How to Hide an Empire

by Daniel Immerwahr

  *

  It was precisely to address the yawning chasm of ignorance around the colonies that a group of Omaha businessmen staged the First Greater America Colonial Exposition. The late nineteenth century was a great time for fairs, and this one pulled out all the usual stops: mock battles,31 speeches, parades, and a “World’s Congress of Beauties.” The main attraction, though, was colonized people. The organizers promised “over a thousand natives of Uncle Sam’s insular possessions”—Filipinos,32 Cubans, Puerto Ricans, and Hawaiians. The Filipino contingent would include not only “civilized Tagals” but “half-wild,33 monkey-like dwarfs of the interior of Luzon.”

  Ostensibly, this was a way for the public to meet the people at the center of the empire controversy. But it’s telling to note how the public would meet them: not giving lectures or speaking with fairgoers, but living on display in model villages, as if they were animals in a zoo.

  A “large encampment of Indians from all the various tribes of the great West” would be there,34 too, just to round out the picture.

  Fulfilling these promises meant recruiting colonized subjects and hauling them to the mainland. This wasn’t easy. Even with the support of the army and the personal backing of President McKinley, the fair’s organizers could induce only thirty-five Filipinos to board the USS Indiana for San Francisco.35 And getting them onto the ship turned out to be the easy part. When the Indiana arrived, immigration authorities wouldn’t let them disembark.

  The Filipinos, languishing for days on board, protested. They were, they maintained, U.S. citizens, fully entitled to move from one part of their new country to another. But the port officers refused to budge. In their eyes, the Filipinos were foreigners and, worse, Asian foreigners, subject to the same racial exclusion laws that prevented Chinese workers from entering.

  The Greater America Exposition, Omaha, 1899

  The Greater America Exposition had intended to explore the questions of empire. Yet here its organizers had inadvertently raised the knottiest one of all. The territories were on the maps, yes. But were the people who lived in them “Americans”?

  *

  The Filipinos made it to Omaha (though the secretary of war had to personally promise that they would return home after the fair). There, they made an impression. “They are stylish dressers,”36 wrote the Omaha Bee, resembling less a “race of savages” than “a lot of dudes” with their canes, derby hats, and white trousers. Fairgoers expecting the Filipino band to offer exotic folk music were surprised when it struck up a lively rendition of “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight,” the theme song for Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. Culturally, the fair’s Filipinos seemed to embrace their new nationality.

  Legally, however, things remained unresolved. The Fourteenth Amendment granted citizenship to anyone born in the United States. Did that include the territories?

  The 1898–1900 annexations had already raised the question of what the United States was, in language and on maps. Now it was coming up in law. And it made its way to the Supreme Court, via a series of connected cases,37 in 1901.

  Weighty legal questions often turn around trivial disputes. Certainly the cases that carried this question up to the Supreme Court seemed piddling: whether an importer shipping oranges from Puerto Rico to New York had to pay a tariff, or whether a soldier returning from the Philippines owed taxes on the diamond rings he’d acquired there. But under them lay a deeper question. The Constitution prohibits taxing commerce between parts of the United States. Did that rule cover the overseas territories, too? In other words, were they part of the country?

  The government, which had collected the tariffs, sought to defend its actions. It argued that the term the United States was ambiguous. The name could refer to all the area under U.S. jurisdiction, but it could also refer, in a narrower sense, to the union of states. The Constitution’s references to “the United States,” the argument continued, were meant in that narrow sense, to refer to the states alone. Territories thus had no right to constitutional protections, for the simple reason that the Constitution didn’t apply to them. As one justice summarized the logic, the Constitution was “the supreme law of the land,”38 but the territories were “not part of the ‘land.’”

  This might have come as a surprise to residents of the western territories, who had assumed that they had the same constitutional protections as their compatriots in the states. But, the attorney general maintained, that was a polite fiction with little basis in law. Mincing few words, he reminded the justices that Congress could impose laws on the territories “without asking the consent of the inhabitants,39 even against their consent and against their protest, as it has frequently done.” He brought up Congress’s dismantling of Indian Country, and he noted that Alaskans had “no right to elect a single officer, or to form a city, or to establish a political system or anything whatever for their own protection.” The overseas territories—which he referred to openly as “colonies”—were no different. The Filipinos in San Francisco Bay had it wrong; they were subjects, not citizens.

  This was precisely the sort of talk that raised anti-imperialists’ hackles, but the attorney general plowed on. “To be called an American subject is no disgrace,”40 he consoled. Moreover, he continued, the government needed the ability to rule its possessions as colonies. This was the age of empire. What if the United States were to annex Egypt, Sudan, part of Central Africa, or “a section of the Chinese Empire”? Would it be forced to apply the Constitution to those places, too? “A great world power, extending its domain from the frozen seas on the North to where the encircling palm trees grow in the Pacific islands, must not be bound by rules too strict or too confining.”

  The argument prevailed. The court affirmed that “the Constitution deals with states” and that territorial rights were at Congress’s discretion. Congress could,41 if it wished, “incorporate” territories into the union and bring them under the protection of the Constitution, as the court judged that it had in the case of the western territories. Some years later, the court also concluded that Alaska and Hawai‘i, the territories beyond the mainland that seemed the most conducive to white settlement, had also been “incorporated.” But the point was that incorporation was not automatic, and the court repeatedly denied that Congress had ever incorporated the former Spanish colonies.

  Invoking the notion that there were different “senses” of “the United States,” a concurring justice articulated the reasoning in a notoriously convoluted phrase. Puerto Rico was “foreign to the United States in a domestic sense,”42 he explained, “because the island had not been incorporated into the United States, but was merely appurtenant thereto as a possession.”

  Lawyers with long memories would have recognized in that unusual word, appurtenant, a reference to the Navassa Island case of more than a decade before. There, the defense had argued that although the guano islands were “appertaining to the United States,” they weren’t part of it, and thus weren’t subject to U.S. law. The Supreme Court had disagreed. But whereas the Navassa case had affirmed the government’s power to apply federal laws in its territories, the new rulings denied territorial inhabitants the right to federal protections.

  *

  The 1901 rulings are collectively known as the Insular Cases (the term can also encompass some later cases). But they are not the cases for which the turn-of-the-century court is best known. Eight of the nine justices who decided the 1901 Insular Cases also decided Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the notorious case that upheld the constitutionality of “separate but equal” Jim Crow institutions.

  On the face of it, the two rulings have much in common. Plessy permitted segregation, the division of the country into separate spaces, some reserved for whites, others for nonwhites. The Insular Cases split the country into what one justice called “practically two national governments,”43 one bound by the Bill of Rights, the other not.

  And, like Plessy, the Insular Cases were about race. The main majority deci
sion contained warnings about including “savages” and “alien races” within the constitutional fold.44 Doing so, one of the justices concurred, would “wreck our institutions,”45 perhaps leading the “whole structure of the government” to be “overthrown.”

  Yet there is one critical difference between Plessy and the Insular Cases. In 1954, in Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court overturned Plessy, declaring “separate but equal” facilities to be incapable of securing equality under the law. Today we regard Plessy as one of the court’s greatest mistakes, an infamously racist ruling that warped the Constitution to deprive millions of citizens of their rights.

  The Insular Cases are far less well-known. Until very recently, it was not unusual for constitutional scholars to have never heard of them.46 But they are nevertheless still on the books, and they are still cited as good law. The court has repeatedly upheld the principle that the Constitution applies to some parts of the country but not others. That’s why a citizen on the mainland has a constitutional right to trial by jury, but when that citizen travels to Puerto Rico, the right vanishes.

  Similarly, the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship guarantee to anyone born in the United States doesn’t apply to the unincorporated territories. In them, citizenship came late and only after struggle. What is more, it arrived as “statutory citizenship,” meaning that it was secured by legislation rather than by the Constitution and could therefore be rescinded.

  Puerto Ricans became citizens in 1917, U.S. Virgin Islanders in 1927, and Guamanians in 1950, though in all cases, because their citizenship is statutory, it can be revoked. Filipinos were never made citizens in their forty-seven years under U.S. rule. American Samoans, despite having been “American” since 1900, are still legally only “U.S. nationals.” They are allowed to fight in the armed forces, which they do in extraordinary numbers—theirs is ranked top of all 885 U.S. Army recruiting stations.47 But they are not citizens, as the Fourteenth Amendment does not apply to them.

  The significance of the Insular Cases goes beyond the law. In distinguishing between “incorporated” and “unincorporated” parts of the United States, these cases enshrined the notion that some places in the country weren’t truly part of the country. Some territories—namely, the ones filling up with white settlers—could hope for statehood. Others would hang, as the chief justice put it, like a “disembodied shade,48 in an intermediate state of ambiguous existence for an indefinite period.”

  That “indefinite period” continues to this day. All the territories that the court deemed “incorporated” have become states. All the territories that it ruled “unincorporated” remain territories. Today, around four million people live in those unincorporated territories—people who have no representation in Congress, who cannot vote for president, and whose rights and citizenship remain a gift from Washington. They could seek statehood, as indeed a large number in Puerto Rico would like to do. But statehood is, like so many other things, at the sole discretion of Congress—a legislative body in which neither Puerto Ricans nor other colonial subjects have a vote.

  6

  SHOUTING THE BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM

  The Greater America Exposition opened on July 1,1 1899, with boisterous celebration. Thousands flocked to Omaha to take it all in: the World’s Congress of Beauties, a Moorish palace, a rainbow-colored electric fountain, the Filipino band, and a reenactment of Dewey’s triumph at Manila Bay. Veterans of the war with Spain, including a troop of Rough Riders, marched through the grounds to loud cheers.

  The last in line, though, the First Nebraska Volunteers, raised a few eyebrows. The Denver Evening Post couldn’t help but notice that “there was something pathetic about their appearance.”2 Their uniforms were tattered, they bore injuries, and they looked harrowed.

  They had come from the Philippines.

  *

  It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The war had begun with a promising alliance: the United States and the Philippines against Spain. With Commodore Dewey controlling the sea and Emilio Aguinaldo racking up victories on land, it moved quickly. Dewey ran a naval blockade and supplied Aguinaldo with arms; Aguinaldo used those arms to dislodge the Spaniards.

  For Aguinaldo, who had led a failed revolt against Spain in 1896, Dewey’s arrival was a deus ex machina. “The Americans, not from mercenary motives,3 but for the sake of humanity and the lamentations of so many persecuted people, have considered it opportune to extend their protecting mantle to our beloved country,” read a message from his junta. “Where you see the American flag flying, assemble in numbers; they are our redeemers!”

  Aguinaldo’s faith in the United States was buoyed by repeated assurances from Dewey and other U.S. officials that once the war was over, Filipinos would have their independence. Aguinaldo noted with consternation that none of these promises ever appeared in writing, but he pressed on. In June 1898 he established a government (making himself its “dictator”) and issued its declaration of independence: “Under the protection of the Powerful and Humanitarian Nation, the United States of America,4 we do hereby proclaim and declare solemnly in the name by authority of the people of the Philippine Islands, that they are and have the right to be free and in de pen dent.”

  The new government quickly went about the business of state-building.5 Within months, it had drafted a constitution, established a capital, started a newspaper, opened schools, established a university, issued currency, appointed diplomats, and levied taxes. It had a flag, too. The Philippine Declaration of Independence set the flag’s colors as red, white, and blue, “commemorating the flag of the United States of North America,6 as a manifestation of our profound gratitude towards this Great Nation for its disinterested protection.”

  The trouble started in August. The siege of Manila—undertaken jointly by the U.S. Army and the Philippine Army of Liberation—ended when Spain surrendered the city to the United States alone. After U.S. troops entered the city, locking out their comrades in arms, McKinley issued his declaration. There would be “no joint occupation with the insurgents,”7 and the Filipinos “must recognize the military occupation and authority of the United States.”

  Thus began a standoff. The United States held Manila and ruled the waves. Aguinaldo’s government claimed the rest of the country, although that claim was notional in the less populated and culturally distinct south.

  The Philippine troops that had besieged Manila held their positions in the suburbs ringing the city, waiting. U.S. soldiers waited inside the city, biding their time as soldiers often do. Bars opened along the main strip, which the men referred to affectionately as the “Yankee Beer Chute.”8 Prostitutes raced to Manila from Russia,9 Romania, Austria, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, and Japan. It was the sex-work equivalent of a gold rush.

  As time passed, troops on both sides became restless, shouting insults at each other. Hopes for a diplomatic solution were dashed in December, when McKinley’s government signed its treaty with Spain to buy the Philippines for $20 million. That news was “received in the Revolutionary camp like a thunderbolt out of a clear blue sky,” wrote Aguinaldo.10

  McKinley issued a proclamation that the military government of Manila was “to be extended with all possible dispatch to the whole of the ceded territory.”11 Aguinaldo issued a counter-proclamation, denouncing this “violent and aggressive seizure” of the Philippines.12 He established a new government, this time a republic, and took the oath of office as the Philippines’ first president. His inaugural banquet was a sumptuous affair,13 with a European-style menu written in French.

  The more McKinley and Aguinaldo doubled down on their claims to sovereignty, the more skittish Manilans became. In the first week of January 1899, some thirty thousand of them fled the city.14 Two weeks later, a Chinese man tried to kick a Spaniard’s dog, but his wooden shoe flew off his foot and struck a Filipino in the face. Anywhere else, this would have been a nonevent, leading to a fistfight at best. But in Manila, a city on the edge, it was a spark on dry
tinder. Doors banged shut, locks slid into place, guns came out, and city dwellers raced for refuge. “Within an area of twenty-five square miles,15 there was not a man, woman, or child who was not aware that his neighbor was fleeing from some dreadful, unknown monsters,” reported the paper. “All were simultaneously affected by the startling awe inspiring stampede.”

  The International Dog-Shoe-Face Incident subsided with minimal bloodshed. The only casualty was the dog (somebody shot it). But two weeks later, the thing touched off in earnest. Private William W. Grayson and Private Orville H. Miller of the First Nebraska Volunteers (the regiment that would later limp through the parade grounds of the Greater America Exposition) encountered three or four Filipino soldiers while on a nighttime patrol of the Manila suburbs. Grayson ordered them to halt. But who was he to give orders? They ordered him to halt.

  “I thought the best thing to do was shoot,”16 remembered Grayson, and he did. He and Miller shot three Filipinos and then ran back for reinforcements. “Line up, fellows,” Grayson called. “The niggers are in here all through these yards.”

  “The British are coming!” this was not. But as a call to arms, it sufficed. Within hours, the United States had mounted an offensive. The war had begun.17

  *

  Someone following the war from afar might have judged the two armies to be well matched.18 The U.S. Army had about twenty thousand soldiers in or around Manila. The Army of Liberation’s numbers are harder to know, but estimates ranged from fifteen thousand to forty thousand. The United States Army had better weapons, but the Philippine Army knew the terrain.