One hundred years ago, this jingoistic folly leaped off the pages of William Randolph Hearst's sensationalist newspapers and propelled our country headfirst into a quest for empire.
Empire dreamers of the William McKinley administration were delighted to have Hearst beat the drums for war. The explosion of the U.S. warship Maine in Havana harbor killed 262 U.S. sailors but no evidence was ever found implicating Spain. Anyway, with Hearst newspapers olding public opinion, McKinley declared war and in a few short months destroyed Spain's decrepit navy and seized much of its tottering empire which included Guam, Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines. Hawaii was annexed during this war.
At the end of the nineteenth century, Spain's colonies were ripe for picking and fair-minded people hailed the Spanish eviction as good riddance-- a blow to
European colonizers and a boost for native independence.
But Spain's defeat did little to dampen the zeal of the European and American
imperialists and their lust for conquest. The brutal realities of colonial subjugation reared its ugly head as England fought the Boers in South Africa. Often the Brits bayoneted the Boers even as they knelt to surrender. Others were herded into concentration camps where tens of thousands of Boer women and children and black Africans perished.
The Belgians were doing the same in the Congo. Mark Twain, a leading anti-imperialist, wrote a blistering essay, King Leopold's Soliloquy", exposing the horrible crimes of the Belgians. It was published as a pamphlet with photographs of shackled and mutilated Congolese victims of racist barbarity.
In the Far East, greedy multi-nationals began plundering and dismembering China which provoked the Boxer rebellion, the mismatched attempt of the Chinese people to drive the imperialist murderers out of their country. The British, selfishly promoting the opium trade, introduced mass opium production and traffic
king. Naturally the Chinese wanted them out but they paid the price in butchery and were further humiliated as they were forced to pay reparations to the English.
How could supposedly civilized, Christian Europeans be such merciless butchers in their conquests in Africa and the Asia? Their actions had to be racially driven. They believed that God created white people to rule over all other races. This view was popularized in Rudyard Kipling's infamous bit of doggerel, "The White Man's Burden."
What about the Philippines and our splendid little war with Spain? The U.S. declared war on Spain in April 1898 and by August it was all over. Why then do the "Spanish-American War" monuments date the war from 1898 to 1902? The Treaty of Paris in 1899 officially ended our war with Spain and dismantled the remains of Spanish empire, the biggest prize was the Philippines which we "bought" for $20 million.
But the Filipinos, who had been fighting for independence from Spain for years, didn't know they could be bought and waged war against America well beyond 1902. As in any mis-match of power, they paid a terrible price. Our war with the Filipinos is just a footnote in history books describing the "Splendid little war with Spain." That's because our Filipino War was far from splendid.
200,000 American soldiers fought to subjugate the Filipinos, 4,234 were killed. Some 20,000 Filipino soldiers were killed as were half a million civilians.
Again racist feelings allowed our soldiers to slaughter these "half-savage" natives with all the brutal tactics perfected by the Europeans.
By looking back at the world at the beginning of the 20th century, history's bloodiest, maybe we can better understand all the terrible events that followed -two World Wars, the holocaust, and all the more recent atrocities.
How do we "Remember the Maine?" Are we doomed to witness more tragedies that heralded the beginning of the last century or have we learned to rise above our
racism and other failings to make the 21st century a little more civilized?
