In a way, America’s empire in the Pacific began with an explosion roughly 100 miles or so off the coast of Florida in the quiet waters of Havana Harbor. On February 15, 1898, the USS Maine, a battleship moored just outside Cuba’s capital, erupted in flames and sank, killing hundreds of crew on board. The ship had been sent there to monitor the growing conflict between Cuban revolutionaries and the Spanish regime that had maintained control of the island for centuries. It is not entirely clear how or why the ship exploded, but almost immediately war hawks in the United States blamed Spain. Tension grew until Congress declared war on April 25, 1898.48
 The war and America’s resulting overseas expansion came at the end of an anxious decade. The 1890s had unleashed an avalanche of social strife at home, including the collapse of the U.S. economy, the supposed closing of the American frontier, unemployment, labor unrest, and the entrenchment of Jim Crow laws limiting the rights of African Americans. The disorder at home led many to look abroad. “Since Jefferson’s time,” the historian Herring wrote, “Americans had sought to deal with pressing internal difficulties through expansion, and in the 1890s they increasingly looked outward for solutions to domestic problems.”50 But by the turn of the century, looking outward only seemed to bring up more questions than answers. Many Americans wondered if expansion was a good idea, whether the United States should enter the 20th century as an imperial power. Mostly, the debate split the population into those for expansion and those against it.
Almost immediately Congress confronted a host of moral and legal conundrums about the nation’s new island possessions: Did the Constitution even allow the United States to reach beyond the boundaries of North America to govern new territory? What did it mean for a former colony to possess colonies of its own? Would these territories be eligible for statehood, or did Congress have the authority to prevent them from joining the Union? Regardless of where fin de siècle Americans came down on expansion, they faced unavoidable questions about what would happen to the inhabitants of these new territories: Were they eligible for American citizenship? Could they move freely between the islands and the mainland United States? Would they have representation in Congress? From the start, America’s racial politics featured prominently in debates about the Philippines and Hawaii. Popular ways of thinking, driven by trends like social Darwinism, shaped congressional discussions on citizenship, democracy, and the movement of goods and people across borders.53
About this object When the United States annexed Hawaii, Congress considered the racial demographics of the islands. Representative James Beauchamp (Champ) Clark of Missouri denounced the idea of eventual Hawaiian statehood, arguing that Congress would be unable to incorporate such a large foreign population into the country. When Congress approved the annexation of Hawaii in July 1898, for instance, a substantial part of the debate focused on the racial characteristics of the inhabitants of the islands.54 As we have seen, the United States had for decades followed a policy of exclusion that prevented people of Asian descent from integrating into American society. But after years of transpacific immigration, Hawaii had substantial Japanese and Chinese populations. The question became whether the U.S. government could reconcile this with the strict exclusionary policies of its immigration law. Some in Congress saw this as a problem the United States could easily overcome.55 But others, like future Speaker James Beauchamp (Champ) Clark of Missouri, saw Hawaii’s large Asian population as a direct threat to the republic. Clark deplored the idea that Hawaii might one day become a state—that Japanese and Chinese immigrants might one day become U.S. citizens—and he encouraged Congress to develop a solution “without polluting and weakening our system of government by taking to our bosom a horde of Asiatic savages.”56 For Clark and Members of Congress who shared his beliefs, expansionism gambled with the future of the nation by overestimating the capacity of American society to assimilate new, nonwhite immigrants.57 Imperial ambitions in the Pacific, Clark predicted, would lead the United States to acquire one new territory after another, reshaping the legislative branch along the way. He described what he considered to be a nightmarish future in which the House had to a hire an “interpreter to the Speaker” in order to translate the “discordant voices” during debate. Underwriting his argument with pseudoscientific theories about race popular at the time, he warned against a “polyglot House” populated by Members from Cuba, Fiji, Hong Kong, Korea, and “the Cannibal Islands,” the last of which, he told the Speaker, would “gaze upon you with watering mouth and gleaming teeth.”58
Taft likewise doubted the capacity of the Philippine people for self-government, a theory he based largely on the color of their skin, once predicting they would “need the training of fifty or a hundred years before they shall even realize what Anglo-Saxon liberty is.” The Filipinos were “born politicians,” Taft wrote to Secretary of War Elihu Root, “as ambitious as Satan and as jealous as possible of each others’ [sic] preferment.”61 Ultimately, the construction of an American empire contained an inseparable and volatile mix of race and nationhood. Americans for and against expansion used common racial theories and popular stereotypes to support their arguments. For some, the United States stood as a civilizing force in the Pacific territories. For others who saw no way of integrating America’s new territories into the Union, race became the chief reason to dial back the country’s overseas ambitions.62 In the first half of the 20th century, America’s dealings in the Philippines and Hawaii showcased the convergence of race and empire. Next Section |
What were some arguments for expansion?
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