A WORLD OF EMPIRES: UNITED STATES RULE IN THE PHILIPPINES, 1898-1913 A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History by Christopher Allen Morrison, M.A. Washington, DC August 17, 2009 Copyright 2009 by Christopher A. Morrison All Rights Reserved ii A WORLD OF EMPIRES: UNITED STATES RULE IN THE PHILIPPINES, 1898-1913 Christopher Allen Morrison, M.A. Thesis Advisor: Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, Ph.D. ABSTRACT The United States occupied parts of the Philippine Islands in 1898 and acquired the entire archipelago from Spain in 1899. From 1898-1913, Americans involved in Philippine affairs interacted with other empires in two primary ways that shaped U.S. rule in the Philippines. First, as new colonial rulers of a distant, unfamiliar Asian land and people, Americans confronted many challenges that were different from those involved in the United States’ westward continental expansion during the 19 th century. Consequently, Americans examined other colonial powers’ experiences to find policy models, lessons of what to avoid, and examples to cite while lobbying for or against certain Philippine initiatives. Second, the American-Philippine colony was located in a region awash in imperialism and was surrounded by other colonial states, to which the Philippines had a variety of direct linkages. As a result of these inter-imperial links, events occurring elsewhere in the region sometimes heavily influenced the islands’ affairs and forced U.S. colonial officials to devise policies that accounted for Philippine connections to the broader imperialist context. This dissertation examines important policymaking episodes in the first fifteen years of U.S.-Philippine colonial history. These include the formation of an American iii colonial government, a currency reform campaign, the creation of an opium control regime, the establishment of an agricultural bank, and the response to Japanese imperialism. In each case, interaction with other empires significantly shaped United States colonial rule in the Philippines. Americans’ studying and borrowing of ideas from other colonial powers were part of a pragmatic approach to colonial policy making. Although American policy models and ideas played a role, the American-Philippine colonial project was not an ideological attempt to remake the Philippines in the image of the United States. U.S. rule in the Philippines had more limited goals aimed at stability and some economic development, and Americans sometimes adopted other powers’ ideas to achieve these goals. This interaction with other empires was part of a U.S. approach to foreign relations during the period that emphasized international cooperation. This study also shows the impact that engagement with other empires had on American exceptionalist attitudes about colonialism. iv PREFACE The United States’ annexation of the Philippine Islands in 1899 launched Americans and their government on a nearly half-century venture as colonial rulers of a far-off Asian land and people. This experience was unprecedented for Americans, despite their nation’s history of governing and incorporating new territories while the United States extended its boundaries westward during the course of the 19 th century. The Philippine situation was unique for a number of reasons. The territory was a large, very distant, tropical archipelago. Moreover, the islands were heavily populated by a mix of unfamiliar ethnic groups that most Americans agreed would never be incorporated into the country’s political, territorial, or cultural body. Nor did U.S. officials expect a substantial number of Americans to settle in the colony. Although governing the Philippines was a novel undertaking for the United States, in 1899 Americans were joining a surge of imperialism that had been a defining feature of late-19 th century international affairs. Stronger powers had partitioned Africa, established control over almost all non-Chinese Asian territories, and were engaged in an ongoing scramble to extract concessions from the weak Chinese Empire. In Southeast Asia, the Philippines themselves were located in the midst of both newly acquired and long held colonies ruled by Japan and European powers. Japanese Formosa, the Dutch East Indies, the British Malay States, and French Indochina, among others, all were nearby and possessed various demographic, socio-economic, geographic, and other characteristics that were similar to the Philippines. v These two basic observations, that administering a place like the Philippines was without direct American precedent and that other powers had historical and contemporary experience ruling similar colonies, proved to be the starting point for this study. They suggested that, as the United States began to rule its new Asian colony, Americans would have examined how other imperial powers had ruled their subject territories to learn what worked or failed. Indeed, a check of what was being said in the period’s major opinion journals such as Forum , The Nation , and North American Review confirmed this assumption. During the first three years of U.S. rule in the Philippines, a number of influential Americans were calling for U.S. officials to take account of what the British, Dutch, and French had done in the field of colonial policy. This finding was intriguing, but of course did not answer the more significant question of how this kind of engagement with other powers’ colonialism actually played a role in the formation of U.S. colonial policy. My determination to answer that question gave shape to this dissertation, which digs into the details of several important American-Philippine policymaking episodes from 1898-1913. During the course of my research, I explored many facets of U.S. rule in the islands and found in a number of cases that Americans who shaped Philippine affairs drew heavily on experiences of other empires to find policy models, lessons of what to avoid, and examples to cite while lobbying for or against certain initiatives. A profound instance of this occurred in 1899-1900 as U.S. officials confronted perhaps the most fundamental early policy choice they had to make. In deciding what form of colonial government to institute in the archipelago, American policy makers vi commissioned research studies and consulted published literature on how other powers governed their colonies. As I continued to delve into this period of U.S.-Philippine history, I also found that interaction with other empires went beyond Americans’ efforts to gain their bearings for crafting colonial policy. The American-Philippine colony was located in a region awash in imperialism and was surrounded by other colonial states, to which the Philippines had a variety of direct economic, strategic, immigration, transportation, and other linkages. As a result of these inter-imperial links, events occurring elsewhere in the region sometimes heavily influenced the islands’ affairs and forced U.S. colonial officials to devise policies that accounted for Philippine connections to the broader imperialist context. This inter-imperial dynamic came into play, for instance, in 1900-01, when the Boxer Rebellion in China helped fuel a currency crisis in the Philippines, and after 1905, when Japanese expansionism in the region provoked intense reactions among Filipinos and Americans within the islands. American engagement with other empires thus took on a variety of forms. I argue that this had an important impact on the American experience as a colonial power in the Philippines. To appreciate the significance of these interactions, and the value of looking at U.S.-Philippine history from this perspective, it is helpful to consider very briefly the state of scholarship on the subject. Existing historical research that examines the early phase of U.S. rule in the Philippines emphasizes the influence of American domestic precedents and contexts, or the contest between American and Filipino agendas that vii played out on the ground within the islands. 1 Inter-imperial connections have remained essentially unexplored, despite the fact that some scholars have acknowledged the need to situate the U.S.-Philippine story within broader regional and imperial contexts. 2 The failure to examine American interaction with other empires consequently has left an important void in our understanding of the United States’ history as a colonizing power. In making this observation, I am not suggesting that Americans did not draw on their own historical experience as they pursued colonialism in the Philippines. Nor do I deny that contemporary American domestic factors and American-Filipino interactions made profound impacts on U.S. colonial policy. Indeed, I do not believe U.S.-Philippine history can be understood properly without grasping these dynamics. But this approach does not tell the whole story. As one of the leading scholars in the field, Glenn A. May, observed in 1996 in an important historiographical survey, “Clearly…much of the history of U.S.-Philippine relations remains to be written.” May explained that many topics have been “largely ignored” and that “the real challenge confronting the field is…that of approaching the subject matter in very different ways.” 3 Historians certainly have made 1 The most prominent works are Peter Stanley, A Nation in the Making: The Philippines and the United States, 1899-1921 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University