1. Philippine-American War
An effect of the Spanish-American War
**There is not a fill-in-the-blank sheet for these notes. Take your own notes in your ISN in the same format that I type your notes in. There is a format guide on the website for extra help. It’s called C-Notes Template.**

2. Filipino Rebels assist U.S. forces
When the U.S. decided to strike the Philippines, Commodore George Dewey enlisted the help of Emilio Aguinaldo and his group of rebel forces.
The Spanish garrison in Manila preferred to surrender to the Americans rather than the Filipinos
News of the victory sent President McKinley scurrying to find a map of Asia to locate “these darned islands” now occupied by U.S. soldiers and sailors.
The Treaty of Paris left the status of the Philippines unresolved.
American business leaders wanted to keep the Philippines so that they could more easily take advantage of the markets of China
Missionary societies wanted to annex the Philippines so that they could bring Christianity to “the little brown brother.”

3. President McKinley pondered the alternatives and later explained his reasoning for annexing the Philippines to a group of fellow Methodists:
“And one night late it came to me this way - I don’t know how it was, but it came: (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 or 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 fellowmen for whom Christ also died. And then I went to bed, and went to sleep and slept soundly.”
In plain English:
national glory
commerce
racial superiority
evangelism
**The U.S. offered Spain $20 million for the islands and Spain accepted.**

4. Anti-Imperialists
Argued that the acquisition of the Philippines would corrupt the American principle dating back to the Revolution that people should be self-governing rather than colonial subjects
Noted the inconsistency of liberating Cuba and annexing the Philippines
Pointed out the danger that the Philippines would become impossible to defend if a foreign power such as Japan attacked.
We see this exact thing happen in WWII!!!
President McKinley had no intention of granting the Philippines independence.
Insisted that the U.S. take control of the islands as an act of “benevolent assimilation”
February 1899, an American soldier outside Manila fired on soldiers in the Filipino Army of Liberation, and two of them were killed. Marked the beginning of the Philippine-American War.

5. Primary Source Analysis
Rudyard Kipling, The White Man’s Burden, 1899
Take up the White Man’s burden
Send forth the best ye breed
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
And reap his old reward;
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:
“Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?”
Ye dare not stoop to less
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloak your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.
Primary Source Analysis
This famous poem, written by Britain’s imperial poet, was a response to the American takeover of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War.

6. Political Cartoon #1
Imperialist or
Anti-Imperialist

7. Political Cartoon #2
Imperialist or
Anti-Imperialist

8. The Philippine-American War
Lasted 3 years, involved some 126,000 U.S. troops, and took the lives of hundreds of thousands of Filipinos (most of them civilians) and 4,234 American soldiers.
Grisly massacres committed by both sides
Americans used derogatory terms to refer to the Filipinos
American atrocities:
villages burned
prisoners tortured and executed
Organized Filipino resistance had collapsed by the end of 1899 but guerilla action lasted until mid-1902