Take up the White Man’s burden–Send forth the best ye breed–
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild–
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
--> White Man’s Burden, by R. Kipling (published 1899). Written to support the benevolent assimilation of the Philippines...
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Today’s North American news has daily reports of the debacle in Iraq. It’s just the latest in a string of US invasions into sovereign lands, but the grand-daddy of it all was in the Philippines.
It is a sad fact that many people, including many Filipinos, don't even know that this war took place. A war that killed somewhere around of 1 in 10 of our ancestors.
* * *
Why was it fought? Weren't the Americans there to help us? Wasn't Aguinaldo allied with them?
What happened at Balangiga?
Why did an American general order the killing of everyone over the age of 10?
Why were so many Filipinos put into concentration camps?
What is the 'water-cure?' [hint: think 19th century waterboarding]
When did the war end? [hint: not 1902]