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The Psychological Study of Colonial Mentality Among Filipino Americans
Expressed by U.S. President William McKinley:
"…I am not ashamed to tell you, gentlemen, that I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty God for light and guidance more than one night. And one night late it came to me this way: (1) That we could not give them back to Spain – that would be cowardly and dishonorable; (2) that we could not turn them over to France and Germany – our commercial rivals in the Orient – that would be bad business and discreditable; (3) that we could not leave them to themselves – they were unfit for self-government – and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain’s was; and (4) that 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, and by God’s grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow-men for whom Christ also died. And then I went to bed…and the next morning I sent for the chief engineer of the War Department, and I told him to put the Philippines on the map of the United States (pointing to a large map on the wall of his office), and there they are, and there they will stay while I am President!" (Rusling, 1987, p. 23).
Expressed by U.S. Senator Albert Beveridge:
"Here, then, senators, is the situation. Two years ago there was no land in all the world which we could occupy for any purpose. Our commerce was daily turning toward the Orient, and geography and trade developments made necessary our commercial empire over the Pacific. And in that ocean we had no commercial, naval, or military base. Today, we have one of the three great ocean possessions of the globe, located at the most commanding commercial, naval, and military points in the Eastern seas, within hail of India, shoulder to shoulder with China, richer in its own resources than any equal body of land on the entire globe, and peopled by a race which civilization demands shall be improved. Shall we abandon it?"
"Senators must remember that we are not dealing with Americans or Europeans. We are dealing with Orientals. We are dealing with Orientals who are Malays. We are dealing with Malays instructed in Spanish methods. They mistake kindness for weakness, forbearance for fear. It could not be otherwise unless you could erase hundreds of years of savagery, other hundreds of years of Orientalism, and still other hundreds of years of Spanish character and custom. . . But, senators, it would be better to abandon this combined garden and Gibraltar of the Pacific, and count our blood and treasure already spent a profitable loss than to apply any academic arrangement of self-government to these children. They are not capable of self-government. How could they be? They are not of a self-governing race. They are Orientals, Malays, instructed by Spaniards in the latter's worst estate."
"(Filipinos) know nothing of practical government except as they have witnessed the weak, corrupt, cruel, and capricious rule of Spain. What magic will anyone employ to dissolve in their minds and characters those impressions of governors and governed which three centuries of misrule has created? What alchemy will change the Oriental quality of their blood and set the self-governing currents of the American pouring through their Malay veins? How shall they, in the twinkling of an eye, be exalted to the heights of self-governing peoples which required a thousand years for us to reach, Anglo-Saxon though we are?"
"Let men beware how they employ the term 'self-government.' It is a sacred term. It is the watchword at the door of the inner temple of liberty, for liberty does not always mean self-government. Self-government is a method of liberty - the highest, simplest, best - and it is acquired only after centuries of study and struggle and experiment and instruction and all the elements of the progress of man. Self-government is no base and common thing to be bestowed on the merely audacious. It is the degree which crowns the graduate of liberty, not the name of liberty's infant class, who have not yet mastered the alphabet of freedom. Savage blood, Oriental blood, Malay blood, Spanish example - are these the elements of self-government?... we must never forget that in dealing with the Filipinos we deal with children."
US General Jacob Smith Ordered US Soldiers to Kill Every Filipino Over Ten Years-Old
U.S. Army General Jacob Hurd Smith was in charge of the Samar region during the Philippines-American War. In Samar, Smith ordered his soldiers to "kill everyone over the age of ten" and make the island "a howling wilderness."
Below is an excerpt of Smith's orders:
"I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better it will please me. I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United States.” General Jacob H. Smith said.
Since it was a popular belief among the Americans serving in the Philippines that native males were born with bolos in their hands, Major Littleton "Tony" Waller asked "I would like to know the limit of age to respect, sir?."
"Ten years," Smith said.
"Persons of ten years and older are those designated as being capable of bearing arms?" Waller asked.
"Yes." Smith confirmed his instructions a second time.
General Smith often bragged to US journalists of his war tactics/crimes. He explained that because native Filipinos were "worse than fighting Indians", he had already been using "appropriate tactics" that he had learned fighting "savages" in the American west. This interview was published with the headline "Colonel Smith of 12th Orders All Insurgents Shot At Hand." The New York Times enthusiastically endorsed Smith's "appropriate tactics" as "long overdue."
Suggested Readings and References:
Benevolent Assimilation: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899-1903, Stuart Creighton Miller, (Yale University Press, 1982).
Before the "Howling Wilderness": The Military Career of Jacob Hurd Smith, 1862-1902 David L. Fritz Military Affairs Vol. 43, No. 4 (Dec., 1979).
Wolff, Leon (1961). Little Brown Brother: How the United States purchased and pacified the Philippine Islands at the Century's Turn. Doubleday.
Images of the Filipino:
Manifest Destiny
The Filipino Animal
The Filipino Savage
The Childish Filipino
Filipinos' First Bath
The White Man's Burden
Kill Everyone Over Ten
The Filipino Bugaboo
