American Global Power from Empire to Superpower

Introduction

This High School World History unit is based on the Yale National Initiative seminar: U.S. Global Power from Empire to Superpower 2022. The unit will focus on the Philippines as a case study for the manner in which the United States functioned as an Empire in the early 20th century.

The unit provides an expanded understanding of the ways European Imperial powers operated in Africa and Asia through the example of the U.S. in the Philippine Islands. The goal is for students to expand their critical thinking skills and give them practice “reading against the grain” of sources that do not always include the Filipino perspective. They will make comparisons to other empires across time, space, and place. And they will grapple with the concept of identity-making, the creation of imagined communities, and growing nationalist movements in the early 20th century.

This unit fills a gap in the narrative of World History classes between units on Colonialism in Africa and the start of the World Wars. It presents the history of the Philippines and U.S. imperialism as a case study in the context of European imperialism. The Filipino experience is both an example and counterexample of the common imperial assumptions of missionaries, Progressive politicians, nationalists, and the racialized ideas of pseudoscience popular at the turn of the twentieth century. Students will compare the Filipino perspective to the experience of other colonized peoples outlined earlier in the course through the creation of their own “newspaper” accounts of the events in question.

Modifying the existing narrative of World History as presented in our textbook is always a challenge. Including the subaltern, colonized, and otherwise ignored voices requires additional work for everyone. However, including these perspectives makes our understanding of the past more complete. Through my readings for this project I have come to appreciate how much we have the power to reshape our students’ understanding of the past by changing the information that they have access to.

Historian Noelani Arista works with the history of Hawai'i and the U.S., but her thoughts apply to the Philippines as well. In her study of U.S. mainland missionaries to the islands of Hawai’i she emphasizes “understanding the sociopolitical and historical antecedents” to the settlement of U.S. and other outsiders can “empower a more finely calibrated understanding of Hawai'ian actions and choices.”¹ Our unit here shows that this applies to Filipino actions and choices as well.

In adapting Arista’s approach, this unit allows students to make comparisons between U.S. and Filipino voices, reasoning, and actions to come to a more complete understanding of the Filipino experience in the twentieth century.

This unit is composed of several “evidence gathering” classes where there is instruction in four different phases of Philippine history. Lecture and discussion are followed by document analysis activities, which enables students to grapple with primary source documents directly. The last day of the unit is a time for students to synthesize their learning and combine their knowledge into imagined first-hand newspaper accounts of the historical events as if they were there.

Evidence for historical study is often sourced from the voices of the “victors” or the dominant group. Hearing the voices of non-elite Filipinos through the filter of the U.S. American sources is difficult. In attempting to build a coherent understanding of the events we will study, it is worth considering the example of American Indians. The approach the U.S. government used in their “negotiations” with American Indians was similar to the approach they used to dominate the Philippines. By comparing what we know about events on the mainland to the evidence we have about events in the Philippine Islands, we can properly account for the perspective of non-elite Filipinos. As Jeffrey Ostler says, “although treaties [with Amerindians] were ‘negotiated,’ it was not an equal plane. To gain consent, U.S. officials employed a range of tactics including issuing ultimatums, threatening war, and offering bribes.”² The U.S. government felt responsible for the Filipino people, and wanted to control the Philippine islands, but continued their approach of bribing elites, and bullying the population into compliance. The manner and mode of interaction was not altogether different from treatment of Amerindians.³

To access the non-elite perspective, we can use the same strategy historians use to access the perspective of Amerindians. As Jeffrey Ostler points out, “although treaties [with Amerindians] were ‘negotiated,’ it was not an equal plane. To gain consent, U.S. officials employed a range of tactics including issuing ultimatums, threatening war, and offering bribes.”² U.S. nationals “negotiated” in a similar way when interacting with Filipinos at the turn of the century. The U.S. government felt responsible for the Filipino people and wanted to control the Philippine islands, but continued their approach of bribing elites and bullying the population into compliance. The manner and mode of interaction was not altogether different from treatment of Amerindians.³ This is why this unit specifically includes Filipino sources wherever possible, and asks students to carefully read other sources “against the grain”.