When the Philippines was America’s ‘new possession’

My article last week drew good feedback. Readers apparently like my going-back-to stories and images of Manila of yore. This week, we head even further into the past with a travelogue on Manila and the country. The book was Yesterdays in the Philippines written by Joseph Earle Stevens, an American businessman and a trade pioneer in the country even before the country’s turnover to the United States.

The author writes from the perspective of the turn of the century when America had already established military and civilian jurisdiction over the islands. His commentary is interesting as it reflects the zeitgeist of the era and the point of view of the new colonizers, or at least some of the businessmen who were adventurous enough to seek profit and the pleasures of travel in these tropical isles. I excerpt liberally from the book’s introduction, which features Stevens’ take on America’s “new possession.”

He starts, “By the victory of our fleet at Manila Bay, one more of the world’s sidetracked capitals has been pulled from obscurity into main lines of prominence and the average citizen is no longer left, as in days gone by…The Philippines have been discovered, and the daily journals with their cheap maps have at last located Spain’s Havana in the Far East. It is indeed curious that a city of a third of a million people-capital of a group of islands as large as New England, New York, Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey, which have long furnished the whole world with its entire supply of Manila hemp, which have exported some 160,000 tons of sugar in a single year and which today produce as excellent tobacco as that coming from the West Indies — it is curious, I say, that a city of this size should have gone so long unnoticed and misspelled. But such has been the case, and until Admiral Dewey fired the shots that made Manila heard round the world, the people of these United States — with but few exceptions — lived and died without knowing where the stuff on their clothes-lines came from.”

Apparently few Americans knew of our archipelago, its location and potential. The author continues with a surprising stance on the matter of the new colony, “Now that the Philippines are ours, do we want them? Are they the long-looked-for El Dorado, which those who have never been there suppose? To all of which questions — even at the risk of being called unpatriotic — I am inclined to answer, No.”

Stevens explains, “Do we want them? Do we want a group of 1,400 islands (surveys weren’t completed at the time), nearly 8,000 miles from our Western shores, sweltering in the tropics, swept with typhoons and shaken with earthquakes? Do we want to undertake the responsibility of protecting those islands from the powers in Europe or the East, and of standing sponsor for the nearly 8,000,000 native inhabitants that speak a score of different tongues and live on anything from rice to stewed grasshoppers? Do we want the task of civilizing this race, of opening up the jungle, of setting up officials in frontier, out-of-the-way towns…?”

The fellow is emphatic with his position, “Do we want them? No. Why? Because we have got enough to look after at home. Because — unlike the Englishman or the German who, early realizing that his country is too small to support him, grows up with the feeling that he must relieve the burden by going to the uttermost parts of the sea — our young men have room enough at home in which to exert their best energies without going eight or eleven thousand miles across land and water to tropic islands in the Far East.”

More questions, this time on colonial governance: “Can we run them? The Philippines are hard material with which to make our first colonial experiment, and seem to demand a different sort of treatment from that which our national policy favors or has had experience in giving. Besides the peaceable natives occupying the accessible towns, the interiors of many of the islands are filled with aboriginal savages who have never even recognized the rule of Spain — who have never even heard of Spain, and who still think are possessors of the soil. Even on the coast itself are tribes of savages who are almost as ignorant as their brethren in the interior; and only 30 miles from Manila are races of dwarfs that go without clothes, wear knee-bracelets of horsehair, and respect nothing save the jungle in which they live. To the north are the Igorrotes, to the south the Moros, and in between, scores of wild tribes that are ready to dispute possession. And is the United States prepared to maintain the forces and carry on the military operations in the fever — stricken jungles necessary in the march of progress to exterminate or civilize such races? Have we, like England for instance, the class of troops who could undertake that sort of work and do we feel called upon to do it, when the same expenditure at home would go so much further?”

The author then posits a strategy that even today would find not a few supporters, “The Philippines must be run under a despotic though kindly form of government, supported by arms… and to deal with the perplexing questions and perplexing difficulties that arise, needs knowledge gained by experience, by having dealt with other such problems before.”

On business potential, Stevens paints a less-than-ideal outlook. “Are the Philippines an El Dorado? Like Borneo, like Java and the Spice Islands, the Philippines are rich in natural resources, but their capacity to yield more than the ordinary remuneration to labor I much question. Leaving aside the question of gold and coal, in the working of which, so far, more money has been put into the ground than has ever been taken out, the great crops in these islands are sugar, hemp, and tobacco. The sugar crop, to be sure, has the possibilities that it has anywhere, where the soil is rich and conditions favorable. The tobacco industry has perhaps more possibilities, and might be made a close rival to that in Cuba. But the hemp crop is limited by the world’s needs, and as those needs are just so much each year, there is no object in increasing a supply, which up to date has been adequate. There are foreigners in the Philippines, who have been there for years, who have controlled the exports of sugar or hemp or tobacco, who have made their living, and who from having been longer on the ground should be the first to improve the opportunities that may come with the downfall of Spanish rule. There are some things that the United States can send to the Philippines cheaper than the Continental manufacturers, but not many. She can send flour and some kinds of machinery, she can put in electric plants, she can build railways, but at present she can’t produce the cheap implements, and the necessaries required by the great bulk of poor natives at the low price which England and Germany can.”

The author ends with a radical option to the question of the islands. “The Philippines are not an El Dorado simply because for the first time they have been brought to our notice. They should not yield more than the ordinary return to labor, and the question is, does the average American want to live in a distant land, cut off from friends and a civilized climate, only to get the ordinary return for his efforts? To which, even though of course there is much to be said on the other side, I would answer, No. We have gone to war …to free Cuba, and at the first blow have taken another group of islands… to deal with. I have not the space here to discuss the solution of the problem, but, for my part, I should like to see England interested in buying back an archipelago, which she formerly held for ransom, leaving us perhaps a coaling port, and opening up the country to such as who chose to go there. Then, with someone else to shoulder the burden of government and protection, we should still have all the opportunities for proving whether or not the islands were the El Dorado dreamed of in our clubs or counting rooms.”

I do not know what happed to the author but his account of Manila from a century ago, as well as his attitude to the realities of the day are eye-opening. America did not offer the archipelago to the English, but that scenario is intriguing as a basis for a novel of historical-fiction. Would we still be driving on the left and probably be more agog over the royals than most English are today? Our accents would also be different with Tagalog-English sounding more like Singlish. But that is a fictional past. The real past is already quite a story.

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