The Filipino insurrection was a three-year conflict that began in 1899 after the Spanish-American War, and the United States declared itself sovereign over the entire archipelago of the Philippines. The struggle against the Americans had its beginnings in the Filipino revolt against the Spanish. Its first phase ended in 1896 when Primo de Rivera, then prime minister of Spain, negotiated a settlement whereby Spain promised economic and political reforms and the rebel leader Emilio Aguinaldo would receive 800,000 pesos and leave the country. The rebels, exiled in Hong Kong, were well organized and anxious for another try at winning their independence.
They did not have a long wait. The American invasion of the Philippines at the start of the Spanish-American War in 1898 was seen by the rebels as a new opportunity to rid the islands of Spanish domination. Admiral George Dewey, who was in Hong Kong preparing his fleet for the battle that would make him famous, offered veiled assurances to Aguinaldo that the United States would win independence for the Philippines in exchange for their support against the Spanish. When Aguinaldo arrived in Luzon after the Battle of Manila Bay, many Filipinos flocked to the cause. Within a short time Aguinaldo had enough troops to effectively block Manila from being supplied by land. Trouble, however, began in August 1898 after the United States tricked the rebels into yielding a portion of their entrenchments and then (with the connivance of the Spanish authorities) captured Manila without the Filipino army. Aguinaldo was further angered by continued American evasiveness as to their intentions in the archipelago.
By February 1899 Filipino troops faced American lines in a tense standoff that flashed into a conflagration when Private Walter Grayson, a Nebraska volunteer, shot and killed several Filipino soldiers while he was on patrol. United States troops then stormed the Filipino lines, killing many soldiers; a bloody war had begun. While troops under General Marcus Mills seized the Visayan Islands to the west, General Arthur MacArthur, father of the more famous general Douglas MacArthur, headed north of Manila on Luzon to Malalos. Badly defeated in pitched battles that followed, the Filipinos switched to guerrilla tactics that the Americans, with only 24,000 troops, could not counter effectively, thus necessitating reinforcement by 46,000 more men. Aguinaldo hoped that guerrilla warfare would protract the war and wear down the already tepid public support for it in the United States.
The Americans won the hearts and minds of some Filipinos by setting up schools and local government and by constructing hospitals, roads, and sewers, but guerrilla activity and terrorism continued unabated. The inability to distinguish between friend and foe created frustration and fear among American troops, who increasingly tried to bring peace through brutality.
Internal dissent within the independence movement and the capture and defection of many of its leaders did more to slow the rebels’ momentum than American military might. The insurrection could be said to have finally ended in March 1902, when Aguinaldo was captured in a daring raid perpetrated by American and loyal Filipino troops, but resistance in the southern Philippines continued for years after Aguinaldo’s capture.
The costs of this war were appalling. Between 100,000 and 200,000 Filipino civilians died of starvation or were killed during the war. Military casualties for the rebels amounted to about 20,000, while American losses were 4,234 killed and 2,818 wounded. In addition, many surviving veterans would die back home from the tropical diseases they contracted during the war.
Further reading: Stanley Karnow, In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines (New York: Random House, 1989).
—Timothy E. Vislocky
Fiske, John (1842-1901) writer, philosopher, historian, lecturer
A prolific historian and a popular lecturer, John Fiske was born on March 30, 1842, in Hartford, Connecticut, and was named Edmund Fisk Green. His father was unsuccessful in business, so from the age of one Fiske was brought up in Middletown by his maternal great-grandfather, John Fisk, and his grandmother Polly Fisk Bound. Three years after his father died in 1852, his mother, Mary Fisk Bound Green, married Edwin Wallace Stoughton, a successful
New York patent lawyer. Fiske elected to stay in Middletown and adopted his great-grandfather’s name in 1855, adding the final e in 1860. Although Stoughton was generous to his stepson, Fiske was unfriendly to his stepfather.
Fiske was a precocious, shy child. He read widely and picked up languages with astounding facility but seldom played with other children and was bullied by other boys. He was religious and sang in the local Congregational church choir, but by the time he was 18 he no longer had faith in the divinity of Christ and the inspiration of the Bible. Having read the rational, scientific, positivist philosophy of Auguste Comte, Fiske was an “infidel,” but he was not an atheist nor would he become one. All of his life, he was a searcher for absolute truth, for an overall explanation of the universe, for a law that would encompass all phenomena.
Since neither his grandmother nor Middletown, where they lived, were pleased with his religious views, Fiske moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1860 he entered Harvard College as a sophomore. Although he found his prescribed courses uninspiring, Fiske read widely in history and philosophy and discovered the works of Herbert Spencer. Utilizing Charles Darwin’s theory of EVOLUTION to explain developments in science and society, Spencer “discovered a great law of evolution in nature, which underlies all phenomena,” for which Fiske had been searching. Following Spencer’s lead, Fiske applied the idea of evolution in his articles, lectures, and books on linguistics, philosophy, history, and religion. Even as an undergraduate, Fiske published articles in the North American Review. These articles marked him as a disciple of English positivist and evolutionary thinkers and made college authorities threaten him with expulsion should he proselytize his ideas. Shortly after his graduation from Harvard, Fiske impressed Spencer by publishing “The Evolution of Language” in the North American Review (October 1863). Fiske argued in the article that simple languages evolved into complex languages and gave, as an example, the development of ancient Chinese into modern Indo-European languages.
Although Fiske wanted to teach linguistics, his expertise in exotic languages such as Sanskrit was not in demand, and his espousal of evolution ruled out a position at Harvard. Having become engaged to Abby Morgan Brooks and needing a job, he studied law, was admitted to the bar in July 1864, and married Abby on September 6, 1864. They had six children. Not a successful lawyer, Fiske gave up law and, aided by subsidies from his stepfather and his wife’s family, managed to support his large family through freelance writing. When his stepfather left the Democratic Party to become a Republican, Fiske moved from the Republican to the Democratic Party and found a major outlet for his writings in the Democratic New York World, which was firmly committed to laissez-faire principles.
Fiske’s situation improved in 1869, when Progressives made Charles William Eliot president of Harvard University. Fiske had contributed articles to the Nation and the Atlantic Monthly in support of Eliot, who asked him to lecture at Harvard on positivist philosophy. Over the next three years Fiske taught philosophy and history there. Still perceived as an atheist, he did not receive a regular teaching appointment, but Eliot made him assistant librarian in 1872, which gave Fiske time to revise his lectures, a process that made him an even more devoted disciple of Spencer, with whom he was in regular correspondence.
Fiske was fortunate in having well-placed and well-heeled friends and admirers. They helped him publish articles, secured an offer for him from Andrew Dickson White to teach American history at Cornell University (which he did not accept), and subsidized a year-long visit to England (1873-74). In England, Fiske met Spencer, Darwin, and other intellectuals and wrote his two-volume work, The Outlines of Cos-mic Philosophy (1874). It was a readable version of Spencer’s works, with additional explorations in the evolution of society, most notable for its attempt to reconcile evolution and religion. Although Fiske believed his “cosmic theism” was compatible with the essence of Christianity, few Christians agreed.
Fiske’s book enhanced his reputation as a philosopher but failed to secure him a coveted position at Harvard. His defeat came both because he was not a specialist in an age of growing professionalism and because two months before Louis Agassiz died, Fiske had attacked him for failing to embrace Darwinism. Continuing to lecture and publish further observations on the relationship of philosophy, science, and religion, Fiske ultimately believed that evolution was “the way in which God makes things come to pass.” Fiske’s finances remained shaky, and he continued to depend on his stepfather (who in 1877 was named minister to Russia) and his wife’s family to supplement his income.
In 1878 an invitation to give six lectures on American history in connection with efforts to save from destruction Boston’s Old South Meeting House redirected Fiske’s interests. Quitting his library job, he gave the lectures on “America’s Place in World History.” America was the cutting edge of evolutionary progress and would inspire a worldwide federal republic led by Anglo-Saxons. His eloquent, optimistic, and flattering portrayal was enthusiastically received in Boston, and in London, where Fiske repeated his lectures a few months later. In a few years Fiske was the country’s most popular lecturer on American history. Basing his inspiring talks on the research of specialists, Fiske enlarged them into readable books, whose sale he promoted on his lecture tours. His first and most influential history, The Critical Period of American History, 1783-1789 (1888), was for generations the dominant interpretation of the United States under the Articles of Confederation, stressing economic depression and an impotent central government. Fiske’s object was not to disparage the articles, but to stress the crucial step in adopting the federal Constitution, which preserved local government in an effective Union. Fiske published additional volumes on the colonial and Revolutionary War periods.
In the 1890s Fiske’s optimism was shaken but not destroyed. He was disturbed by corrupt municipal political machines and the wave of immigrants that supported them. The espousal of Free Silver by the Democrats in 1896 forced him to abandon that party, and in 1898 the embracing of imperialism by the Republicans in the Spanish-American War distressed him. Fiske hoped his dream of a world federation would be achieved by example, not conquest. He died on July 4, 1901, the 125th anniversary of the nation he celebrated so effectively.
Further reading: Milton Berman, John Fiske: The Evolution of a Popularizer (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1961).
World History
