842 Ch. 21 • The Age of European Imperialism
Emilio Aguinaldo (1869—1964). But once the peace treaty ending the
Spanish-American War was signed, President William McKinley announced
that it would be “cowardly and discreditable” to leave the Philippines. In
1899, the Filipinos began a war of independence. U.S. troops defeated
Aguinaldo’s guerrilla forces after three years of fighting. American soldiers
herded Filipinos into prison camps, torturing and executing some of those
they captured. Aguinaldo himself was taken prisoner in 1901, and the
insurrection, in which perhaps as many as 200,000 Filipinos died, ended
the following year. The Philippines became a territory of the United
States.
At the same time, the U.S. government did not want to be left out of the
scramble for Chinese concessions. In 1899, Secretary of State John Hay
announced his country’s “Open Door Policy” with regard to China, and
tried to convince the other powers to leave China open to all trade. Only
the British government publicly expressed its agreement with this princi
ple, but the scramble for advantage in China went on.
Map 21.4 demonstrates the remarkable impact of the scramble for
colonies in Asia. Only Japan and Siam (Thailand) succeeded in really keep
ing their independence. The government of China was virtually helpless in
the face of the imperial powers.
Domination of Indigenous PeoplesThe eagerness with which many Europeans embarked on or applauded
imperial ventures can be partially explained by their assumptions that non
Western peoples were culturally inferior. These were not new views, nor
were they the only ones held. However, in early modern Europe, non
Western peoples—particularly Islamic peoples—had been viewed as ene
mies by virtue of their religions: Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, among
others. The colonial powers assumed the right to exploit conquered “infe
rior” peoples and decide what was “best” for the colonized. British imperial
ists spoke of “the white man’s burden,” a phrase unfortunately immortalized
by Rudyard Kipling’s 1899 poem of the same name: “Take up the White
Man’s burden— / And reap his old reward: / The blame of those ye better, /
The hate of those ye guard.”
Nineteenth- and twentieth-century Western attempts to understand
dominated or conquered peoples also reflected the intellectual and cultural
processes of imperialism. What has become known as “Orientalism” began
with the assumption that not only were Asian, African, and other colo
nized peoples different, but they were inferior as well. This was reflected by
the Egyptian exhibit at an international exposition in Paris in 1900. There
visitors could view what were presented as African and Asian villages,
complete with “natives” on exhibit. An Egyptian visitor was outraged by the
image that the hosts wanted to present of Cairo, his native city, as horribly