Essay --

Rudyard Kiplings seminal poem, The White Mans heart and soul resonated amongst the Statesn policymakers in the aftermath of the War of 1898. For a price of cardinal million dollars, the Spanish relinquished their control of the Filipinos to the United States, thereby transforming America into an oerseas empire. As statesmen in Washington considered their new Pacific possession, they viewed the archipelago as a moral liability rather than a strategic asset. The maiden formal evaluation of the prospects for Filipino independence came in February 1900, when President McKinley dispatched the Philippine Commission to Manila to compile a report on the subject. In this paper I consider their assessment through a tender lens. I argue that while McKinleys emissaries strove for objectivity, preconceived notions of national identity, race, and civilisation influenced their judgment. Ultimately, the Commission viewed American-ness as a prerequisite for independence. BackgroundThe Spanish ha d maintained colonial authority over the Philippines since Ferdinand Magellan laid claim to the islands in 1521. For over three hundred years the Spanish government, aided by friars from the Catholic Church, used Manila as a naval base and well-bred the hinterland as a source of cotton. Filipino aristocrats across the archipelago intentional Spanish, and helped to disseminate the Catholic faith to the majority of animists and sabians worshippers of the moon and stars. Although m some(prenominal) friars were disadvantageously engaged in helping the Filipino peasants, over time they gained a reputation for exploitation and corruption. In response to these grievances and to an absence of representation in the colonial legislature, community political leaders began in the early 19... ...mission rejected the prospect of Philippine independence primarily because the population deviated from the western concept of the nation. The masses of the people are without a common speech a nd leave out the sentimentality of a nation. The Filipinos are not a nation, but a variegated assemblage of different tribes and peoples, and their loyalty is still of the tribal reference (pdf one 192). . . their lack of education and political experience, combined with their racial and linguistic diversity, disqualify them, in spite of their mental gifts and domestic virtues, to undertake the projection of governing the archipelago at the present time . . . should our power by any fatality be withdrawn, the Commission believes that the government of the Philippines would speedily lapse into rebellionThe Filipinos are not a nation, and there can be no political being that we call a people,