“Façade of Benevolence:”

Education as an Imperial Tool in the American-Occupied Philippines

Maclen Johnson

HIST 250: Colonial America

Professor Verney

18 April 2019
 Johnson 1

In 1916, the United States grappled with its role on the global stage, balancing its

declaration of neutrality in World War I against its invasions of Cuba and the Dominican

Republic – and its continued presence in the Philippines. The Jones Act, issued that year,

declared that the earlier Spanish-American War over the Philippines was never intended to be a

“war of conquest or for territorial aggrandizement.” In this framework, the United States only

applied its presence in the islands until a “stable government can be established therein,”

ensuring that the Philippine people had the necessary skills to govern themselves.1 Not until

1946 would the Philippines gain this independence. The United States, unable to realize its

imperial dreams in the islands, had to present an image of preparing the nation for its sovereignty

while exercising control of its institutions and shaping the Philippines into an idealized Western

form. The education system perpetuated by the United States exemplified its desired role as

savior of the Philippines, justifying its imperial presence not as a conquest for new territory but

an opportunity to free the islands from Spanish chains and guide them on the path of self-

government. However, it did so with no acknowledgement paid to the ability of the people it

claimed to defend.

The United States danced around what they wanted out of the Philippines, simultaneously

condemning the Spanish for their actions in the islands while yearning for the same imperial

power. The U.S. government – and its citizens – sought empire but could not obtain it in the

same ways as the “exploitive and oppressive” Europeans.2 The United States had started as

colonies and their rejection of England and its imperial practices elsewhere in the world labeled

them hypocrites if they expanded into new territory in a similar fashion. The Monroe Doctrine of

1
The Jones Law of 1916. https://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/constitutions/the-jones-law-of-1916/.
2
Paul A. Kramer, The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines (Chapel Hill: The
University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 11.
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1823 expressed anti-imperial sentiments against Europe, declaring that no new colonies would

be permitted in the Western Hemisphere. Of course, this did not mean the United States would

challenge existing imperial holdings in the Americas. Further fire would be added to the doctrine

in 1904 with the Roosevelt Corollary, which warned that the U.S. would intervene to preserve

peace and stability in territories colonized by European nations within their sphere of influence.

While Roosevelt’s declaration came as a response to the Venezuelan crisis of 1902, its meaning

can be applied to America’s defense of the actions it took against Spain in the Philippines

beginning in 1898. In the early twentieth century, America was cultivating its image as a world

power and was perfectly situated to act as a gracious bridge of trade between the West and East.

The Philippines were an ideal pit stop for American naval ships to refuel on the trade route to

China as well.3 America – if only to preserve and justify its colonial war – viewed itself as a

paternal figure to the Philippines, lifting its people out of savagery and into a model civilization

fit for independence.

Despite glowing reports issued by the American government, Philippine citizens did not

fall gratefully before them. Instead, they demanded their independence based on the democratic

ideals the United States claimed to be introducing. The Spanish-American War originated with

the sinking of a U.S. naval ship on the coast of Cuba. It soon expanded under the banner of

freeing Spanish colonies in the Western Hemisphere. While under Spanish control, the Filipinos

idealized the American Revolution, and the president of the burgeoning Philippine Republic,

Emilio Aguinaldo, styled his revolt against the European power in its likeness. Aguinaldo even

issued a Filipino Declaration of Independence in June of 1898.4 Spain ceded the Philippines to

3
Anne Paulet, “To Change the World: The Use of American Indian Education in the Philippines,” History of
Education Quarterly 47, no. 2 (2007), 177.
4
Meg Wesling, Empire’s Proxy: American Literature and U.S. Imperialism in the Philippines (New York: NYU
Press, 2011), 39.
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the United States for $20 million after the signing of the 1899 Treaty of Paris.5 Once the Spanish

were gone, they hoped they would have their own chance at self-government. Instead, they faced

the very nation they looked up to telling them they were not civilized enough to be independent.

The Philippine-American War picked up where Spain and America left off, raging from 1899 to

1902. The United States won because the Filipino combatants attempted to wage conventional

battle against their better-equipped soldiers, switching to more effective guerilla tactics too late

to turn the tide.6 In a campaign speech on September 7, 1900, Theodore Roosevelt described the

Philippine rebellion, led by Aguinaldo, as a movement that “would mean not liberty for all

Filipinos, but liberty for a certain bloodthirsty section to oppress a great majority of their fellow

countrymen.”7 The citizens who had studied American democracy and released their own

Declaration of Independence in 1898 were once again rejected and demeaned.8 The war was

often labelled an insurrection to reduce the Filipinos fighting it. The change in terminology

created an angle in which the Philippines battled their own government – the United States. By

framing Aguinaldo’s efforts as a civil war rather than forcing out an unwanted power that

threated Philippine sovereignty, America could treat the war as an intermission between Spanish

violence and their own goodwill and grace in the Pacific.9

Education veiled military intervention as a sign that American sovereignty had been

accepted in the Philippines despite continued conflict. Taft played a significant part in promoting

education in the Philippines as he sought to erase the violent stain of the Philippine-American

War. While he painted soldiers abroad as compassionate and considerate, the letters the men

5
Wesling, Empire’s Proxy, 69.
6
Kramer, The Blood of Government, 1.
7
Theodore Roosevelt, “Free Trusts, Silver, and the Philippines” (speech, September 7, 1900), Voices of Democracy,
http://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/theodore-roosevelt-free-silver-trusts-and-the-philippines-speech-text/.
8
Wesling, Empire’s Proxy, 39.
9
Kramer, Blood of Government, 89.
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wrote home told of destroying entire villages and burning crops.10 The military did not withdraw,

however, Taft boasted that the number of troops fell from 75,000 to 15,000 in 1904.11 They

justified their presence as protection for all peoples, Filipino and American, to ensure that

teachers and missionaries were not threatened, and city centers did not return to barbarism.

Racial attitudes and ethnic superiority were significant in the U.S. outlook on the

Filipinos. They made a crucial distinction between their dehumanization on the part of the

Spanish compared to the Americans redeeming unlearned savages. Spain excluded the

Philippines from political processes on the defense that they were infidels who were “uniquely

undeserving” of such inclusion.12 This came in spite of the fact that the colonies of Cuba and

Puerto Rico had representatives in the Spanish government. At the onset of the Spanish-

American War, President William McKinley set in stone the idea of the Filipinos as backwards

and needing tutelage so they could rise above the failures of their race to one day exist as a

sovereign nation, in the meantime relying on American troops to defend their rights.13 He

established the Philippine Commission in 1901 to oversee the growth of schoolhouses that would

become the “stamp of Americanism” in the new territory.14 McKinley’s choice to promote the

education brought in by the United States over the continued military presence would

characterize future presidents’ approach to the region as well.

Spain and America both put the Philippines on display at expositions within their

countries to prove that they had formed a mutual bond with people of the islands and that their

presence was received eagerly. Spain imported natives and required them to stay in “typical

10
Wesling, Empire’s Proxy, 105.
11
David Brody, Visualizing American Empire: Orientalism and Imperialism in the Philippines (Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press, 2010), 166.
12
Kramer, Blood of Government, 36-37.
13
Wesling, Empire’s Proxy, 39.
14
Wesling, Empire’s Proxy, 4.
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dwellings” that they would in the Philippines and to act in ways that highlighted their assumed

backwards nature.15 The 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis saw Filipino elites

interacting with American officials as they collaborated to bring displays – and populations –

together.16 William Taft, as the time Secretary of War and the former head of the Philippine

Commission, invested over 100,000 dollars into the exhibit as a means to prove to the Filipinos

that the government had nothing but kindness and encouragement to offer their country. He

hoped that native participation would further ensure their compliance with U.S. control.17 The St.

Louis Exposition was admittedly more human. Those who experienced the Filipino people and

culture at the event interpreted what they saw in ways beyond the curator’s control, prompting

empathy from the Americans and curtailing the “boundless faith” of colonial officials that

“proximity always bred loyalty and one-way assimilation.”18 As Filipinos adapted to U.S.

occupation, American citizens were forced to confront their own racial prejudices. The

exposition and their assimilation proved that the Philippine people were not drastically different

from themselves. Despite continuing the colonial European trend of expositions, the contrast

between this empathetic reaction and the Spanish objective of degrading Filipinos to something

subhuman highlights that Americans, in some capacity, did have a different outlook and motive

for involvement in the Philippines though it was still less than acceptable.

American treatment of the Philippine population mirrors many of its approaches to

education and classifications of Native Americans. Betty Wood details that the English settlers

saw the stratified social orders of the Native Americans as similar to their own society. The

English believed the natives would “positively welcome such a process” of Anglicization

15
Kramer, Blood of Government, 36.
16
Kramer, Blood of Government, 231-232.
17
Ibid., 238.
18
Ibid., 232.
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because in their minds, they were helping a lost culture attain a higher degree of civility. 19

Reports of animals like chickens or pigs living at home with the Native Americans and Filipinos

were frequent and marked with surprise and horror.20 Because the English colonists and

Americans were not used to this behavior, they saw it as subversive and against their way of life.

The choice to centralize the fact that the people lived alongside animals subconsciously prompts

the reader to evaluate the native groups as unclean and more in touch with beast than man.

Likewise, both groups had to be “taught the value of labor” as a representative government

demanded members who took personal pride in their work.21 Industry and education linked

together to encourage a strong work ethic that was opposed to the “natural” function of the

Filipino and Native American race. As these practices had worked before, the U.S. already had

an example of the uplifting changes it could make in the Philippines to better construct its people

for self-government.

Religion and missionary work emboldened the American educators and worked to further

eradicate the native culture. Missionaries received government aid to work among the Native

Americans as early as 1820 and had similar support in the early twentieth-century Philippines as

well because of the blurred line between the church and the state, which was often disregarded

altogether. American Methodists found pride in that their mission and nation “had literally

transformed the country” to something better and, ultimately, more euro-centric.22 Protestant

missionaries sought to eradicate the Catholic influence of the Spanish.23 The impact of American

19
Betty Wood, Origins of American Slavery: Freedom and Bondage in English Colonies (New York: Hill and
Wang, 1997), 35.
20
Paulet, “To Change the World,” 197.
21
Paulet, “To Change the World,” 198-199.
22
Kenton J. Clymer, “Religion and American Imperialism: Methodist Missionaries in the Philippine Islands, 1899-
1913,” Pacific Historical Review 40 no. 1 (1980), quoted in Philippine Observer, V (July, 1915), 11.
23
Clymer, “Methodist Missionaries,” 41.
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public schools triumphed over the remaining parochial institutions.24 The Spanish introduced

Christianity and a formal education system to the nation long before the Americans arrived,

though the United States attempted to downplay their contributions.25 Many Protestants agreed

that the Catholic influence was sufficient in instilling important moral and religious values in the

population, but others argued they had merely created “superficial Christians” and “provided

little more than a veneer over a culture that remained… heathenish.”26 In response, these

missionaries watched reproachfully for any Catholic influence in the Filipino government, even

protesting a motion for a legal holiday in celebration of the island’s patron saint.27 The

missionaries taught to what their wants and expectations were for the Philippine people rather

than what the citizens themselves practiced.

The influx of the English language and its requirement in Philippine schools solidified

American authority as it trickled into homes and businesses. The first public schools opened in

the capital of Manila in 1900 with pictures from the classrooms displayed at the 1901 Pan-

American Exposition to provide visual evidence of Philippine assimilation under American

rule.28 Historian Meg Wesling argues that the literature studied in American-run classrooms

enforced the ideals of the white middle class, transplanting the racial, social, and economic

values of the native Philippine culture with those of the United States. Already selectively taught

to the upper echelons of U.S. society, American literature proudly drew on its commonalities

with English writing from which it stemmed. Its migration to Filipino schoolhouses was an effort

to supplant the culture of the people and introduce the supposedly more refined heritage of the

24
“Filipinos Learn Readily,” New York Times, December 26, 1901,
https://www.nytimes.com/1901/12/26/archives/filipinos-learn-readily-opportunity-to-attend-american-schools.html.
25
Meg Wesling. Empire’s Proxy, 2.
26
Clymer, “Methodist Missionaries,” 41.
27
Clymer, “Methodist Missionaries,” 42.
28
Kramer, Blood of Government, 236.
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Anglo-Saxon, all the while offering this gift to the entire population rather than a select few.29 A

1901 New York Times article praised the American schools overseas for pulling record

attendance and their choice to teach exclusively in English. 150,000 Filipino students were

enrolled with almost 800 American teachers guiding their education.30 Evening schools taught

Filipino adults English with “demands for the establishment of schools… coming from all parts

of the archipelago.”31 English was chasing out Spanish as well as the native Tagalog, providing a

common method of communication in the face of many dialects while making the lives of

American teachers easier, which had been the goal.32 The language served as a “conduit for the

transmission for those ideas of self-government” that the Filipinos could not express in their own

uncivilized tongue.33 Requiring English set it as the model for sophisticated civilization and a

necessary factor if the Filipinos ever wanted their independence.

Not all Americans supported such educational ventures in the Philippines, albeit for

ethnocentric reasons rather than anti-imperialism. The United States wanted a gateway to China,

reducing the islands as a proxy for trade. Its inhabitants did maintain the rights of American

citizenry, however, and could reap the benefits thereof. Filipinos had the right to apply for

passports and move across the Pacific, meaning that they “could also occupy the United States,”

a turn of phrase that outraged nativists who did not want their assimilation.34 Louis Livingston

Seaman, a New York doctor during the time of American occupation in the islands, defended the

education system as a necessary step to ensure a stable government, stating that Western

29
Wesling, Empire’s Proxy, 40.
30
“Filipinos Learn Readily.”
31
“Filipinos Learn Readily.”
32
Paulet, “To Change the World,” 199.
33
Paulet, “To Change the World,” 200.
34
Kramer, Blood of Government, 350.
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countries had gone through thousands of years of social evolution to reach their current status.35

The Philippines could not simply skip this growth and emerge a fully-functioning body.

However, he saw the presence of the United States as a dangerous drain on the treasury and

declares that the education of the Philippines was best left to China – a nation that surpasses the

West in longevity and could instill values of hard work and industry against the “dishonesty,

laziness, and treachery” seen in the Filipinos.36 Although the United States had good intentions

with its colonial efforts and emancipated its territories unlike the Europeans did in Africa, the

country’s altruism cost too much in American lives and gold.37 He approached the Philippines as

a problem for someone else, their barbarism nothing more than an economic roadblock to the

superior United States.

America positioned female teachers in the Philippines as testimony to the nation’s willing

submission to U.S. authority. These women were utilized as a form of acceptable empire to

pacify their own people despite the fact that there were still soldiers abroad. American teachers

inserted themselves as an “efficient army of democratizing and civilizing agents” among an

otherwise savage yet subordinate population with their arrival signifying a more peaceful phase

of occupation.38 The affairs of the Philippines were considered “too unsettled” for more women

to teach on the islands in the early years as it would put them in danger.39 Once military activity

subsided, they would be welcomed. The voyage of the Thomasites in 1901 marked a shift away

from military force and toward pacification. The image of the white middle-aged woman

teaching America’s new “young brown brothers” promoted the nation’s success in guiding

35
Louis Livingston Seaman, “The Problem of the Philippines,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political
and Social Science 30 (1907), https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1010641.pdf, 133.
36
Seaman, “The Problem of the Philippines,” 134.
37
Seaman, “The Problem of the Philippines,” 130-131.
38
Wesling, Empire’s Proxy, 5.
39
“Filipinos Learn Readily.”
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Filipinos toward a brighter future.40 The “iconographic status of white womanhood” and the

limited authority that came with it was just that – symbolic.41 Women, excluded from politics at

home, were expected to prepare the Philippines for self-government. This granted them a level of

autonomy that they could not experience in the U.S. but further demonstrated the hypocrisy of

the government in its selective definition of who was fit for independence and participation. The

feminization of education and the presence of female teachers in the Philippines contributed to

the image of benevolent American control.

By painting itself as a righteous liberator, the United States tried to evade the label of a

colonizer in the European sense, but its actions were nonetheless a quest for empire. David

Brody describes the indigenous Philippine wood adorning the floor of Taft’s newly constructed

Oval Office as harsh symbolism for the president’s “imperialist sensibilities” and the subversive

measure the U.S. took against the islands in the name of providing order to a lesser population.42

In its desperation to disconnect from European methods of empire, the U.S. followed patterns set

by its predecessors in expositions, language, and conquest but differed in its publicized racial

view of the Filipinos. While the nation continued to treat Philippine citizens as savage and

unruly, its promise of self-government did come to fruition after decades of war and forced

education. Although being less evil than another imperialist power is not a good measure of

success, the Americans did regard their Filipino subjects with more civility and dignity. The

Philippine classrooms modeled the global debate of colonialism, serving as a proxy of their own

between the native people and their American “guardians.” As the Spanish had introduced their

own schools and religious influence, Americans demonstrated their exceptionalism was not used

40
Wesling, Empire’s Proxy, 108.
41
Wesling, Empire’s Proxy, 109.
42
Brody, Visualizing American Empire, 168.
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as a voice for territories it claimed to protect, but a method of vaulting above European nations

and claiming more power and glory on the world stage.

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Bibliography

Primary Sources:

“Filipinos learn readily,” New York Times, December 26, 1901.

https://www.nytimes.com/1901/12/26/archives/filipinos-learn-readily-opportunity-to-

attend-american-schools.html.

Roosevelt, Theodore. “Free Trusts, Silver, and the Philippines.” Speech, September 7, 1900.

Voices of Democracy. http://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/theodore-roosevelt-free-silver-

trusts-and-the-philippines-speech-text/.

Seaman, Louis Livingston. “The Problem of the Philippines.” The Annals of the American

Academy of Political and Social Science 30, 1907. 130-134.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1010641.pdf.

Secondary Sources:

Brody, David. Visualizing American Empire: Orientalism and Imperialism in the Philippines.

Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2010.

Clymer, Kenton J. “Religion and American Imperialism: Methodist Missionaries in the

Philippine Islands, 1899-1913.” Pacific Historical Review 49, no. 1 (1980), 29-50.

Paulet, Anne. To Change the World: “The Use of American Indian Education in the

Philippines.” History of Education Quarterly 47, no. 2 (2007), 173-202.

Kramer, Paul A. The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the

Philippines. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006.

Wesling, Meg. Empire’s Proxy: American Literature and U.S. Imperialism in the Philippines.

New York: NYU Press, 2011.

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Wood, Betty. The Origins of American Slavery: Freedom and Bondage in the English Colonies.

New York: Hill and Wang, 1997. 20-39.