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History
See other History Articles

Title: Mark Twain on Imperialism
Source: historywiz.com
URL Source: http://www.historywiz.com/primarysources/marktwain-imperialism.htm
Published: Dec 15, 1992
Author: Mark Twain
Post Date: 2006-12-15 21:04:14 by Destro
Keywords: None
Views: 200
Comments: 13

Mark Twain on Imperialism

Mark Twain, The Greatest American Humorist, Returning Home, New York World [London, 10/6/1900]

You ask me about what is called imperialism. Well, I have formed views about that question. I am at the disadvantage of not knowing whether our people are for or against spreading themselves over the face of the globe. I should be sorry if they are, for I don't think that it is wise or a necessary development. As to China, I quite approve of our Government's action in getting free of that complication. They are withdrawing, I understand, having done what they wanted. That is quite right. We have no more business in China than in any other country that is not ours. There is the case of the Philippines. I have tried hard, and yet I cannot for the life of me comprehend how we got into that mess. Perhaps we could not have avoided it -- perhaps it was inevitable that we should come to be fighting the natives of those islands -- but I cannot understand it, and have never been able to get at the bottom of the origin of our antagonism to the natives. I thought we should act as their protector -- not try to get them under our heel. We were to relieve them from Spanish tyranny to enable them to set up a government of their own, and we were to stand by and see that it got a fair trial. It was not to be a government according to our ideas, but a government that represented the feeling of the majority of the Filipinos, a government according to Filipino ideas. That would have been a worthy mission for the United States. But now -- why, we have got into a mess, a quagmire from which each fresh step renders the difficulty of extrication immensely greater. I'm sure I wish I could see what we were getting out of it, and all it means to us as a nation. Mark Twain in America Again, Chicago Tribune [New York, 10/15/1900]

"You've been quoted here as an anti-imperialist."

"Well, I am. A year ago I wasn't. I thought it would be a great thing to give a whole lot of freedom to the Filipinos, but I guess now that it's better to let them give it to themselves. Besides, on looking over the treaty I see we've got to saddle the friars and their churches. I guess we don't want to."

"Then you're for Bryan?"

"I guess not. I'm rather inclined toward McKinley, even if he is an imperialist. But don't ask political questions, for all I know about them is from the English papers."

Mark Twain Home, New York Tribune [New York, 10/15/1900]

Once I was not anti-imperialist. I thought that the rescue of those islands from the government under which they had suffered for three hundred years was a good business for us to be in. But I had not studied the Paris Treaty. When I found that it made us responsible for the protection of the friars and their property I changed my mind.

Mark Twain Home, An Anti-Imperialist, New York Herald [New York, 10/15/1900]

I left these shores, at Vancouver, a red-hot imperialist. I wanted the American eagle to go screaming into the Pacific. It seemed tiresome and tame for it to content itself with the Rockies. Why not spread its wings over the Philippines, I asked myself? And I thought it would be a real good thing to do.

I said to myself, here are a people who have suffered for three centuries. We can make them as free as ourselves, give them a government and country of their own, put a miniature of the American constitution afloat in the Pacific, start a brand new republic to take its place among the free nations of the world. It seemed to me a great task to which we had addressed ourselves.

But I have thought some more, since then, and I have read carefully the treaty of Paris, and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem.

We have also pledged the power of this country to maintain and protect the abominable system established in the Philippines by the Friars.

It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.

Source: From Mark Twain's Weapons of Satire: Anti-Imperialist Writings on the Philippine-American War, Jim Zwick, ed., (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1992).

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#1. To: Destro (#0)

At least he can admit he was snookered and adopt another POV, one more in line with reality. Might be a working defination of sanity.

tom007  posted on  2006-12-15   21:31:08 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


Replies to Comment # 1.

#2. To: tom007 (#1)

My favorite quote from the Spanish American War is just before it started when Hearst sent an illustrator to Cuba to take some photos and do dramatic drawings of the suppossed rebellion then raging against the heavy hand of Spanish rule. After several weeks of trapsing all over Cuba the journalist wired Hearst that there was no war or rebellion and that he wanted to come home. Heart then wired back "Please remain, you supply pictures and I'll supply the war."

This country has a long history of being lied into wars that do nothing but drain the American taxpayer, center more power in DC, and enrich the parasites that swirl around it.

And each of these utterly superfluous elective wars of Empire only serve to further push the definition of what are "the interests" of the United States and thus expand the potential for new enemies and new wars - all of which- not one- has a thing to do with defending this country in the slightest.

But the truly sad part? The truly sad part is that DC actually has average Joe Dumbfuck in Toledo Ohio and Lincoln Nebraska thinking these "victories" are his too- that "he" is a part of this collective "we". As in "We" are in Iraq. Really? Ask Joe Dumbfuck next time you see him or hear him (he isn't hard to miss as there is usaully one, at least, in every office, on every job site and bellied up at every bar) how much money his last "Iraq War profit sharing check" was for? When he asks what check? Just say; EXACTLY, DUMBFUCK.

Burkeman1  posted on  2006-12-15 22:46:37 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


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