Author Insight Video
Transcript
Life and history are filled with unintended consequences. That certainly was the case with the war against Spain in 1898. The United States went to war ostensibly on behalf of the Cuban people, who were seeking their independence from Spanish colonial rule. In the process of conducting that war, however, the United States acquired possessions all around the world, including the Philippine islands in Asia. Why were we so interested in doing that?
Well, Americans in the late 19th century, like Europeans embraced the ideology of imperialism. That is, they believed that advanced industrialized nations like the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and France needed to acquire colonies in order to provide raw materials to feed their industrial economies, and also to acquire markets for them to sell finished products to those colonial peoples.
At the same time, there were others in the United States with different motives. American Christian denominations were very eager to send missionaries to the Philippines to bring the message of Christianity to these “backward peoples.”
Finally, the United States was very interested in developing an Asian colony that would enable them to take advantage of the China market. China was then, of course, a very populous nation and the United States, as well as the European nations, were eager to take advantage of that huge market by selling their products to China. Having bases in the Philippines would enable the Americans to take advantage of that huge growing market.
And so, for these reasons that had nothing to do with the Cuban rebellion against Spanish control, the United States ended up acquiring territory in the Pacific. That acquisition had all sorts of unintended consequences.
Ultimately, of course, the American control of the Philippines would involve us in a competition with Japan that would become one of the factors leading to the outbreak of war in 1941 when America was attacked by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor. So the acquisition of the Philippines had recurring significance to the United States that no one envisioned at the time.