God's Arbiters: Americans and the Philippines, 1898 - 1902
- ISBN-10
- 0199831629
- ISBN-13
- 9780199831623
- Category
- Literary Criticism
- Pages
- 288
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2011-06-01
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press, USA
- Author
- Susan K. Harris
Description
When the U.S. liberated the Philippines from Spanish rule in 1898, the exploit was hailed at home as a great moral victory, an instance of Uncle Sam freeing an oppressed country from colonial tyranny. The next move, however, was hotly contested: should the U.S. annex the archipelago? The disputants did agree on one point: that the United States was divinely appointed to bring democracy--and with it, white Protestant culture--to the rest of the world. They were, in the words of U.S. Senator Albert Beveridge, "God's arbiters," a civilizing force with a righteous role to play on the world stage. Mining letters, speeches, textbooks, poems, political cartoons and other sources, Susan K. Harris examines the role of religious rhetoric and racial biases in the battle over annexation. She offers a provocative reading both of the debates' religious framework and of the evolution of Christian national identity within the U.S. The book brings to life the personalities who dominated the discussion, figures like the bellicose Beveridge and the segregationist Senator Benjamin Tillman. It also features voices from outside U.S. geopolitical boundaries that responded to the Americans' venture into global imperialism: among them England's "imperial" poet Rudyard Kipling, Nicaragua's poet/diplomat Ruben Dario, and the Philippines' revolutionary leaders Emilio Aguinaldo and Apolinario Mabini. At the center of this dramatis personae stands Mark Twain, an influential partisan who was, for many, the embodiment of America. Twain had supported the initial intervention but quickly changed his mind, arguing that the U.S. decision to annex the archipelago was a betrayal of the very principles the U.S. claimed to promote. Written with verve and animated by a wide range of archival research, God's Arbiters reveals the roots of current debates over textbook content, evangelical politics, and American exceptionalism-shining light on our own times as it recreates the culture surrounding America's global mission at the turn into the twentieth century.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2011-06-29
- 257 pages
- Paperback
- Oxford University Press
-
- 2011-01-15
- 288 pages
- Ebook
- Oxford University Press
Similar books
-
God's Arbiters: Americans and the Philippines, 1898-1902
By Susan K. HarrisDrawing on documents ranging from Noah Webster's 1832 History of the United States to Congressional speeches and newspaper articles, and the anti-imperialist writings of Mark Twain, this book assesses the attitudes of Americans and the ...
-
Mark Twain, the World, and Me: Following the Equator, Then and Now
By Susan K. HarrisEdited by Edgar Marquess Branch, Michael Barry Frank, Kenneth M. Sanderson, Harriet E. Smith, Lin Salamo, and Richard Bucci. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Mark Twain's Satires and Burlesques. Edited by Franklin Rogers.
-
A Duterte Reader: Critical Essays on Rodrigo Duterte's Early Presidency
By Nicole Curato“God's Arbiters: Americans and the Philippines, 1898–1902/Empire's Proxy: American Literature and US Imperialism in the Philippines.” American literature: A Journal of Literary History, Criticism and Bibliography 86 (1):189–91.
-
American Settler Colonialism: A History
By W. HixsonC. Joseph Genetin-Pilawa, Crooked Paths to Allotment: The Fight Over Federal Indian Policy after the Civil War (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 156; Banner, How the Indians Lost Their Land, 257.
-
Liberty and American Anti-Imperialism: 1898-1909
By M. CullinaneThis book provides a study of the American anti-imperialist movement during its most active years of opposition to US foreign policy, from 1898 to 1909.
-
A People's History of the U.S. Military
By Michael Bellesiles... 2002); Ronald B. Frankum Jr., Like Rolling Thunder: The Air War in Vietnam, 1964–1975 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005). 55. Marilyn B. Young, The Vietnam Wars, 1945–1990 (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 129–32, 191. 56.
-
Legalist Empire: International Law and American Foreign Relations in the Early Twentieth Century
By Benjamin Allen Coates... April 7-8, 1899 (Philadelphia: American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1899), 22, 47. Kramer, “Empires, Exceptions, and Anglo-Saxons”; Susan K. Harris, God's Arbiters: Americans and the Philippines, 1898-1902 (New York: ...
-
America and the Just War Tradition: A History of U.S. Conflicts
By J. Daryl Charles, Mark David HallAmerica and the Just War Tradition examines and evaluates each of America’s major wars from a just war perspective.
-
The American Yawp: A Massively Collaborative Open U.S. History Textbook, Vol. 2: Since 1877
By Ben Wright, Joseph L. LockeOver 300 historians joined together to create the book they wanted for their own students—an accessible, synthetic narrative that reflects the best of recent historical scholarship and provides a jumping-off point for discussions in the U ...
-
Global Faith, Worldly Power: Evangelical Internationalism and U.S. Empire
By John Corrigan, Melani McAlister, Axel R. SchaferAssessing the grand American evangelical missionary venture to convert the world, this international group of leading scholars reveals how theological imperatives have intersected with worldly imaginaries from the nineteenth century to the ...