Note (by hilzoy): what follows is by our commenter dr. ngo.
Hilzoy pointed me to the following passage, by Josh Treviño (Tacitus), which refers to the Philippine-American War as part of his argument for staying the course in Iraq:
"The ability of a society to see through grinding conflicts like the Philippines Insurrection or the Boer War augers well for its future, lest it lose the mere capacity to conquer, and be susceptible to humiliation by any small power with no advantage save mental fortitude. It is indeed difficult to imagine now the methods that transformed the Philippines for us, and South Africa for the British, from bitter foe to steadfast friend being applied in Iraq. Would that they were. But patriotism, pride, and honor are nonetheless still present in the American character. It is the American political class that lacks them in corresponding measure."
She thought, and I agree, that since I am a historian of the Philippines (and of imperialism in general), it might be useful for me to respond to this comparison. I'll try to limit my nitpicking on nomenclature (no one not soaked in imperial nostalgia refers to the "Philippine [not "Philippines" here] Insurrection" anymore) and spelling (it's "augurs," actually), as well as my thoughts on the Boer War, which I know much less well. Here, then are some comments.
- The "grinding conflict" in the Philippines lasted effectively from February 1899 to mid-1901 (officially, after the surrender of Emilio Aguinaldo) or mid-1902 (unofficially, after the surrender of Miguel Malvar and Vicente Lukban). The Iraq conflict has already gone on longer than this. (To be fair, the Philippine-American War was preceded by a "phony war" against the Spanish in the latter half of 1898, and followed by fighting - much of which was carried out by Philippine Scouts or the Philippine Constabulary - on the fringes against a few diehard insurgents and the conquest of the Muslim south, virtually a separate war.)
- The Filipino resistance, brave though it was, was seriously outgunned and under-trained for the conflict, so actual American casualties in combat - as opposed to victims of disease - were few. Many of the resistance fighters had no firearms at all, but were "bolomen," fighting only with machetes (bolos). The few rifles the Filipinos had were obsolete and ineffective, compared with the Krag-Jorgensens deployed by the Americans (as in the comic marching song, "Damn, Damn, Damn the Filipinos . . . Civilize 'em with a Krag . . ."). Worse, from their perspective, was that the Filipinos didn't have enough ammunition to practice marksmanship, and most of them did not know how to use the sights on their rifles, so that it was estimated (by Americans) that more than 90% of the shots they actually took in battle went over the heads of their targets.
- "Patriotism, pride, and honor" may well have been part of the American character then, but so were racism, which was widely and nastily displayed at this time (both in the field and in comments and cartoons at home), and a propensity to torture, including the "water cure" for captured or suspected "insurrectos." (There were extensive Senate hearings on the latter in 1902, if anyone desires documentation.) The will to conquer was predicated on the belief that it was perfectly acceptable to do horrible things to lesser peoples, which we did, as did the British, who developed "concentration camps" to deal with the Boers. (NB: I'm well aware these were different from what the Nazis later developed under the same name, but still . . .)
- The United States made a public commitment to stay and rule the Philippines indefinitely, if not permanently, and was backed in this by other imperial powers. (Cute factoid: Rudyard Kipling's famous poem "The White Man's Burden" was written as a direct response to this conflict, urging the US to accept its imperial responsibilities in the Philippines.) This had some effect on the resistance. Perhaps such a commitment is what Tacitus wants us to make in Iraq, but my sense is that a century later most Americans, and the rest of the world - to say nothing of most Iraqis - would be reluctant to see us to shoulder such a semi-permanent "burden" again.
- Most significantly, I believe, in the world before 1900 Third World nationalism was far, far less developed than it became over the subsequent century. Throughout Asia and Africa Western powers were able to conquer and control scores of polities, millions of people, who simply were not raised to believe that they had a right to rule themselves and a collective capacity to resist foreign incursions effectively. Thus in the same period, just within Southeast Asia, the French were able to conquer Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, the British Burma and Malaya, and the Dutch Indonesia, all with minimal casualties.
The Filipinos were actually ahead of the curve in terms of nationalism, but it was still very much a recent concept, not widely or deeply implanted. Many Filipinos, who had lived under Spanish colonial rule for more than three centuries, proved happy to accept the rule of a more benevolent master, rather than insisting on self-rule, a fact deplored by the hard-core "insurrectos." (Virtually all of the revolutionary leadership, in fact, eventually came to terms with American rule, swore allegiance to it, and wound up in comfortable positions within colonial society.)
Yet just half a century later, the Vietnamese were able to fight the French to a stalemate and then force them to withdraw, the Indonesians won their independence from the Dutch, and the British got out of Burma in large part because they knew they couldn't hold it against Aung San without the use of Indian troops, which would be denied them by Nehru's soon-to-be independent India.
In each of these cases, it might be (and, indeed, was in some quarters) argued that the old imperial "will" was lacking by the 1940s-50s. This is to some extent true, but such an imperial "will" had in the first place been built on an often-unspoken calculus, that wars in far-off countries could be fought cheaply and quickly, and could always be won eventually. (Never, so far as I know, did imperial powers commit themselves to "pay any price" to conquer a distant society; whenever things went seriously wrong the public conscience or the bureaucratic bean-counters always said, at some point, "The cost is too great, it's simply not worth it," and pulled back.)
Once the indigenous resistance was stronger - more politically conscious, better armed and trained - this unspoken calculus no longer applied. Instead, the "home field advantage" came back into play. No longer could small numbers of well-armed foreigners dominate much larger numbers of "natives" on their home soil, as they had been able to do during the 19th century. (But not, interestingly, before this, at least in most of Asia, where not just China and Japan, but smaller countries like Siam, Burma, and Vietnam had shrugged off Western plans for conquest prior to 1800.)
The USA, having chosen for its own reasons to give the Philippines independence in 1946, did not learn this lesson until (at the earliest) the Korean War and the Vietnam War, both of which, fifty years earlier, would have been won in weeks. It appears that some have still not learned it.
- Having said all this, the question of exactly how the USA effectively "pacified" the Philippines, turning it from "bitter foe to steadfast friend," remains an interesting one, which has engaged me for more than thirty years of my scholarly career. (My first articles on it were published in 1971 - god, I feel old.) I just wouldn't expect any answers we might arrive at to be applicable to the radically different political-military landscape of a century later.
dr ngo
16 November 2006
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