bsmall2
> His fervor to “Christianize” the Filipinos, most of whom were already practicing Catholics, suggested his ignorance of conditions on the islands. He certainly had no idea that they were in the throes of the first anticolonial revolution in the modern history of Asia.
> “The episode marked a pivotal point in the American experience,” Stanley Karnow wrote in his history of the Philippines.
https://libcom.org/article/us-conquest-philippines-1898-1902
#PresidenMcKinley #USColonies #Filipinos #StephenKinzer #Philippines
The US conquest of the Philippines, 1898-1902

An account of the American takeover of the Philippines, beginning with the US defeating Spain, and ending with it brutally suppressing Filipino resistance, written by Stephen Kinzer.

libcom.org
Sep 18, 2025 at 1:58amWeb
Show threadbsmall2Sep 18, 2025
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> Speeches by senators during the treaty debate, along with many articles in the press, however, offered a more tangible rationale for taking the Philippines. Businessmen had become fascinated with the prospect of selling goods in China, which, after losing a war with Japan in 1895, had become weak and incapable of resisting intervention. They saw a magnificent confluence of circumstances, as this vast land became available for exploitation at the same time they were casting desperately about for new markets...
Show threadbsmall2Sep 18, 2025
🧵 1899!! Sounds like 1960s and 70s Vietnam!
> Faced with these handicaps, the guerrillas turned to tactics unlike any the Americans had ever seen. They laid snares and booby traps, slit throats, set fires, administered poisons, and mutilated prisoners. The Americans, some of whose officers were veteran Indian fighters, responded in kind. When two companies under the command of General Lloyd Wheaton were ambushed southeast of Manila, Wheaton ordered every town and village within twelve miles to be destroyed and their inhabitants killed.
Show threadbsmall2Sep 18, 2025
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> Aguinaldo and his troops were crippled by a lack of weaponry, enforced by an effective American naval blockade. American soldiers landed in waves, by the tens of thousands, eager to fight against an enemy of whose motivations they were blissfully unaware. In letters home, they told friends and relatives that they had come “to blow every nigger to nigger heaven” and vowed to fight “until the niggers are killed off like Indians.”
#USForeignPolicy #USAWars
Show threadbsmall2Sep 18, 2025
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> Our men have been relentless.. to exterminate men, women, children, prisoners and captives..of ten and up, an idea.. that the Filipino.. was little better than a dog, noisome reptile.. whose best disposition was the rubbish heap. Our soldiers have pumped salt water into men to “make them talk,” have taken prisoner people who held up their hands and peacefully surrendered, and..without an atom of evidence to show that they were even #insurrectos, stood them on a bridge and shot them down one by one, to float down as an example..
Show threadbsmall2Sep 18, 2025
> the American commander in the Philippines, #GeneralArthurMacArthur, to proclaim the rebellion “almost entirely suppressed.” He spoke too soon. Rebels who were still in the field fought with intensifying ferocity. In September 1901, a band of them overran an American position on the island of Samar with a brutality that set off some of the harshest countermeasures ever ordered by officers of the United States.
#GeneralMacArthur #MacArthurInThePhilippines