SUPPORT OF AMERICAN IMPERIALISM

American imperialism is a term that refers to the economic, military, and cultural influence of the United States internationally.

JOSIAH STRONG, FROM OUR COUNTRY (1885) No writer did more to popularize the idea of Anglo-Saxon supremacy than the Protestant clergyman Josiah Strong. He was a leader of the Social Gospel movement, calling for social justice and combating social evils. He supported missionary work so that all races could be improved and uplifted and thereby brought to Christ. His book, “Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis,” was written for a limited purpose: to promote missionary activity by Protestant churches. But it argued for foreign missions with ideas that captured a much wider audience than the limited one Strong had in mind. The book quickly sold almost 200,000 copies, and became something of a bible for those who were ready to be convinced that it was the destiny of the Anglo-Saxon race to dominate even to eliminate the savage races of the world.  It seems to me that God, with infinite wisdom and skill, is training the Anglo-Saxon race for an hour sure to come in the world's future. Heretofore there has always been in the history of the world a comparatively unoccupied land westward, into which the crowded countries of the East have poured their surplus populations. But the widening waves of migration, which millenniums ago rolled east and west from the valley of the Euphrates, meet to-day on our Pacific coast. There are no more new worlds.

The unoccupied arable lands of the earth are limited, and will soon be taken. The time is coming when the pressure of population on the means of subsistence will be felt here as it is now felt in Europe and Asia. Then will the world enter upon a new stage of its history-the final competition of races, for which the Anglo-Saxon is being schooled.

Long before the thousand millions are here, the mighty centrifugal tendency, inherent in this stock and strengthened in the United States, will assert itself. Then this race of unequaled energy, with all the majesty of numbers and the might of wealth behind it-the representative, let us hope, of the largest liberty, the purest Christianity, the highest civilization-having developed peculiarly aggressive traits calculated to impress its institutions upon mankind, will spread itself over the earth. If I read not amiss, this powerful race will move down upon Mexico, down upon Central and South America, out upon the islands of the sea, over upon Africa and beyond.

And can anyone doubt that the result of this competition of races will be the "survival of the fittest?"

PLATFORM OF THE ANTI-IMPERIALIST LEAGUE

In order to get a better notion of the Anti-Imperialist League's rhetoric, below are excerpted passages from its platform. Recall that this was the largely "conservative" critique of imperialism and that even former Presidents Harrison and Cleveland lent their names to it.

"We hold that the policy known as imperialism is hostile to liberty and tends toward militarism, an evil from which it has been our glory to be free. We regret that it has become necessary in the land of Washington and Lincoln to reaffirm that all men, of whatever race or color, are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We maintain that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. We insist that the subjugation of any people is 'criminal aggression' and open disloyalty to the distinctive principles of our Government.

"We earnestly condemn the policy of the present National Administration in the Philippines. It seeks to extinguish the spirit of 1776 in those islands. We deplore the sacrifice of our soldiers and sailors, whose bravery deserves admiration even in an unjust war. We denounce the slaughter of the Filipinos as a needless horror. We protest against the extension of American sovereignty by Spanish methods.

"We demand the immediate cessation of the war against liberty, begun by Spain and continued by us. We urge that Congress be promptly convened to announce to the Filipinos our purpose to concede to them the independence for which they have so long fought and which of right is theirs.

"The United States have always protested against the doctrine of international law which permits the subjugation of the weak by the strong. A self-governing state cannot accept sovereignty over an unwilling people. The United States cannot act upon the ancient heresy that might makes right.

"Imperialists assume that with the destruction of self-government in the Philippines by American hands, all opposition here will cease. This is a grievous error. Much as we abhor the war of 'criminal aggression' in the Philippines, greatly as we regret that the blood of the Filipinos is on American hands, we more deeply resent the betrayal of American institutions at home. The real firing line is not in the suburbs of Manila. The foe is of our own household….

"We hold, with Abraham Lincoln, that 'no man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.' When the white man governs himself, that is self-government, but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government – that is despotism.

"Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in us. Our defense is in the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men in all lands. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and under a just God cannot long retain it."

Within a few months of the American bombardment at Manila Bay on May 1, 1898, a group of prominent New Englanders established the first American peace movement of national scope in response to a foreign war. It was called the Anti-Imperialist League. Although their members were derided as a collection of "mugwumps" – irascible political independents – their ranks would soon include such celebrated figures as Mark Twain, William James, and Andrew Carnegie. These notables would eventually expand their provincial and social base to include local leaguers from throughout the Midwest clear to the West Coast, ultimately including prominent members such as labor leader Samuel Gompers and progressive reformer Jane Addams. Eventually, the national League would number nearly 50,000, before commencing a decline in membership with the eventual "pacification" of the Philippines in 1901. In one form or another, the anti-imperialist movement that sprang from the Spanish-American War would continue public education campaigns until the Red Scare of the late 1910s. Samuel Gompers, the usually cautious head of the American Federation of Labor, put it more forcefully. "I propose stating as succinctly as possible the grounds of our opposition to the so-called policy of imperialism and expansion. We cannot annex the Philippines without a large increase in our standing army. A large standing army is repugnant to republican institutions and a menace to the liberty of our own people. If we annex the Philippines, we shall have to conquer the Filipinos by force of arms, and thereby deny to them what we claim to ourselves – the right to self-government."

“THE WHITE MAN’S BURDEN,” RUDYARD KIPLING (1899)

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.

Take up the White Man's burden-- In patience to abide,

To veil the threat of terror And check the show of pride;

By open speech and simple, An hundred times made plain,

To seek another's profit And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden-- The savage wars of peace--

Fill full the mouth of Famine, And bid the sickness cease;

And when your goal is nearest (The end for others sought)

Watch sloth and heathen folly Bring all your hope to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden-- No iron rule of kings,

But toil of serf and sweeper-- The tale of common things.

The ports ye shall not enter, The roads ye shall not tread,

Go, make them with your living And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden, And reap his old reward--

The blame of those ye better The hate of those ye guard--

The cry of hosts ye humour (Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--"Why brought ye us from bondage,

Our loved Egyptian night?"Take up the White Man's burden--

Ye dare not stoop to less-- Nor call too loud on Freedom

To cloak your weariness. By all ye will or whisper,

By all ye leave or do, The silent sullen peoples

Shall weigh your God and you. Take up the White Man's burden!

Have done with childish days-- The lightly-proffered laurel,

The easy ungrudged praise: Comes now, to search your manhood

Through all the thankless years, Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom, The judgment of your peers.

-McClure's Magazine, Feb. 1899