Analysis Paper
Kanieshamm
EWC26.5.docx26.5Albert Beveridge, “Defense of Imperialism”
Albert Beveridge (1862-1927) was a Republican Senator from Indiana, historian, and imperialist. A supporter of President Theodore Roosevelt (in office from 1901-1909), Beveridge supported American expansion in the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico after the American victory in the Spanish-American War (1898). In “Defense of Imperialism,” Beveridge portrays Americans as a people favored by God who are destined to rule over additional lands and achieve commercial supremacy. He did not believe that the people of the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico were mature or capable of self-government, which justified American rule. In addition, Beveridge acknowledges the importance of imperial adventures to justifying national greatness in the early twentieth-century. Beveridge’s ideas represent, in sum, two primary justifications for the New Imperialism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth-centuries. On the one hand, imperialists argued that foreign control was necessary for peoples not yet ready to govern themselves. On the other hand, they recognized that imperialism served the interests of the metropole insofar as it justified “Great Power” status among the community of nations.
It is a noble land that God has given us; a land that can feed and clothe the world; a land whose coastlines would enclose half the countries of Europe; a land set like a sentinel between the two imperial oceans of the globe, a greater England with a nobler destiny.
It is a mighty people that He has planted on this soil; a people sprung from the most masterful blood of history, a people perpetually revitalized by the virile, man-producing working-folk of all the earth; a people imperial by virtue of their power, by right of their institutions, by authority of their Heaven-directed purposes— the propagandists and not the misers of liberty.
It is a glorious history our God has bestowed upon His chosen people; a history heroic with faith in our mission and our future; a history of statesmen who flung the boundaries of the Republic out into unexplored lands and savage wilderness; a history of soldiers who carried the flag across blazing deserts and through the ranks of hostile mountains, even to the gates of sunset; a history of a multiplying people who overran a continent in half a century; a history of prophets who saw the consequences of evils inherited from the past and of martyrs who died to save us from them; a history divinely logical, in the process of whose tremendous reasoning we find ourselves today.
Therefore, in this campaign, the question is larger than a party question. It is an American question. It is a world question. Shall the American people continue their march toward the commercial supremacy of the world? Shall free institutions broaden their blessed reign as the children of liberty wax in strength, until the empire of our principles is established over the hearts of all mankind?
Have we no mission to perform, no duty to discharge to our fellow man? Has God endowed us with gifts beyond our deserts and marked us as the people of His peculiar favor, merely to rot in our own selfishness, as men and nations must, who take cowardice for their companion and self for their deity—as China has, as India has, as Egypt has?
Shall we be as the man who had one talent and hid it, or as he who had ten talents and used them until they grew to riches? And shall we reap the reward that waits on our discharge of our high duty; shall we occupy new markets for what our farmers raise, our factories make, our merchants sell—aye, and please God, new markets for what our ships shall carry?
The Opposition tells us that we ought not to govern a people without their consent. I answer, the rule of liberty that all just government derives its authority from the consent of the governed, applies only to those who are capable of self-government. We govern the Indians without their consent, we govern our territories without their consent, we govern our children without their consent. How do they know what our government would be without their consent? Would not the people of the Philippines prefer the just, humane, civilizing government of this Republic to the savage, bloody rule of pillage and extortion from which we have rescued them?
And, regardless of this formula of words made only for enlightened, self-governing people, do we owe no duty to the world? Shall we turn these peoples back to the reeking hands from which we have taken them? Shall we abandon them, with Germany, England, Japan, hungering for them? Shall we save them from those nations, to give them a self-rule of tragedy?
They ask us how we shall govern these new possessions. I answer: Out of local conditions and the necessities of the case methods of government will grow. If England can govern foreign lands, so can America. If Germany can govern foreign lands, so can America. If they can supervise protectorates, so can America. Why is it more difficult to administer Hawaii than New Mexico or California? Both had a savage and an alien population; both were more remote from the seat of government when they came under our dominion than the Philippines are today.
Will you say by your vote that American ability to govern has decayed; that a century’s experience in self-rule has failed of a result? Will you affirm by your vote that you are an infidel to American power and practical sense? Or will you say that ours is the blood of government; ours the heart of dominion; ours the brain and genius of administration? Will you remember that we do but what our fathers did—we but pitch the tents of liberty farther westward, farther southward—we only continue the march of the flag…? [W]hile, we did not need the territory taken during the past century at the time it was acquired, we do need what we have taken in 1898, and we need it now. The resources and the commerce of these immensely rich dominions will be increased as much as American energy is greater than Spanish sloth. In Cuba, alone, there are 15,000,000 acres of forest unacquainted with the ax, exhaustless mines of iron, priceless deposits of manganese, millions of dollars’ worth of which we must buy, today, from the Black Sea districts. There are millions of acres yet unexplored.
The resources of Porto Rico have only been trifled with. The riches of the Philippines have hardly been touched by the finger-tips of modern methods. And they produce what we consume, and consume what we produce— the very predestination of reciprocity—a reciprocity “not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” They sell hemp, sugar, coconuts, fruits of the tropics, timber of price like mahogany; they buy flour, clothing, tools, implements, machinery and all that we can raise and make. Their trade will be ours in time.…
[I]f any man tells you that trade depends on cheapness and not on government influence, ask him why England does not abandon South Africa, Egypt, India. Why does France seize South China, Germany the vast region whose port is Kaouchou…?
[H]awaii furnishes us a naval base in the heart of the Pacific; the Ladrones another, a voyage further on; Manila another, at the gates of Asia—Asia, to the trade of whose hundreds of millions American merchants, manufacturers, farmers, have as good right as those of Germany or France or Russia or England; Asia, whose commerce with the United Kingdom alone amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars every year; Asia, to whom Germany likes to take her surplus products; Asia, whose doors must not be shut against American trade. Within five decades the bulk of Oriental commerce will be ours.…
Wonderfully has God guided us. Yonder at Bunker Hill and Yorktown His providence was above us. At New Orleans and on ensanguined seas His hand sustained us. Abraham Lincoln was His minister and His was the altar of freedom the Nation’s soldiers set up on a hundred battlefields. His power directed Dewey in the East and delivered the Spanish fleet into our hands, as He delivered the elder Armada into the hands of our English sires…We can not fly from our world duties; it is ours to execute the purpose of a fate that has driven us to be greater than our small intentions. We can not retreat from any soil where Providence has unfurled our banner; it is ours to save that soil for liberty and civilization.
26.5
Albe
rt Beveridge, “Defense
of Imperialism”
Albert Beveridge (1862
-
1927) was a Republican Senator from
Indiana, historian, and imperialist. A supporter of President
Theodore Roosevelt (in office from 1901
-
1909), Beveridge
supported American expansion in the Phi
lippines, Cuba, and
Puerto Rico after the American victory in the Spanish
-
American
War (1898). In “Defense of Imperialism,” Beveridge portrays
Americans as a people favored by God who are destined to rule
over additional lands and achieve commercial suprem
acy. He
did not believe that the people of the Philippines, Cuba, and
Puerto Rico were mature or capable of self
-
government, which
justified American rule. In addition, Beveridge acknowledges
the importance of imperial adventures to justifying national
gre
atness in the early twentieth
-
century. Beveridge’s ideas
represent, in sum, two primary justifications for the New
Imperialism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth
-
centuries. On the one hand, imperialists argued that foreign
control was necessary for
peoples not yet ready to govern
themselves. On the other hand, they recognized that
imperialism served the interests of the metropole insofar as it
justified “Great Power” status among the community of nations.
It is a noble land that God has given us; a
land that can feed and clothe the world;
a land whose coastlines would enclose half the countries of Europe; a land set
like a sentinel between the two imperial oceans of the globe, a greater England
with a nobler destiny.
It is a mighty people that He has planted on this soil; a people sprung from the
most masterful blood of history, a people perpetually revitalized by the virile,
man
-
producing working
-
folk of all the earth; a people imperial by virtue of their
power, by ri
ght of their institutions, by authority of their Heaven
-
directed
purposes
—
the propagandists and not the misers of liberty.
It is a glorious history our God has bestowed upon His chosen people; a history
heroic with faith in our mission and our future; a h
istory of statesmen who flung
the boundaries of the Republic out into unexplored lands and savage wilderness;
a history of soldiers who carried the flag across blazing deserts and through the
ranks of hostile mountains, even to the gates of sunset; a histo
ry of a multiplying
26.5Albert Beveridge, “Defense
of Imperialism”
Albert Beveridge (1862-1927) was a Republican Senator from
Indiana, historian, and imperialist. A supporter of President
Theodore Roosevelt (in office from 1901-1909), Beveridge
supported American expansion in the Philippines, Cuba, and
Puerto Rico after the American victory in the Spanish-American
War (1898). In “Defense of Imperialism,” Beveridge portrays
Americans as a people favored by God who are destined to rule
over additional lands and achieve commercial supremacy. He
did not believe that the people of the Philippines, Cuba, and
Puerto Rico were mature or capable of self-government, which
justified American rule. In addition, Beveridge acknowledges
the importance of imperial adventures to justifying national
greatness in the early twentieth-century. Beveridge’s ideas
represent, in sum, two primary justifications for the New
Imperialism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth-
centuries. On the one hand, imperialists argued that foreign
control was necessary for peoples not yet ready to govern
themselves. On the other hand, they recognized that
imperialism served the interests of the metropole insofar as it
justified “Great Power” status among the community of nations.
It is a noble land that God has given us; a land that can feed and clothe the world;
a land whose coastlines would enclose half the countries of Europe; a land set
like a sentinel between the two imperial oceans of the globe, a greater England
with a nobler destiny.
It is a mighty people that He has planted on this soil; a people sprung from the
most masterful blood of history, a people perpetually revitalized by the virile,
man-producing working-folk of all the earth; a people imperial by virtue of their
power, by right of their institutions, by authority of their Heaven-directed
purposes— the propagandists and not the misers of liberty.
It is a glorious history our God has bestowed upon His chosen people; a history
heroic with faith in our mission and our future; a history of statesmen who flung
the boundaries of the Republic out into unexplored lands and savage wilderness;
a history of soldiers who carried the flag across blazing deserts and through the
ranks of hostile mountains, even to the gates of sunset; a history of a multiplying
