The sudden ascent to — or, as critics said, descent into — world power forced many Americans to come to terms with the brutal realities of imperialism: its "barbaric" violence, its repression of freedoms abroad and at home and the limits of the U.S. reach despite their overwhelming superiority of arms.

The turn of the century was a time of flux for the nationalism of many domestic observers of the American scene.

It took the bloodshed of the Philippine-American War to shake the seemingly secure foundations of Americanism: 4,000 U.S. troops died, not to mention the more than 200,000 Filipinos who met the same fate. In the late 1890s, “Americanism” had been a sturdy concept, one that domestic debates about citizenship, Catholicism and immigration had reaffirmed as white, native-born, Protestant — and good.

As a measure of that consensus, most of the thousands who later wrote, rallied and sang against the Philippine issue — from socialists who advocated revolution to industrialist Andrew Carnegie — had originally been quiet when the United States went to war against Spain in Cuba during the spring of 1898.

In line with U.S. ideals

That war seemed in line with U.S. ideals — it hurried the collapse of an Old World empire, propped up self-determination for Cuban patriots and ended the cruelty of Spanish reconcentración — the sweeping up of Cubans into concentration camps.

The turn away from these ideals in Cuba came only with the passage of the Platt Amendment of 1901, which denied the island its independence in foreign affairs. By that time, however, the stirring over the Philippines had begun in earnest.

Americanism contradicted

In the Philippines in 1899, American actions contradicted not only abstract values of Americanism but also the U.S. goals as stated at the outset of the struggle.

Aguinaldo and his men vowed to fight anyone, including Americans, to defend their “American” right.

For a few months, everything went as planned. Admiral Dewey smashed the Spanish forces in the spring of 1898, and by mid-year American warships brought the exiled Filipino patriot Emilio Aguinaldo back to his home islands to help finish off the Spanish, whom Aguinaldo had been fighting since 1896.

What followed, however, was by almost every account a travesty of justice. On January 4 1899, Major-General Elwell S. Otis unilaterally declared himself governor of the Philippines, thus breaking the pledge of upholding sovereignty that Dewey made to Aguinaldo.

Rising tension

The following day, Aguinaldo accused the United States of actions “foreign to the dictates of culture and the usages observed by civilized nations.”

Seizing on a soon-to-be-common idea, Aguinaldo noted American hypocrisy: “My government cannot remain indifferent in view of such a violent and aggressive seizure of a portion of its territory by a nation which arrogated to itself the title champion of oppressed nations.”

Disregarding self-determination

Ignoring this contradiction, by February 1899 U.S. forces signed the Treaty of Paris with Spain, re-designated Aguinaldo and his rebels as the newest,

The emotion that primarily emerged from the pages of anti-imperialist writings was not anger or outrage, but rather sorrow.

greatest threat to American interests on the archipelago, and attacked their positions.

In the next year or so, armed with superior firepower and imbued by a racist fervor for annihilation akin to that directed against American Indians, U.S. forces imitated the departing Spaniards by resorting to reconcentración themselves in order to crush Aguinaldo.

Few disputed that the occupation disregarded the principle of self-determination. President William McKinley and others simply declared Filipinos incapable of it.

Governing against consent

One supporter of the president, in a book titled "Americanism in the Philippines," published in 1900, even defended “Americanism” as a denial of self-government.

“Just powers of government are not necessarily derived from the consent of the governed,” he wrote, “but rather from the source whence originated the necessity for government. The best thing that can be done for people, in many instances (and this is one of them), is to govern them against their consent.”

Betrayal in the air

Filipino rebels were quick to point out this bold inversion of the logic of Americanism. The message that the Filipinos most consistently drove home to their U.S.

Perhaps it would be wiser to look for a union of Americanism's ideals with the best ideals of other civilizations around the world.

audience was that the occupation had made a mockery of a principle for which Americans themselves had fought.

Aguinaldo insisted that Dewey had promised self-government for the Filipinos “in full good faith” despite not writing it down. Now the feeling of betrayal was in the air.

“Can you wonder our people mistrust you?” wrote one of Aguinaldo’s representatives to American readers. “They do not even regard you as being serious — a nation which professes to derive its just power of government from the consent of the governed.”

Defending their "American" right

“I claim,” said another, displaying a mastery of American themes, “in the name of the Filipine [sic] nation, the fulfillment of the solemn declaration made by the illustrious William McKinley, president of the republic of the United States, aggrandizement and extension of national territory, but only in respect to the principles of humanity, the duty of liberating tyrannized people and the desire to proclaim the unalienable rights, with their sovereignty, of the countries released from the yoke of Spain.”

Aguinaldo and his men vowed to fight anyone, including Americans, to defend their “American” right.

Between diversity and unity

The Pragmatist philosopher and psychologist William James articulated the meaning of this betrayal for the American psyche perhaps more meaningfully than any other American observer.

“Americanism” had been a sturdy concept, one that domestic debates had reaffirmed as white, native-born, Protestant — and good.

As Carrie Tirado Bramen has argued, James belonged to a generation caught between diversity and unity — the twin desires of Americanism. He embraced the burgeoning plurality of modernity, yet he longed for his nation to maintain some of the moral oneness of Victorianism.

The turn of the century was a time of flux for the nationalism of many domestic observers of the American scene, some of whom wished to reconstitute a multicultural nation before embarking on empire while others saw U.S. racial hierarchy itself threatened by empire.

Tangled in the Phillipines

Perhaps this ambivalence moved James to qualify the U.S. war in the Philippines as a “tangle” in a famous letter to the Boston Evening Transcript published on March 1 1899, right after the signing, in Paris, of the “peace” treaty with Spain.

In his letter, James warned of danger to the American creed. U.S. troops were acting as “pirates, pure and simple” and robbing Aguinaldo’s forces, “an ideal popular movement,” of the right to govern that they clearly had won. “We are destroying down to the root every germ of a healthy national life in these unfortunate people,” he wrote. “It is horrible, simply horrible.”

World power

James was also devastated about what world power was doing to “national life” in the America that he loved. “Imperialism and the idol of a national destiny, based on martial excitement and mere 'bigness,' keep revealing their corrupting inwardness more and more unmistakably.”

Imperialism and the idol of a national destiny, based on martial excitement and mere ‘bigness,’ keep revealing their corrupting inwardness more and more unmistakably.”

This was all happening too quickly, he thought, for Americans: “The process of education has been too short for the older American nature not to feel the shock... The worst of our imperialists is that they do not themselves know where sincerity ends and insincerity begins. Their state of consciousness is so new.”

James’s only hope lay in combining Filipino force of arms with U.S. force of ideals: “If the Filipinos hold out long enough, there is a good chance... of the older American beliefs and sentiment coming to their rights again... Let every American who still wishes his country to possess its ancient soul — soul a thousand times more dear than ever, now that it seems in danger of perdition — do what little he can.”

Not anger but sorrow

Because there was little that critics could do, the emotion that primarily emerged from the pages of anti-imperialist writings was not anger or outrage, but rather sorrow.

Sorrow settled in on James and others from the realization that empire had become a way of life for the United States. The emotion was most unsettling for a people used to conquering and feeling good about it.

National self-doubt

Through the 20th century, Americans would rarely feel good about the trials they faced in Asia: the Bataan death march, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Korean stalemate, the Vietnam quagmire.

The Filipinos most consistently drove home how the occupation had made a mockery of a principle for which Americans themselves had fought.

Through many of these, national self-doubt deepened. Vietnam especially bifurcated American national identity into what Senator William Fulbright called "two Americas" — one virtuous, the other rapacious — a construct that seemed to make it easier to accept the moral compromises of war.

Today, if the American left wants to build a patriotic peace movement that reconciles virtue and global power, perhaps it would be wiser to look for a union of Americanism's ideals with the best ideals of other civilizations around the world, in a truly forward-looking redefinition of an American as an open and compassionate citizen of the world.