect of their nized the islands as potentially self- history merely reaffirmed the Micronesians’ determining, along with the American gov- commitment to an alternative future. ernment’s absolute requirement that it possess eminent domain powers over Micronesia’s ENDNOTES land, served only to provoke the doubts of the 1 Micronesian leaders charged with negotiations. Because the Northern Marianas chose to pursue a more closely integrated relationship with the This situation was offset, ironically, by the US, rather than independence, I am largely ex- Americans’ rhetoric of independence and the cluding it from this account of Micronesian glories of their own struggles to wrest their independence. 2 land from recalcitrant colonial rulers. The Republic of Belau’s negotiations took It can be fairly argued, then, that the entire longer; it joined the UN in 1994. The Marianas sweep of US expansion across the North Islands became the US Commonwealth of the American continent, into the Caribbean, and Northern Marianas with the end of trusteeship. 3 out across the Pacific, coupled with the twin “Claimed by the United States.” 4 rhetorical spins celebrating independence and During the course of the negotiations the explaining away America‘s systematic denial of Micronesian Congress assembled remarks con- indigenous rights, shaped and motivated the cerning political status from its previous Micronesians’ experience with the problems of sessions into two volumes labeled “Political negotiating self-determination. The greater the Status Digest,” Parts I and II. For the sake of 62 Lessons Learned: The Micronesian Quest For Independence

convenience, wherever possible my citations are nesians negotiated with the US, before they to these, rather than to the original journals. joined the UN and achieved independence. 5 6 It should be noted that while the term rendered Negotiating treaties with minority tribal factions in English is “commonwealth,” Puerto Rico of- was a standard tactic employed by the US in the ficially refers to itself as “Estado Libre course of Indian removal. See for instance the Asociado,” the literal translation of which, Cherokee case (McLoughlin 1993:1-34). “freely associated state,” is the status the Micro- Dorrance, John (1992) The United States and the Pacific BIBLIOGRAPHY Islands. Westport: Praeger. Beals, Carleton (1939) American Earth. Philadelphia: Draper, Theodore (1996 Struggle for Power. New Lippincott. York: Random House. Brands, H.W. (1992) Bound to Empire. New York: Foltos, Lester J. (1989) “The New Pacific Barrier: Oxford University Press. 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