When America Chose Empire

This article was originally published by George Ford Smith at The Mises Institute.

In 1901, on far-away Balangiga—a village in Eastern Samar of the Philippines—an American general gave an order that stripped away any notion of “civilizing” or “Christianizing” a foreign people: “Make it a howling wilderness.”

General Jacob H. Smith’s command—accompanied by the instruction to “kill everyone over ten”—was not an aberration. It was consistent with a decision made only a few years earlier about America becoming one of the “great” nations. The government would abandon its anti-imperial tradition and join the ranks of empire.

The events at Balangiga were recorded but not broadcast—the public today knows nothing about it. After months of occupation, abuses by American troops—including arrests, food deprivation, and humiliation of the local population—provoked a surprise Filipino attack on September 28, 1901 that killed 74 men of Company C, 9th US Infantry Regiment, “who were stationed in Balangiga to keep its small port closed and prevent any trading.” The American response was swift and total. Villages were burned, civilians killed, and Balangiga was reduced, in Smith’s words, to a “howling wilderness.”

Smith was court-martialed—not for murder, but for “conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline.” On President Teddy Roosevelt’s order he was reprimanded and retired. Murdering and raping savages was considered more like a breach of etiquette than an atrocity.

The Founders’ Vision

This was not the country of Washington or Jefferson, who each counseled avoiding foreign entanglements. As John Quincy Adams reminded Americans on July 4, 1821, the first settlers of Plymouth colony,

. . .at the eve of landing from their ship, . . . bound themselves together by a written covenant; and, immediately after landing, purchased from the Indian natives the right of settlement upon the soil.

Thus was a social compact formed upon the elementary principles of civil society, in which conquest and servitude had no part. The slough of brutal force was entirely cast off: all was voluntary; all was unbiassed consent; all was the agreement of soul with soul.

The American ideal, in other words, rested on voluntary association and consent. Even settlement, Adams noted, was grounded in purchase and agreement, not conquest.

1898: The Turning Point

That changed with the Spanish-American War. After George Dewey destroyed the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay the United States found itself in possession of Spain’s former territories: the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico. The spoils of war presented an opportunity. Mark Twain satirized Dewey’s decision:

Our traditions required that Dewey should now set up his warning sign, and go away. But the Master of the Game happened to think of another plan—the European plan. He acted upon it. This was, to send out an army—ostensibly to help the native patriots put the finishing touch upon their long and plucky struggle for independence, but really to take their land away from them and keep it. That is, in the interest of Progress and Civilization.

Similarly, sociologist William Graham Sumner had written that the United States was “the chief representative of the revolt and reaction against” imperial power. The American experiment flatly rejected empire.

We have beaten Spain in a military conflict [Graham wrote], but we are submitting to be conquered by her on the field of ideas and policies. Expansionism and imperialism are nothing but the old philosophies of national prosperity which have brought Spain to where she now is. . . a poor, decrepit, bankrupt old state.

No figure better represents this shift to empire than Theodore Roosevelt. The former organizer of the First US Volunteer Cavalry known as the Rough Riders, Roosevelt worshipped power, action, and national greatness.

On July 1, 1898, astride his horse, Texas, “He led a series of charges up Kettle Hill towards San Juan Heights [Cuba]. . .while the Rough Riders followed on foot. He rode up and down the hill encouraging his men with the orders to ‘March!’ He killed one Spaniard with a revolver salvaged from the Maine,” the battleship that exploded in Havana harbor earlier that year for which US propaganda blamed the Spanish. Roosevelt declared the battle to be “the great day of my life.”

Influenced by naval historian Alfred Thayer Mahan, Roosevelt believed that global power required naval dominance and overseas presence. The “stick” in his famous phrase, “Speak softly and carry a big stick,” referred to the navy—ready, powerful, and visible.

Sumner warned that empire would change the United States. “The most important thing which we shall inherit. . .will be the task of suppressing rebellions.” And in suppressing others, a nation reshapes itself.

Lincoln’s suppression of the South’s independence had already altered the American mindset. After Appomattox, the Union was no longer a voluntary confederation of states. A country that was founded on secession had shown it would crush any part of it that attempted to secede. It was now one nation, indivisible, ready to conquer or suppress.

The same nation that celebrated liberty erected concentration camps for Native Americans, waged campaigns of annihilation on the plains, then eagerly went to war in 1898. By the end of the 19th century, the government was ready for imperial ventures.

Conclusion

In 1899, Roosevelt articulated what would become the moral language of the new America: “I wish to preach. . .the doctrine of the strenuous life. . .of labor and strife. . .and splendid ultimate triumph.”

If you’re a rugged American, this sounds exhilarating. But for the government, it leads to perpetual war. The drive for an energetic, interventionist government leaves us where we are today, a debt-choked, warmongering state armed with the power to extinguish all life on earth.