How to Hide an Empire

Home > Other > How to Hide an Empire > Page 50
How to Hide an Empire Page 50

by Daniel Immerwahr


  58 he identified as white: Albizu listed his race as “white” on his Selective Service questionnaire in World War II according to John M. Hansell, Report 100–47403, July 5, 1944, Albizu FBI File, sec. 3. Albizu never denied his nonwhite ancestry, he simply rejected the “one-drop” racial classification system.

  59 his wife mistook: Meneses de Albizu Campos, “Como conoci.”

  60 a humiliating episode: Described in Carl E. Stanford, Report 100–3906, May 26, 1943, Albizu FBI File, sec. 2. Andrea Friedman cautions against making too much of this incident in Citizenship in Cold War America: National Security State and the Possibilities of Dissent (Amherst, MA, 2014), 145–46.

  61 He arrived in Boston too late: Albizu in Blanchard, Harvard Class of 1916. Albizu’s reactions to his Southern journey are described in Ribes Tovar, Albizu, 20–21. An alternative account of Albizu’s radicalization, arguing that he was a nationalist from high school, is Juan Antonio Corretjer, Albizu Campos and the Ponce Massacre (New York, 1965), 9–12.

  62 Jan Smuts: See Mark Mazower, No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations (Princeton, NJ, 2009), especially chap. 1.

  63 “indisputable”: Naoko Shimazu, Japan, Race and Equality: The Racial Equality Proposal of 1919 (London, 1998), 9.

  64 “exploded with enthusiasm”: Sayyid Qutb, A Child from the Village, trans. John Calvert and William Shepard (1946; Syracuse, NY, 2005), 96.

  65 “a bunch of robbers”: Manela, Wilsonian Moment, 195.

  8. WHITE CITY

  1 largest private fortunes: Calculations of wealth across history are difficult. Consulting with economists, Business Insider ranked Rockefeller and Carnegie the two richest humans of all time (Gus Lubin, “The 20 Richest People of All Time,” Business Insider, September 2, 2010, www.businessinsider.com/richest-people-in-history-2010-8).

  2 “It appears to me”: Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward, 2000–1887 (Boston, 1888), 157–58.

  3 “miles of broad streets,” etc.: Ibid., 52.

  4 Burnham: The classic biographies are Charles Moore, Daniel H. Burnham: Architect, Planner of Cities (Boston, 1921), and Thomas S. Hines, Burnham of Chicago: Architect and Planner, rev. ed. (Chicago, 1979). On the connections between Bellamy and Burnham, see Mario Manieri-Elia, “Toward an ‘Imperial City’: Daniel H. Burnham and the City Beautiful Movement,” in The American City: From the Civil War to the New Deal , ed. Giorgio Cuicci et al., trans. Barbara Luigia La Penta (1973; Cambridge, MA, 1979), 1–142.

  5 “megalomania”: Louis H. Sullivan, The Autobiography of an Idea (1924; New York, 1954), 288.

  6 twenty-one million tickets: Reid Badger, The Great American Fair: The World’s Columbian Exposition and American Culture (Chicago, 1979), 131.

  7 “They beheld”: Sullivan, Autobiography, 321.

  8 “ablaze with pity”: Katherine Mayo, The Isles of Fear: The Truth About the Philippines (New York, 1925), 83. Mayo’s reference is to the Philippines in particular.

  9 “Who but a mad dreamer”: Forbes Diary, 1:4, May 21, 1910.

  10 “in the same way”: Manuel Quezon, quoted in Origins of the Philippine Republic: Extracts from the Diaries and Records of Francis Burton Harrison, ed. Michael P. Onorato (Ithaca, NY, 1974), 6.

  11 favorite polo horses: Forbes Diary, 1:5, September 4, 1913.

  12 Gee Strings: Ibid., 1:4, April 15, 1911.

  13 “I remember”: Ibid., 1:3, March 27, 1909.

  14 “they want it”: Ibid., 1:1, February 1, 1904.

  15 “knew exactly”: Ibid., 1:1, 439n.

  16 “believe in it”: Ibid., 1:3, July 18, 1910.

  17 “ancient pest-hole”: Mayo, Isles of Fear, 84.

  18 “It has the crookedest streets”: George A. Miller, Interesting Manila (Manila, 1906), 54.

  19 “constant terror”: Helen Herron Taft, Recollections of Full Years (New York, 1914), 254, 256.

  20 torching an entire district: Reynaldo C. Ileto, “Cholera and the Origins of the American Sanitary Order in the Philippines,” in Discrepant Histories: Translocal Essays on Philippine Culture, ed. Vicente L. Rafael (Philadelphia, 1995), 51–82.

  21 “Manila has before it”: D. H. Burnham, assisted by Peirce Anderson, “Report on the Improvement of Manila, P.I.,” June 28, 1905, 33, folder 7, box 57, ser. 5, Burnham Collection. On the relationship between Burnham’s plans and Manila’s decimation, see Estela Duque, “Militarization of the City,” Fabrications 19 (2009): 48–67.

  22 “Because every section”: Burnham, “Improvement of Manila,” 19.

  23 “world famous resort,” etc.: Ibid., 25.

  24 “seems to meet”: Forbes Diary, 1:1, January 5, 1905.

  25 “If one has capital”: Moore, Burnham, 1:73.

  26 his Plan of Chicago: See William E. Parsons, “Burnham as Pioneer in City Planning,” Architectural Record 38 (1915): 13–31; Moore, Burnham; Hines, Burnham; and especially Carl Smith, The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City (Chicago, 2006). Details drawn from Smith’s book.

  27 Chicago voters approved: Smith, Plan of Chicago, 133.

  28 In the Philippines: On Burnham and colonial architecture, see, besides the biographies, Thomas S. Hines, “Daniel H. Burnham and American Architectural Planning in the Philippines,” Pacific History Review 41 (1972): 33–53; Robert R. Reed, City of Pines: The Origins of Baguio as a Colonial Hill Station and Regional Capital (Berkeley, CA, 1976); Winand Klassen, Architecture in the Philippines: Filipino Building in a Cross-Cultural Context (Cebu City, 1986), chap. 5; David Brody, “Building Empire: Architecture and American Imperialism in the Philippines,” Journal of Asian American Studies 4 (2001): 123–45; Gerard Lico, Arkitekturang Filipino: A History of Architecture and Urbanism in the Philippines (Quezon City, 2008), chap. 5; Christopher Vernon, “Daniel Hudson Burnham and the American City Imperial,” Thesis Eleven 123 (2014): 80–105; and Rebecca Tinio McKenna, American Imperial Pastoral: The Architecture of U.S. Colonialism in the Philippines (Chicago, 2017).

  29 No living Filipino: The one Filipino name that appears in Burnham’s Manila plan is that of “Dr. Razal [sic],” i.e., the late Jose Rizal, mentioned (once, glancingly) in Burnham’s one-paragraph history of Manila from 1571 to the onset of U.S. rule. Thanks to Margaret Garb for pointing out Burnham’s isolation from Filipinos.

  30 Three days after: A. N. Rebori, “The Work of William E. Parsons in the Philippine Islands,” Architectural Record 40 (1917): 433.

  31 “we so fixed it”: Forbes Diary, 1:1, 392n.

  32 “charged with”: William E. Parsons, Annual Report of the Consulting Architect, November 17, 1905, to June 30, 1906, 2, folder 9, box 57, ser. 5, Burnham Collection.

  33 Parsons: See Rebori, “Parsons”; Thomas S. Hines, “American Modernism in the Philippines: The Forgotten Architecture of William E. Parsons,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 32 (1973), 316–26; Michelangelo E. Dakudao, “The Imperial Consulting Architect: William E. Parsons (1872–1939),” Bulletin of the American Historical Collection 12 (1994): 7–43; and Lico, Arkitekturang Filipino, chap. 5.

  34 “architect’s dream”: Parsons, quoted in Forbes Diary, 1:1, March 12, 1906.

  35 “large and rapidly increasing”: Parsons, 1906 Annual Report, 10.

  36 he standardized: Ibid.; Rebori, “Parsons,” 433; and Lico, Arkitekturang Filipino, 262–72.

  37 howls of protest: Ralph Harrington Doane, “The Story of American Architecture in the Philippines,” Architectural Review 8 (1919): 121.

  38 “I doubt if this method”: Rebori, “Parsons,” 433.

  39 “the Burnham plan is sacred”: Quoted in Hines, “Burnham in the Philippines,” 51.

  40 “more deeply interested” … “to formulate my plans”: “Plan Queen City for the Far East,” Chicago Tribune, September 18, 1904.

  41 “Stood trip well” … “How is the horse?”: Pershing, My Life Before the World War, 253.

  42 four thousand men: Reed, City of Pines, 109.


  43 “The Filipinos so far”: Forbes Diary, 1:1, September 17, 1904.

  44 Devil’s Slide: W. Cameron Forbes, Notes on Early History of Baguio (Manila, 1933), 32.

  45 “Few days pass”: Forbes Diary, 1:1, September 17, 1904. On the road, see Greg Bankoff, “‘These Brothers of Ours’: Poblete’s Obreros and the Road to Baguio 1903–1905,” Journal of Social History 38 (2005): 1047–72, and McKenna, American Imperial Pastoral, chap. 2.

  46 “gives the red corpuscles”: Forbes Diary, 1:1, January 1, 1905.

  47 could not own land: One land seizure in Baguio was challenged and eventually overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes chided that colonialism in the Philippines should not proceed “like the settlement of the white race in the United States.” Its purpose should be “to do justice to the natives, not to exploit their country for private gain.” Carino v. Insular Government, 212 U.S. 449, 458 (1909). The story is in McKenna, American Imperial Pastoral, chap. 3.

  48 “could be made equal”: D. H. Burnham, “Preliminary Plan of Baguio Province of Benguet, P.I.,” June 27, 1905, 2, folder 3, box 56, ser. 5, Burnham Collection.

  49 “unusual monumental possibilities”: D. H. Burnham, “Report on the Proposed Plan of the City of Baguio, Province of Benguet, P.I.,” October 3, 1905, 2, in folder 4, box 56, ser. 5, Burnham Collection.

  50 “frankly dominate”: Burnham, “Preliminary Plan of Baguio,” 1.

  51 “equal to the finest”: Forbes’s Prospectus of the Baguio Country Club, quoted in Virginia Benitez Licuanan, Filipinos and Americans: A Love-Hate Relationship (Baguio, 1982), 71.

  52 “monumental buildings where”: Burnham, “Proposed Plan of Baguio,” 6.

  53 “blessed relief” … “the swarm”: Forbes Diary, 1:5, March 9, 1913.

  54 “every three days”: Ibid., 1:3, May 14, 1908.

  55 6 were Filipino: Licuanan, Filipinos and Americans, 91.

  56 “I get up leisurely,” etc.: Forbes Diary, 1:5, March 9, 1913.

  57 “I have let”: Ibid., 1:3, May 14, 1908.

  58 triumph of modern engineering: S. R. Afable, “Most Progressive City,” in J. C. Orendain, Philippine Wonderland (Baguio, 1940), 35–40.

  59 “admire the audacity”: “America in the Philippines, Part VII,” London Times, December 1, 1910.

  60 “Stingy towards”: La Vanguardia, June 20, 1912, quoted in Reed, City of Pines, 108.

  61 one in four … one in twenty: Cristina Evangelista Torres, The Americanization of Manila, 1898–1921 (Quezon City, 2010), 43.

  62 “It is impossible”: Hines, “Modernism in the Philippines,” 325.

  63 “nailed down”: Parsons, “Burnham as Pioneer,” 24.

  64 Juan Arellano: Surprisingly few accounts of Arellano’s life and career exist. The best are I. V. Mallari, “Architects and Architecture in the Philippines,” Philippine Magazine, August 1930, 156–57, 186–94; Ernesto T. Bitong, “Portrait of an Architect in Retirement,” Sunday Times Magazine (Manila), June 16, 1957, 3–6; Dominador Castañeda, Art in the Philippines (Quezon City, 1964), 94–95; Klassen, Architecture in the Philippines, chap. 5; and Lico, Arkitekturang Filipino, chap. 5.

  65 it didn’t win: Report of the Philippine Exposition Board to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (St. Louis, 1904), 87.

  66 Jamestown Exposition: Bitong, “Portrait of an Architect.”

  67 disqualified: Castañeda, Art in the Philippines, 94.

  68 Olmsted: Mallari, “Architects and Architecture,” 190.

  69 “the most magnificent”: A.V.H. Hartendorp, “The Legislative Building,” Philippine Education Magazine, October 1926, quoted in Rodrigo D. Perez III, Arkitektura: An Essay on the American Colonial and Contemporary Traditions in Philippine Architecture (Manila, 1994), 5.

  70 “Here is a stronger”: “Designed by Filipino Brains, and Built by Filipino Hands,” The Philippine Republic, February 1927, 5.

  71 he later regretted: Arellano’s striking repudiation of the “Occidental influence” is articulated in “Fine and Applied Arts in the Philippines: An Interview with Juan M. Arellano,” Philippines Herald Year Book, September 29, 1934, 53, 58, 62.

  72 “architecturally, the landmark”: Nick Joaquin, Almanac for Manileños (Manila, 1979), 213, 214. Later, Arellano would adopt other styles, notably Art Deco.

  73 “greatest architectural success”: Hines, “Burnham in the Philippines,” 50.

  9. DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS

  1 “a picnic”: Richard Harding Davis, The Cuban and Porto Rican Campaigns (New York, 1898), 299–300.

  2 “hordes of pallid refugees”: Bailey K. Ashford, A Soldier in Science: The Autobiography of Bailey K. Ashford (New York, 1934), 3. My account of Ashford relies also on Bailey K. Ashford and Pedro Gutiérrez Igaravídez, “Summary of a Ten Years’ Campaign Against Hookworm Disease in Porto Rico,” Journal of the American Medical Association 54 (1910): 1757–61; Bailey K. Ashford and Pedro Gutiérrez Igaravídez, Uncinariasis (Hookworm Disease) in Porto Rico: A Medical and Economic Problem (Washington, DC, 1911); Warwick Anderson, “Going Through the Motions: American Public Health and Colonial ‘Mimicry,’” American Literary History 14 (2002): 686–719; Nicole Trujillo-Pagan, Modern Colonization by Medical Intervention: U.S. Medicine in Puerto Rico (Leiden, Netherlands, 2013); and especially José Amador, Medicine and Nation Building in the Americas, 1890–1940 (Nashville, 2015), chap. 3.

  3 Wood’s attention: Ashford, Soldier in Science, 17–18.

  4 came to see himself: In ibid., Ashford calls Puerto Rico “home” (325), describes himself as a “Puerto Rican” (412), and speaks critically of “our northern brothers” on the mainland (332).

  5 “flabby flesh”: Ibid., 41.

  6 “It was unthinkable”: Ibid., 42.

  7 “oval thing”: Ibid., 4.

  8 “like a veil”: Ibid., 43.

  9 nine in ten rural: “Report of the Porto Rico Anemia Commission,” 1904, in Ashford and Gutiérrez, Uncinariasis, 136.

  10 long tunnel: Steven Palmer, “Migrant Clinics and Hookworm Science: Peripheral Origins of International Health, 1840–1920,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 83 (2009): 688–90.

  11 two-thirds of Puerto Ricans: José G. Amador, “‘Redeeming the Tropics’: Public Health and National Identity in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Brazil, 1890–1940” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 2008), 119.

  12 leading cause: “Report of the Porto Rico Anemia Commission,” 1904, in Ashford and Gutiérrez, Uncinariasis, 127–28.

  13 “carrying a bottle”: Ashford, Soldier in Science, 45.

  14 nearly 30 percent: Ashford and Gutiérrez, Uncinariasis, 35. The two were joined in their work by three other physicians: Walter W. King and, later, Isaac González Martínez and Francisco Sein y Sein.

  15 “What on earth,” etc.: Story recounted (by Stiles) in Mark Sullivan, Our Times: The United States, 1900–1925 (New York, 1930), 3:319–20. See also Burton J. Hendrick, The Training of an American: The Earlier Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, 1855–1913 (Boston, 1928), 370–71.

  16 give a million dollars: My account of the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission is from John Ettling, The Germ of Laziness: Rockefeller Philanthropy and Public Health in the New South (Cambridge, MA, 1981).

  17 local sheriff: Charles Wardell Stiles, “Early History, in Part Esoteric, of the Hookworm (Uncinariasis) Campaign in Our Southern United States,” Journal of Parasitology 25 (1939): 298.

  18 Tampa newspaper: Sullivan, Our Times, 328.

  19 “Six thousand years ago”: Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth (New York, 1962), 33.

  20 were as prideful: Ashford and Gutiérrez, Uncinariasis, 30–31.

  21 Southern tent revival: Discussed with great clarity in Ettling, Germ of Laziness, chaps. 6–7.

  22 “preach the gospel”: “Second Report of the Porto Rico Anemia Commission,” 1906, in Ashford and Gutiérrez, Uncinariasis, 170.

  23 “utterly inadequate”: Ashford and Gutiérrez, Uncinariasis, 19.

  24
“sanitary ordinance” … “energetically enforced” … “liberty”: “Third Report of the Porto Rico Anemia Commission,” 1907, in ibid., 213, 214.

  25 campaign fizzled: Ashford, Soldier in Science, 71–72, 87–88. On the mainland versus colonial hookworm campaigns, see Anderson, “Going Through the Motions,” 701–702.

  26 enduring economic effects: Hoyt Bleakley, “Disease and Development: Evidence from Hookworm Eradication in the American South,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 122 (2007): 73–117.

  27 first global health campaign: John Farley, To Cast Out Disease: A History of the International Health Division of the Rockefeller Foundation, 1913–1951 (New York, 2004); Steven Palmer, Launching Global Health: The Caribbean Odyssey of the Rockefeller Foundation (Ann Arbor, MI, 2010).

  28 headed off the direst: Ashford and Gutiérrez, Uncinariasis, 21–22.

  29 afflicted eight or nine in ten: Arnold Dana, Porto Rico’s Case, Outcome of American Sovereignty (New Haven, CT, 1928), 39; Lawrence D. Granger, “A Study of the Rural Social Problems in Porto Rico” (M.A. thesis, University of Southern California, 1930), 62–63; and Farley, Cast Out Disease, chap. 5.

  30 killed hundreds, etc.: Thomas Mathews, Puerto Rican Politics and the New Deal (Gainesville, FL, 1960), chap. 1.

  31 sugar prices and wages: Emilio Pantojas-Garcia, “Puerto Rican Populism Revisited: The PPD During the 1940s,” Journal of Latin American Studies 21 (1989): 523.

  32 Incomes in Puerto Rico: James L. Dietz, Economic History of Puerto Rico: Institutional Change and Capitalist Development (Princeton, NJ, 1986), 139.

  33 “among the lower”: James R. Beverley, quoted in Annette B. Ramírez de Arellano and Conrad Seipp, Colonialism, Catholicism, and Contraception (Chapel Hill, NC, 1983), 186n56.

  34 “only solution,” etc.: “Top Secret” annex to memorandum by Charles W. Taussig, March 15, 1945, quoted in William Roger Louis, Imperialism at Bay: The United States and the Decolonization of the British Empire (New York, 1978), 486–87n.

 

‹ Prev