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(Blount - The Taft Commission) The_Phillipine_Comission_of_which_Judge…

- - - - Father: James H. Blount
        
        Published Blount Report: congressional investigation into US Marine's overthrow of Hawaiian queen
        
        Also an anti-imperialist
      - Experience
        
        Cuba
        
        1 year (military officer)
        
        Philippines
        
        2 years (military officer)
        
        1899-1901
        
        4 years (circuit judge)
        
        1901-1905
        
        WWI
        
        died of injuries in 1918
      - https://www.warmemorial.columbia.edu/james-henderson-blount
      - Active in anti-imperialism movement
    - - Americans and Filipinos: From allies to enemies
        
        End of Spanish-American War: Americans prevented Filipino forces from entering Manila: considered as a betrayal
        
        Americans lent help to the Filipino revolution against the Spaniards
        
        freed Aguilnado from exile and brought him back to restart revolution
      - Written in July 4, 1912 (some push in US for Philippine independence)
        
        Woodrow Wilson's 1912 Election Campaign signalled desire to grant Philippine independence
        
        "The Philippines are at present our frontier but I hope we presently are to deprive ourselves of that frontier."
        
        Jones Bill
        
        Proposal for a fixed date for Phillippine independence
        
        first proposed 1912 (blocked)
        
        proposed again 1914 (passed)
        
        supported by Philippine nationalists
        
        Manuel L. Quezon
        
        Sergio Osmeña
  - - - Highlighted Filipino capability of self rule even when the Americans vehemently denied it
      - Author intends to "make audible the voice of a weaker subject people"
    - - Did not approach military leaders but listened to the few westerners who told them that locals wanted Americans there
      - Attempted to be a benevolent government but one based on the incompetency of the governed
  - - - "Surely even the valor of ignorance can see that we are presumptuously seeking to reverse the order of God and nature in assuming that an alien race can lead a people out of the wilderness ..." (pg296)
        "But all Filipinos look alike, the whole seven of eight millions of them. They differ from one another not one whit more than one Japanese differs from another." (pg295)
      - Blount thinks the Filipinos being in "tribal state" is uncivilised
        
        "Countless generations ago the Filipinos were lifted by the Spanish priests out of the tribal state" (pg296)
        "the original tribal dialects, which the Spanish priests patiently mastered and finally reduced for them to a written language" (pg296)
    - - There is no more patriotic people in the world than the Filipino people. I base this opinion upon an intimate knowledge of them, and in the light of considerable observation throughout most of Europe, and in Asia from the Golden Horn to the mouth of the Yang-tse. (pg297)
    - - "One Filipino does not differ from another any more than one American does from another American - in fact they differ less, considering immigration" (pg298)
- - - - Beliefs
        
        Expansionist
        
        Keep Philippines as colony permanetly
      - June 2, 1845 to September 5, 1912
      - Brought out in this chapter to contrast the military's understanding of the war vs the politicians' understanding of the war
      - https://www.historynet.com/arthur-macarthur
        
        A very competent and successful military leader, earning himself the Medal of Honor
        
        Self-educated in the fields of "Asian religions, social history, and law"
    - - At first believed that Aguinaldo's troops represented a small portion of the local's sentiments
        
        Changed his mind when he fought to take over the insurgent capital Malolos
      - War Reports
        
        War Department Report, 1901
        
        Understood that the disbandment of the field army was a transition to a more internationally accepted regular concentrated field army
        
        War Report 5 May to 1 Oct 1900
        
        Army was Strained
        
        53 stations of American troops in Nov 1 1899 to 413 stations in Sept 1 1900
        
        Found the American perception of the Philiphine War "unfair to the service" (pg 311)
        
        thinks that the guerrillas are dealt with easily by the police and not the military
        
        War Report 1901
        
        Understood the serverity of the war
        
        "the hope of ending the war without further effusion of blood was not well founded" (pg 313)
        
        Belived that the locals accepted the insurgent's authority
        
        constrasted to Judge Taft's view that the insurgents were like the Mafia
        
        "every native, without any exception, residing within the limits of the archipelago, owed active allegiance to the insurgent cause" (pg 313)
        
        "assasination ... was generally accepted as a legitimate expression of insurgent governmental authority" (pg 313)
  - - - US and Phillipines (Aguilnado) were fighting against Spain to take Manila
      - Double cross was of US taking control of the Phillipines rather than "setting the locals free of the Spaniards" and letting them have their independence
      - “We are going to lick the Spaniards and set you free,” was now about to be ignored because the islands (Philippines) might be profitable to the United States.
  - - - at least 200,000 Filipino civilian deaths, mostly due to famine and disease
      - the resistance of a hostile people fighting to the last ditch against a foreign occupier
    - - unfit for self-governance
      - numerous Christian "tribes" that speak different languages
      - stereotype, homogeneity in appearance and habits
- - - - The Daily Star (November 3, 1899)
        The commission concluded that "the United States cannot withdraw. ... We are there and duty binds us to remain. The Filipinos are wholly unprepared for independence ... there being no Philippine nation, but only a collection of different peoples."
- - - - Tension
        Amplified
        
        Synthesis
        
        The Schurman Commission
        They came, they saw, they went, recognizing the futility of the errand on which they had been sent. ...
        And now came the Taft Commission a year later, on precisely the same errand, after the Filipinos been welded into absolute oneness—if that were somewhat lacking before—in the fierce crucible of sixteen months of bloody fighting against a foreign foe for the independence of their common country
        
        From the arrival of the American troops on June 30, 1898, until the outbreak of February 4, 1899, there had been TWO armies camped not far from each other, one born of the idea of independence and bent upon it, the other at first groping in the dark without instructions, and finally instructed to deny independence. There was never any faltering or evasion on the part of Aguinaldo and his people. They knew what they wanted and said so on all occasions. At all times and in all places they made it clear, by proclamation, by letter, by conversation, and otherwise, that independence was the one thing to which, whether they were fit for it or not, they had pledged “their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.”
      - But the life of Spirit is not the life that shrinks from death and keeps itself untouched by devastation, but rather life that endures it and maintains itself in it. It wins its truth only when, in utter dismemberment, it finds itself.... Spirit is this power only by looking the negative in the face, and tarrying with it. This tarrying with the negative is the magical power that converts it into
        being.