History 122 Research Brief
The U.S.-Philippine WarDavid C. Hanson, Virginia Western Community College
Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
--Rudyard Kipling, The White Man's Burden (1899)A mere footnote in most historical accounts of American foreign policy is the guerilla war in the Philippines (1899-1902). The "splendid little war" with Spain lasted less just a few months and cost only 400 battle casualties (mostly in Cuba, where an additional 5,000 Americans died from disease), but the "pacification" of the Philippines, following the defeat of Spain, lasted over three years and cost 4,000 American lives. Congress had recently annexed Hawaii, and the defeat of Spain offered a convenient opportunity for the U.S. to acquire a set of steppingstones across the Pacific to the Asian mainland. While President William McKinley clearly understood the value of the "Jewels of the Pacific," he was sensitive to the outcry from American anti-imperialists. He explained that he prayed to God for divine guidance and it was revealed to him that the welfare of the Filipinos was his moral duty:
"I have been criticized a good deal about the Philippines, but I don't deserve it. . . . [because] there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them. . . ." --William McKinley (1899)
Congress had ensured that Cuba could not be claimed by the U.S. as spoils of war, having inserted the Teller Amendment into the war declaration in 1898; but Puerto Rico, Guam, Wake Island, and the Philippines simply changed hands from Spanish to American occupation forces. The U.S. paid $20 million in compensation to the Spanish government.
What McKinley failed to anticipate was the reluctance of the Filipinos to accept the blessings of American occupation. The leader of the Philippine insurrection was Emilio Aguilnaldo. He was born on the Island of Luzon. In 1895 Aguilnaldo joined the secret, nationalist brotherhood of Katipunan founded by Andres Bonifacio. After the Philippines erupted in revolt against the Spaniards in 1896, Aguilnaldo won several victories in Cavite Province. In 1897 Katipunan forces retreated into the mountains in the face of Spanish attacks. The Spanish attempted to buy off Aguilnaldo, and he accepted an offer from the Spaniards: exile in Hong Kong in exchange for 400,000 pesos. Soon after his arrival there, Aguilnaldo purchased the weapons his troops would require to continue the struggle.
After the U.S. declared war on Spain in 1898, Aguilnaldo saw a possibility that the Philippines might achieve independence; the U.S. hoped instead that Aguilnaldo would lend his troops to its effort against Spain. He returned to Manila on May 19, 1898 and declared Philippine independence on June 12. When it became clear that the U.S. had no interest in the liberation of the islands, Aguilnaldo's forces refused to join forces with American troops. On January 1, 1899 following the meetings of a constitutional convention, Aguilnaldo was proclaimed president of the Philippine Republic. The United States refused to recognize Aguilnaldo's authority and on February 4, 1899 he declared war on the U.S. forces in the islands. American occupation forces identified their objective as the capture of Aguilnaldo. They initially perceived conquest and pacification as dependent on the fall of the Aguilnaldo government. Because of their superiority in weapons, they also believed that the war would be short and swift in their favor. But the Americans were shocked at the courage and tenacity of the Filipinos who dragged the Americans into several years of battle.
The Filipinos waged a guerrilla warfare which was suitable for the country’s terrain and their limited firearms. Many of them were peasants by day and revolutionaries by night. They were sustained in their struggle by the unrelenting support of entire towns. Even if the American flag was displayed in the town and the local elite officials publicly acknowledged support to the United States, it did not matter since the guerrillas received food, supplies, and shelter from the people. It was dangerous for an American to stray away from the U.S. garrison lest he be hacked to death by the guerrillas and their sympathizers.
Towards the end of 1900, the Americans declared martial law. To combat guerrilla warfare, they launched a scorched-earth "pacification" campaign. Every Filipino was viewed as an enemy regardless of whether he or she took up arms. Entire towns were held responsible for the actions of guerrillas. Mere objection to the Americans was termed treason. Villages sympathetic to the guerrillas were burned and people indiscriminately killed. Torture was systematically used to elicit information from suspected guerrillas or their sympathizers. One form of torture was the "water cure" treatment where the victim was forced to drink excessive amounts of water after which he was stomped on the stomach. One U.S. soldier bragged in a letter that Americans were shooting Filipinos "like rabbits." Even though the U.S. War Department imposed blanket censorship, these atrocities became widely known because American soldiers wrote to their families and relatives in the U.S. and related stories of abuse. Some of these letters were eventually published in American local newspapers, highlighting the brutality of these "pacification" campaigns, leading to Congressional investigation, public outrage, and considerable embarrassment for the White House.
Part of the strategy was the introduction of "reconcentration", a policy of hauling thousands of Filipinos (whom Americans referred to as their "little brown brothers") into concentration camps to flush out the guerrillas among them and to cut their material support to the resistance movement. In the process of reconcentration, whole towns suffered from starvation and disease. Villagers were taken from their sources of livelihood and were not decently fed. Worse, living conditions were less than adequate, with people confined in overcrowded camps without proper sanitation. Camps then became breeding grounds for the spread of deadly diseases such as cholera.
The guerilla war for independence did not immediately end with Aguilnaldo’s capture on March 23, 1901; the insurrection lasted until July 1902. In the end, it took over three years to “pacify” the Philippines. More than 120,000 American soldiers served in the Philippines, 4,200 of whom died. It was estimated that 25,000 Filipino rebels and 200,000 civilians also died.
The savage jungle war for control of the Philippines reinforced doubts about American imperialism. As U.S. soldiers in that distant land fell before the machete and the bullet, prey to the terrors of climate, disease, and insurgents, the confident talk of destiny sounded hollow. As one cynical writer asked,
We've taken up the White Man's burden
of ebony and brown;
Now will you tell us Rudyard,
how we may put it down?Aguilnaldo’s dream of Philippine independence came true on July 4, 1946. He died in Manila in 1964.
