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Colonial-era
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There was an Anti-Imperialist League opposing the American colonization of Ph. If I remember correctly, Carnegie and Mark Twain were members of it.
Yes, they were strong proponents of our freedom. Here's a picture of one of the pamphlets that the league distributed for their cause! :)
Thanks for sharing!
No "Free Puerto Rico"?
Contrary to the anti-imperialistic views of some Americans, I believe also, the poem "The White Man's Burden" was English author, Rudyard Kipling's vocal support of the US Annexation of the PH.
Kipling has always been an imperialist.
Yep. They argued that having an overseas colony runs contrary to the US Constitution.
Heroes
I remember this being taught during my 7th grade class.
Few names have only resonated as loud as Andrew Carnegie. He was a titan of industry, pioneering steel production and propelling America to the modern age. Carnegie built an empire, founding the Carnegie Steel Company and dominating the market with innovative techniques and aggressive expansion.
Carnegie refused that his legacy be lesser known on his business ventures but his philanthropy. He had always lived the idea of “The Gospel of Wealth”, a belief that the wealthy were morally obligated to use their riches for the advancement and betterment of society. One of his notable endeavors in using his riches was to stop the American government from colonizing the Philippines. Despite his wealth and influence, he remained steadfast on the principles of justice and freedom and offered to refund the government the full $20 million they paid to the Spanish. His life story is a testament to the American Dream, but perhaps more importantly, it exemplifies the power of philanthropy and the responsibility of wealth.
Read more at: https://raphaelcanillas.com/2024/03/27/transaction-20m-away-from-freedom/
From "the responsibility of wealth" to "greed is good". So much can change in 100 years.
I swear neoliberals destroyed the modern world hopes and dreams
The tactic employed here is to use people’s sense of responsibility as tools to lead followers of the neoliberal ideology to act in ways that are against the best interests of responsibility.
War is peace, good is bad, down is up, greed is good.
Not being constrained by norms and mores is a powerful framework to respond to the needs of the moment with out the ossification that mindless tradition often encourages.
However we need a grounding in values consistent with health, freedom, respect, prosperity, and community. Otherwise we lose faith in our system and institutions.
BTW the dream is always alive. Its just buried under trash.
This is exactly the perfect definition of the states rn IMO .
History repeats itself. This article proves it.
Interesting read bro!
Had American influence not been present, would the Philippines have fared better?
Yes
Well, one is we could have avoided being a battlefield during WW2.
Japan had re-armed itself because of the growing threat of being colonized itself by the west; afraid to be the next Philippines or the other colonized parts of Asia.
Just imagine if ww2 or the Phil-American war did not happen to the Philippines. Given that we are second to Japan in terms of economy in the past, we could have been the taiwan or South korea of today.
In contrast, IMO, the greatest gift the Americans has given the Philippines is the english language. It gives us a leverage especially compared to our neighbors in todays globalization.
our closest neighbor Malaysia speaks English though, and so as many former British Colonies. i think Singaporeans & Malaysians have full English conversations more often than us.
Boot licking industrialists? Yeesh
Carnegie was a complicated man who aspired to elevate his fellow humans through charity, while also viciously exploiting his workers to create the wealth necessary to give such extensive charity. The countless workers maimed and killed in his factories were the very people he claimed to be helping by creating libraries. Those working seven 12 hour shifts a week had no use for any of the charitable opportunities Carnegie provided.
It is undeniable that his creation of charitable institutions led to the enrichment and inspiration of countless people throughout the world, and the cumulative impact of that legacy is impossible to determine. However the manner in which that charity was facilitated can only be described as a betrayal of the very principles that Carnegie claimed to hold dear. As is so often the case, the man created a self-justifying ethos that allowed him to continue to put himself above all others while claiming the mantle of the benefactor of all mankind, all while exploiting his workers to a degree unmatched in American history at that point.
https://www.scotsman.com/news/carnegie-was-brutal-boss-who-exploited-his-workforce-2513190
Imagine how much 20 million dollars back then, he was batshit crazy rich.
$20mil in 1913 (oldest date on the inflation calculator)would be over $600mil today. What more in 1898?
Quite small tbh IMO. As an analogy, Okada Manila is 2.5 billion USD so by today's standard, Okada today is 4 times more valuable than the whole Philippines during 1913.
Not an economist here but I just feel like it's too small for the Philippines unless the Philippines was dirt-poor but I believe that was not the case.
land was cheaper back then. US also bought Alaska for $7.2 Million
Spain sold the Philippines to the USA for $20 million. That's as much as Carnegie's proposal (obviously), and he's basically giving the USA their money back, so... that's a relatively fair deal.
However, even if Carnegie offered them $10,000,000 (50% less), money is still A LOT back then, and not many people have it, and since there's a.) not really that much to spend money on and b.) a lot of things are less valued which means "adjusting for inflation" wouldn't be accurate if your point is to say that Carnegie's proposal is "small" since to be as accurate as possible, we also have to factor in the needs of the people at the time, what people buy at the time, what people spend their money on at the time, how people get their money at the time, how many people have "money" at the time, or who gets money at the time.
So yeah, basically Okada is NOT "4 times more valuable than the whole Philippines during 1913" because "adjusting for inflation" is never an accurate basis to compare which is which in terms of "worth" between ages past since needs, spends, where it goes is a lot different back then.
Also, factor in Carnegie just matched the price, so... 🤷♂️
And I'm a med student, btw, so these things are far beyond me, and I'm just reaching from my history stock knowledge from High School.
You'd have to discount that. Assuming a normalized interest rate of 6.5% between 1913 to 2024 (~111 years), the present value of Okada in 1913 (excluding operation results) would land around $2.3M. Assuming as well inflation data from 1898 to 1913, the Philippines' value would be adjusted to $23.75M (excluding operation results).
Nonetheless, they bought the Philippines during war times, so valuations would be extremely low. Case in point would be World War 2 where they valued property and the country based on 1939 values due to very volatile prices. :)
A lot American industrialists and businessmen also wanted to free the Philippines from US control because cheap goods from PH were threats to US industries.
There was even a time when US dairy farmers united to call for PH freedom from US because Filipino milk is selling cheaper in the US than American milk.
Manila steel was also a higher quality steel than US-made steel and they sell cheap in the US because PH was a US territory and PH goods don’t have to pay tariffs.
Totoo ito
Add to that the fact they don't want a more non-white people to make a significant part of their population
Americans weren't that enthusiastic about annexing the Philippines or Puerto Rico, and badly wanted Cuba instead.
Wow, we were talking about him in our class as one of the few people to challenge the wealthy to give some money for the needy; eventually, it lead to the modern Corporate Social Responsibility.
Well this is nice to know
Offtopic:
But in terms of "robber barons" + PH + Treaty of Paris, JP Morgan financed the Friar Lands purchase (the US bought most of the estates/haciendas from the monastic orders, then tried to redistribute them by "giving" ie leasing them to small/poor farmers; the payments of the farmers were supposed to be like a "revenue" for the new republic).
JP Morgan (his name is still in one of the biggest banks in the US JP Morgan-Chase) bought Carnegie's US Steel (still a huge company).
A lot of these 19th-20th c. American industrialists (often called "robber barons" because of their monopolistic power at the time) are still known in many American institutions that people might've heard about if you've been to NYC (because they gave donations/philanthropy): "Carnegie Hall", "30 Rock" (ie "Rockefeller Building"), Morgan Stanley (an investment bank), etc. (other outside of NY: Carnegie Mellon, top US private university known for research, that's why you'd often hear it named in a lot of papers).
JP Morgan (and other barons like Carnegie) in a lot of ways is like George Soros or Koch Bros. today ie used money to change policies.
I'm not trying to sound condescending, I wrote this because this is usually not taught to Filipinos but this is basic US history. Also, Carnegie's steel company had headquarters in Pittsburgh, formerly the steel capital of the US (and why the football team is called "Steelers").
What a patama!
Would the Philippines have fared better without the American influence? We wouldn't know..
Depende. Pero meron din kasi yung Japanese at German Empire na nag raise ng mga interests sa Pilipinas.
https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=SFC18980814.2.83&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN--------
https://web.archive.org/web/20150827063805/http://www.gov.ph/diplomatic-relations/ph-jp/
Never under German empire, wala silang kwenta mag handle ng colonies nila puro athrocities.
By saying depende, do you mean we could have fared better under German or Japanese rule?
Hindi naman sa ganun na under direct rule tayo ng mga Hapon at mga Aleman, pwede rin kasi na gusto nilang impluwensiyahan lang ang First Republic o parang gawing puppet nila para magamit ang mga assets at yaman ng Pilipinas. Pero hindi ko masasabi na magiging maganda pa rin ang direktang pamumuno ng either German o Japanese.
IF America did not took the Philippines, Germany or Japan would
The best case scenario was making the First Republic an American protectorate like Cuba, ceding some bases to the US Navy which was the original goal since annexation was put in the last minute. It would have allowed the First Republic to have survived(assuming no internal factionalism tearing it apart) and protected it from foreign threats.
Sure there would an American military presence but thats pretty much we have today lol.
Thanks for the information
Isn't he the king who wants to buy the Philippines and wants to become one of their colonies? Correct if I was wrong, but he's the one who killed a lot of africans, right?
No, Andrew Carnegie is a business man who attempted to buy the independence of the Philippines. The king your talking about is Leopold II of Belgium who attempted to buy the Philippines and thankfully, failed. In Africa though, he managed to persuade the other colonial powers at that time to give to him a large swathe of land (which is now DR Congo) so he could "develop" and "civilize" the people. The British, Germans, and the Portuguese seek to claim that land but agreed to give it to a monarch of a minor country so they would not have have to fight over it themselves on the condition that anyone from those countries can benefit economically from the land. We dodged a major bullet as the Congolese were forced to meet unrealistic rubber quotas under the punishment of having their hands chopped off.
Good read on PH-US war
The US populace around this time was pretty contented with colonizing the land here and it was unpopular to assume that the USA would turn into an empire. Missionaries turned sugar barons in Hawaii did not want to pay taxes on their sugar so they hired a PR blitz in the USA to encourage colonialism. It worked and Hawaii was eventually annexed along with the USA taking over places like Cuba and the PI from Spain. Pretty wild to think we could have had sovereignty earlier if not for this.
american lovers downvoting this
Carnegie didn't offer to reimburse the USA the 20 million dollars out of concern for the Philippines and granting Filipinos freedom. He was more concerned about focusing resources at home and sorting out the situation of the newly freed blacks and more importantly, the new immigrants from Europe (Carnegie's family was also relatively new immigrants from Scotland).
Many American politicians and leaders knew that the Philippines will be a resource sink as a colony and as a matter of fact, the Philippines was self-supporting. Meaning, Congress alloted zero budget for the management of the colony. Money for the management of the islands, including the purchase of the vast lands owned by religious orders, were funded through bonds paid for by Philippine taxes.
and so far wala tayong easily accessible database of these no?
Idol ko talaga tong tao na to
this piqued my interest ! wikipedia also said that carnegie also gave away most of his fortune to charities and universities. what a great dude
God Plan is what it is