9.3.4 The Pacific

Colonization of the Pacific by Europeans had begun as early as the sixteenth century when Spain claimed the Philippines. Over the course of the eighteenth through the early nineteenth centuries, France and Britain had also laid claim to the islands of the Pacific. Britain established a colony in Australia in 1788 and colonized New Zealand in 1840. France made Tahiti a protectorate in 1842. In the second half of the nineteenth century, those islands that did not already belong to a great power were quickly absorbed into larger colonial empires.

In some cases, competing powers agreed to share possession of large islands or island chains. For example, in 1899, Germany, Britain, and the United States formally agreed to divide the Samoan islands between Germany, which took control of those now known as Samoa, and the United States, which received those now called American Samoa. In exchange for Britain’s forfeiting any claim to the islands, Germany gave it control of some of the territory it had settled in the North Solomon Islands and made concessions regarding its holdings in Africa. The foreign powers took the additional step of abolishing the Samoan monarchy.

The United States was particularly active in the Pacific. Unlike the other industrial powers, it had not attempted to claim any parts of Africa or Asia beyond some trading concessions in China. Throughout the later nineteenth century, it was developing the land and exploiting the resources within its North American borders. It pushed steadily westward from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, acquiring territory by purchase, treaty, or conquest from France, Britain, and Mexico on the way. To clear the land for use by farmers, ranchers, miners, and timber companies, by the end of the century the federal government had confined the Indigenous peoples to reservations. In 1867, it purchased the Russian colony of Alaska. By the 1890s, it had settled all its vast territory and began to look abroad. The United States wanted access to the wealth of China as well as land to grow sugarcane, one of the food commodities it could not produce in a quantity to suit its needs.

The United States’ first significant move to acquire territory for an empire beyond the North American mainland was to take control of Hawaii. Although it had annexed a number of minor islands in the Pacific, including Baker Island, Howland Island, and Midway Atoll, it had done so only with the intent of collecting guano for fertilizer and did not develop or settle them.

People from the United States had visited and lived in the Kingdom of Hawaii since the mid-nineteenth century, and a substantial American community owned land there. Many grew sugar for export to the United States. In 1887, the Hawaiian Patriotic League was founded. Consisting primarily of American members, the League forced Hawaii’s King Kalakaua to adopt a new constitution that disenfranchised many Indigenous Hawaiians while giving property-owning U.S. citizens the right to vote and hold public office. In 1890, a new tariff passed by the U.S. Congress increased taxes on foreign sugar, which raised the price of Hawaiian sugar and threatened the profits of American plantation owners. However, if Hawaii were to be annexed by the United States, its sugar would no longer be taxed as a foreign import, giving an advantage to the planters.

When Kalakaua died in 1891, his sister Liliuokalani inherited the throne (Figure 9.26). Resenting U.S. interference in Hawaii’s government, she proposed a new constitution to restore voting rights to many Native Hawaiians while denying them to American and European residents. Fearful of losing political power in Hawaii and the hope of annexation, in 1893 a group of primarily American conspirators forced Liliuokalani to abdicate. In 1898, the United States annexed Hawaii.

The annexation of Hawaii was not the only imperial conquest of the United States in 1898. In 1895, the inhabitants of Cuba, one of Spain’s few remaining colonies, had risen to demand independence. U.S. businesses had invested heavily in Cuba, and many traded with the Spanish colony. The Cuban revolutionaries appealed for help in winning independence, but U.S. president Grover Cleveland was intent on neutrality. When riots in Havana threatened U.S. lives and property in December 1897, however, President William McKinley dispatched the battleship USS Maine to protect them. In February 1898, an explosion on the ship was blamed on a Spanish mine. With newspapers and the public calling for the U.S. government to “remember the Maine” and avenge the loss of U.S. lives, Congress declared war on Spain on April 25, 1898.

Two days later, U.S. commodore George Dewey sailed from Hong Kong to the Philippines, another Spanish colony. Entering Manila Bay, Dewey quickly destroyed the Spanish fleet. The war in Cuba also proceeded swiftly—and in favor of the United States. Spain’s last two island colonies, Guam and Puerto Rico, surrendered with little fighting. In December 1898, Spain recognized Cuba’s independence, ceded Guam and Puerto Rico to the United States, and allowed the United States to purchase the Philippines. Spain was finished as a colonial power, but the United States was just beginning.

Not all in the United States favored making the Philippines a U.S. territory, but many did. The Philippines’ proximity to China attracted those who sought to trade with the latter. Many feared Japan or a European power like Germany would seize control of the islands if the United States did not stake its claim to them. Indeed, Germany attempted to establish a base in the Philippines only a few weeks after the Spanish forces surrendered.