Interesting book review: :thumb:
By Peter Kneisel, Globe Correspondent | March 31, 2007
A War of Frontier and Empire: The Philippine-American War, 1899-1902
By David J. Silbey
Hill & Wang, 272 pp., $26
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It was supposed to be a quiet footnote to the Spanish-American War, a keenly anticipated walk over against the hopelessly outmatched ragtag Philippine Army of Liberation.
It became a brutish colonial war that turned unpopular at home because it resisted the jingoistic bunting that adorned the "splendid" war with Spain. It took the lives of 4,200 US servicemen, 20,000 Philippine soldiers, and between 200,000 and a million civilians. It was fought to secure the Philippines as the new western edge of America's manifest destiny, against an army the United States had armed and encouraged, and then against the insurrectionists and the civilian population that supported them. The Philippine-American War disappeared from the American consciousness, overshadowed by bigger wars. It is a good time to revisit it.
David Silbey provides us with a timely, deft reexamination of American politics at the turn of the 20th century. The Philippine Islands were an unexpected prize following the swift capitulation of the Spanish. The national debate was clear: Should a nation founded on the principle of self-determination -- fundamentally anti-imperialist -- become a colonial power? And its pressing corollary: How does a young country, clearly enamored of its own "exceptionalism," lift up a polyglot archipelago of divers culture and religion, scattered over 150,000 square miles, if the people there won't stop shooting at it?
We know precisely when it began -- Feb. 4, 1899. A brief skirmish with US infantry killed three Liberation soldiers and fractured the uneasy alliance between the two armies. They were encamped side by side, allied to defeat the Spanish garrison isolated in Manila. But the US command had excluded the Filipinos from the staged, face-saving battle that preceded the Spanish surrender. The Army of Liberation felt betrayed by the ratification of the Treaty of Paris. Their worst fears had been realized. They had been traded from one colonial master to another.
For President McKinley and the War Department, hostilities allowed the Americans to brush aside the resistance and get on with the business of nation-building. The United States had arrived on the international stage: the Philippines would be a strategic anchor in the Pacific and a commercial gateway to the Far East.
Three years later, after the assassination of McKinley, President Theodore Roosevelt's declaration of victory on July 4, 1902, would only be useful for clerical purposes because the war would rage on for another decade. Roosevelt had a mid term election coming up, and the war had become both a political liability and a public relations nightmare. The proclamation of victory was a cynical counterbalance to sensational congressional hearings that soured the public with evidence of torture, summary executions, and reprisals. Two generals were court-martialed for classifying combatants as any male over the age of 10.
Silbey moves seamlessly between the political arena, the insurrectionists, and the war diaries of the US infantry. He follows the fortunes of Emilio Aguinaldo, the complicated leader of the insurrectos , as he is chased across Luzon struggling to keep his army in the field. When Aguinaldo is finally captured, and broadcasts an appeal to lay down arms, the guerrilla war continues without him.
Read Silbey's account for his masterful restraint. It is a quick and sobering study. Only once does he break character. When General E. S. Otis turns over his command to Arthur MacArthur in May 1900, he cables Washington that the fighting is all but over. "Mission accomplished," Silbey adds. As Otis boards a steamer to take him from the islands, he pockets a telegram from his staff: 19 US soldiers killed in ambush on Samar . One volunteer laments in his diary , "Has the war ended . . . or just begun."
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