Conquering Americans
From Mr James B. Callender Sir: Where exactly does Paul Johnson get the idea that 'Americans have never wanted power over others' (And another thing, 26 October)? This may be the popular image of the 'land of the free', but it is sadly untrue.
I am not a bleeding-heart anti-American. I am a keen fan of capitalism and globalisation, and I frequently enjoy McDonald's. Gap and other dark fruits of Americanism. I merely want to point out that just before the turn of the century the US was an imperial power in every sense of the word.
On 30 April 1898 a US naval squadron, under the command of Admiral Dewey, steamed into Manila Bay. After a day's bombardment it destroyed the Spanish squadron and shore batteries, and by August the Filipinos came under the control of Washington. This invasion was under the guise of a mission of liberation, and for a brief spell the island's rebels, who had for years opposed the Spanish, were overjoyed. They were soon horrified when they realised that America had no intention of allowing the Filipinos to govern them, and they began a new war of resistance. America poured ever-increasing military might into the islands until there were as many as 75,000 US soldiers on the islands at one time. Thousands of men were killed on both sides for no clear purpose — in this sense it was a forerunner of Vietnam — until March 1901 when the rebel leader, Aguinaldo, swore an oath of allegiance to America and urged his people to stop fighting, saying, 'There has been enough blood, enough tears. enough desolation.' The US did not completely give up its power over some of the naval bases on the island until 1991.
Paul Johnson points out that the American instinct has always been isolationist. That may be the case now, but at the end of the 19th century the US became gripped by a feeling of extreme nationalism, much like the kind that was growing in Europe, and as a result America took up 'the White Man's Burden'. As Albert Beveridge, who became a senator the next year, put it, 'We are a conquering race.'
James B. Callender
Aberdeen
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