From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (60 page)

The conference opened in January 1906 in Algeciras, Spain. Roosevelt played a less conspicuous role than at Portsmouth, but he exerted important and at times decisive influence. As before, he closely watched the proceedings and worked through trusted personal intermediaries. He took a consistently pro-French position while effusively flattering the kaiser. When Wilhelm backed himself into a corner from which there appeared no face-saving exit, TR threatened to publish Germany's inadvertent pledge to compromise. Faced with this dismal prospect, the kaiser gave in and then had to swallow Roosevelt's fulsome praise for his "epoch-making political success" and "masterly policy." France got most of what it wanted; the kaiser got Roosevelt's praise. War was averted, achieving the president's short-term aim; Germany was isolated and angry.
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During the first years of the new century, U.S. officials devoted much effort to managing the empire taken from Spain in 1898. They brought to the task a keen sensitivity to their new world role and the importance of what they were doing. They imparted to their work the zeal for social engineering that marked the Progressive Era. Forms of governance and relationships with the United States varied markedly in the new possessions. In all cases, Americans believed in their exceptionalism. They were
doing the "world's work," Roosevelt boasted, bringing to their new wards the blessings of civilization rather than exploiting them. Whatever the intentions, of course, U.S. policies were exploitative. It was not simply a matter of Americans taking advantage of helpless victims. Local elites, often Creoles who shared the racist assumptions of their new colonial masters, collaborated with the imperial power to advance their personal interests and maintain their privileged position.

At first overlooked in imperial calculations, Puerto Rico came to assume exaggerated importance in American eyes. It would provide bases to guard the canal. It could serve as a transit point for the growth of U.S. trade and investment in Latin America. The expansion of sugar production would reduce dependence on Europe for a vital consumer product. As Americans optimistically set out to educate Puerto Ricans to "our way of looking at things," they reasoned that if they did their job well they could "win the hearts" of other Latin Americans and "weld together" the civilizations of the two continents.
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The United States carved out a unique status for its new Caribbean possession. Racist attitudes toward Puerto Ricans made incorporation and self-government equally unthinkable. The island's dense population made colonization by Americans impractical. The Foraker Act of 1900 established Puerto Rico as an unincorporated territory, a possession of the United States but not part of it, the United States' first legally established overseas colonial government. The Supreme Court in the 1901 Insular Cases ruled that the United States could govern the island without the consent of the people for an unspecified period. The Constitution "follows the flag," Root declared sardonically, "but doesn't quite catch up with it."
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The United States also kept Puerto Rico at a distance economically, imposing a tariff on most of its imports. The new scheme of governance—what Root called "patrician tutelage"—took away much of the autonomy Spain had conceded in 1897. The vote was limited to literate male property owners, disfranchising 75 percent of the male population. An executive council composed of five Americans appointed by the president worked closely with local elites and wielded such power that Puerto Ricans compared it to the "Olympian Jupiter."
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The occupation government and colonial administration set out to Americanize the island, hoping in the process to create a model of order
and stability.
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They built roads to attract investment and facilitate economic development. They implemented sanitation and public health programs to ensure a healthy workforce and permit "white American officials" to "escape death in doing their duty." They rewrote the legal code. United States officials viewed Puerto Ricans as morally deficient and lazy—"where a man can lie in a hammock, pick a banana with one hand, and dig a sweet potato with one foot," Gov. Charles Allen explained, "the incentive to idleness is easy to yield to." Viewing the local population as "plastic" and capable of being molded, they reconstructed the educational system to instill into Puerto Ricans that "indomitable thrift and industry which have always marked the pathway of the Anglo-Saxon."
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English replaced Spanish as the language of instruction. Classes promoted such values as honesty, hard work, and equality before the law. In the mode of Tuskegee Institute, Puerto Ricans were taught manual and technical skills to make them productive workers. Through high tariffs and incentives, the island was integrated into the U.S. economic system, transforming a reasonably diverse agricultural economy into one based on large-scale sugar production. Experts like Jacob H. Hollander of Johns Hopkins University reformed the tax code and made tax collection more efficient. United States officials even sought to Anglicize the name of the island by changing the spelling to "Porto Rico," a move
National Geographic
magazine adamantly rejected.
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The new name never quite caught on, and proconsuls could not undo centuries of Spanish rule and remake the United States' new colonial subjects into North Americans. The roads and public health programs improved the quality of life and laid a basis for economic expansion. Educational programs were at best a qualified success. Efforts to force-feed the English language hindered instruction in other areas. Puerto Ricans clung to Spanish; illiteracy rates remained high. Despite vigorous efforts to Americanize the islanders, nationalist sentiment remained alive. Puerto Ricans challenged government dictates and agitated for greater self-government.

Even more than in Puerto Rico, the United States in the Philippines set out with missionary zeal to replicate its institutions. Idealistic young Americans went forth to educate the "natives." Colonial officials built
roads and railroads, modernized port facilities at Manila, and through public health programs contained the deadly diseases of malaria and cholera. Experts stabilized the Philippine currency and reformed the legal system. Through what was called reciprocal free trade, the United States sought to foster a mutually beneficial economic development. Beginning with reforms at the local levels, U.S. officials instructed their new wards in democratic politics as a basis for eventual self-government. "We are doing God's work here," Governor General Taft exulted.
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As in Puerto Rico, the results were no better than mixed. To its credit, the United States avoided the worst exploitation of European imperialism. Congress imposed restrictions that prevented Americans from taking over huge chunks of land. Literacy and life expectancy levels rose markedly; an honest judiciary and efficient tax system were put into place. The use of English gave scattered islanders with a bewildering diversity of dialects a lingua franca, even if an alien one. Upper-class Filipinos aped American manners. The masses took to baseball and Sousa marches. As journalist Stanley Karnow has observed, however, the "Filipinos became Americanized without becoming Americans."
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Racism further tainted an already unequal and distant relationship between master and subject. Suffrage was limited to property owners, and no more than 3 percent of the population voted. Behind the facade of democracy, an oligarchy of wealthy Filipino collaborators dominated politics and society and exploited their own people. Reciprocal free trade tied the two economies together, making the Philippines vulnerable to the booms and busts of the U.S. business cycle, stimulating uneven economic growth, and widening an already huge gap between rich and poor. Whatever the United States' intentions, the result was a colonial relationship.
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In terms of long-term ties, the United States set the Philippines on a very different course from Puerto Rico. From the outset, U.S. rule had been rationalized in terms of noble intentions. The Schurmann Commission of 1899 recommended eventual independence for the islands, and the United States could not easily scrap promises to prepare them for self-government. Some Filipinos were ambivalent. Those who benefited from the colonial relationship recognized the economic perils that might accompany independence and feared Japan. The elite nevertheless ritualistically clamored for independence, finding eager listeners
among traditionally anti-imperialist Democrats in the United States. When the Democrats won the presidency in 1912, the Wilson administration introduced a program of "Filipinization," giving Filipinos more seats on the governing executive council and larger roles in the bureaucracy. In 1916, Congress passed the Jones Act, committing the United States to independence as soon as the Filipinos could establish a "stable government." The pledge was vaguely worded, to be sure, but it was still unprecedented. No imperial nation to this point had promised independence or even autonomy.
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By the time TR took office, the United States was poised to fulfill the dream of a canal across the Central American isthmus. In late 1901, after extensive deliberation, a private commission recommended that it be built across Nicaragua, which was closer to the United States, had a more favorable climate, and posed fewer engineering challenges than the rival site in Panama. Within six months, the United States had shifted to Panama. Fearing the loss of its sizeable investment, the French company that had failed to build a canal across Panama and its redoubtable agent Philippe Bunau-Varilla reduced the price for its concession and mounted a frantic lobbying campaign. Its chief agent, the unscrupulous and powerful New York lawyer William Nelson Cromwell, spent lavishly and may have bribed key congressmen. The lobbyists even placed on the desks of senators as a warning against that route stamps portraying a Nicaraguan volcano belching forth tons of lava. Meanwhile, an engineering firm concluded that Panama's technical problems could be managed. Congress in June 1903 voted overwhelmingly for that route.
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Only Colombia now stood in the way. Although separated from Panama by a stretch of impenetrable jungle, Colombia had withstood countless revolutions to maintain its precarious hold over the isthmus. Having just suffered a long civil war, it desperately needed money and was sensitive to questions of its sovereignty. When Hay negotiated a treaty giving Colombia $10 million with annual payments of $250,000 and the United States a one-hundred-year lease over a six-mile strip of land, Colombian politicians understandably balked. They did not want to lose the treaty, but they feared giving away so much for so little. For reasons noble and petty, they hoped by holding out to get a better deal.

Colombian rejection of the treaty set in motion powerful forces. Panamanians eager for independence and U.S. largesse plotted yet another
revolt. They were encouraged by the indefatigable Bunau-Varilla, who feared going home empty-handed and sought to manipulate the political situation to salvage his clients' investment. Outraged at Colombia's "obstruction," Roosevelt and Hay made no effort to understand its legitimate concerns or to exploit its continuing interest. They were not to be deterred by a pipsqueak nation. Roosevelt privately denounced the Colombians as "contemptible little creatures," "jack rabbits," and "homicidal corruptionists." He did not instigate the rebellion—he knew he did not have to. He and Hay dealt with Bunau-Varilla discreetly. But they made clear they would not obstruct a revolt, and their timely dispatch of warships to the isthmus prevented Colombia from landing troops to suppress the uprising. A stray jackass and a "Chinaman" were the lone casualties in a relatively bloodless revolution. The United States recognized the new government with unseemly haste.
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Having contrived to secure appointment as envoy to the United States, the opportunistic Bunau-Varilla moved swiftly to consummate the deal. Even before the revolution, he had drafted a declaration of independence and constitution for Panama. His wife had designed a flag (later rejected because it too closely resembled Old Glory). Determined to complete the transaction before real Panamanians could get to Washington, he negotiated a treaty drafted by Hay with his assistance and far more favorable to the United States than the one Colombia had rejected. The United States got complete sovereignty in perpetuity over a zone ten miles wide. Panama gained the same payment promised Colombia. More important for the short run, it got a U.S. promise of protection for its newly won independence. Bunau-Varilla signed the treaty a mere four hours before the Panamanians stepped from the train in Washington. Nervous about its future and dependent on the United States, Panama approved the treaty without seeing it.
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Colombia, obviously, was the big loser. Panama got nominal independence and a modest stipend, but at the cost of a sizeable chunk of its territory, its most precious national asset, and the mixed blessings of a U.S. protectorate. Panamanian gratitude soon turned to resentment against a deal Hay conceded was "vastly advantageous" for the United States, "not so advantageous" for Panama. TR vigorously defended his actions, and some scholars have exonerated him.
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Even by the low standards of his
day, his insensitive and impulsive behavior toward Colombia is hard to defend. Root summed it up best. Following an impassioned Rooseveltian defense before the cabinet, the secretary of war retorted in the sexual allusions he seemed to favor: "You have shown that you have been accused of seduction and you have conclusively proven that you were guilty of rape."
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Although journalists criticized the president and Congress investigated, Americans generally agreed that the noble ends justified the dubious means. Even before completion of the project in 1914, the canal became a symbol of national pride. The United States succeeded where Europe had failed. It wiped out yellow fever and surmounted enormous engineering challenges. The canal symbolized for Americans their ingenuity and resourcefulness rather than imperialism; "the greatest engineering wonder of the ages," it was hailed, "a distinctively American triumph." Its symbolic importance in turn gave them a special attachment to it that make subsequent adjustments difficult.
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