686 ★ CHAPTER 17 Freedom’s Boundaries, at Home and Abroad
Leaders of both parties, while determined to retain the new overseas pos-
sessions, feared that people of what one congressman called “an alien race and
foreign tongue” could not be incorporated into the Union. The Foraker Act of
1900 declared Puerto Rico an “insular territory,” different from previous territo-
ries in the West. Its 1 million inhabitants were defined as citizens of Puerto Rico,
not the United States, and denied a future path to statehood. Filipinos occupied
a similar status. In a series of cases decided between 1901 and 1904 and known
collectively as the Insular Cases, the Supreme Court held that the Constitution
did not fully apply to the territories recently acquired by the United States— a
significant limitation of the scope of American freedom. Congress, the Court
declared, must recognize the “fundamental” personal rights of residents of the
Philippines and Puerto Rico. But otherwise it could govern them as it saw fit for
an indefinite period of time. Thus, two principles central to American freedom
since the War of Independence— no taxation without representation, and gov-
ernment based on the consent of the governed— were abandoned when it came
to the nation’s new possessions.
In the twentieth century, the territories acquired in 1898 would follow dif-
ferent paths. Hawaii, which had a sizable population of American missionaries
and planters, became a traditional territory. Its population, except for Asian
immigrant laborers, became American citizens, and it was admitted as a state
in 1959. After nearly a half- century of American rule, the Philippines achieved
independence in 1946. Until 1950, the U.S. Navy administered Guam, which
remains today an “unincor porated” territory. As for Puerto Rico, it is sometimes
called “the world’s oldest colony,” because ever since the Spanish conquered
the island in 1493 it has lacked full self- government. Congress extended Ameri-
can citizenship to Puerto Ricans in 1917. Puerto Rico today remains in a kind of
political limbo, poised on the brink of statehood or independence. The island
has the status of a commonwealth. It elects its own government but lacks a
voice in Congress (and in the election of the U.S. president), and key issues such
as defense and environmental policy are controlled by the United States.
Whatever the end result, the Spanish- American War established a prece-
dent for American intervention in the affairs of other countries, especially
those in the Western Hemisphere. In the twentieth century, the United States
would intervene in Latin America to change local governments, either by direct
military action or via support for military coups, no fewer than forty times.
Drawing the Global Color Line
Just as American ideas about liberty and self- government had circulated
around the world in the Age of Revolution, American racial attitudes had a
global impact in the age of empire. The turn of the twentieth century was a