The Conquest of the Philippines by the United States, 1898–1925

The Conquest of the Philippines by the United States 1898–1925
SECOND EDITION

By Moorfield Storey and Marcial P. Lichauco
Edited by Rolando O. Borrinaga and Cornelia Lichauco Fung
Foreword by E. San Juan Jr

The Conquest of the Philippines by the United States, 1898–1925 is considered a crucial work that contextualized the Filipino campaign for independence and self-government to an American public largely misinformed and ignorant about their colonial possession. This joint project by the American anti-imperialist Moorfield Storey and brilliant young Filipino lawyer Marcial P. Lichauco was one of the only publications at the time to present a Filipino viewpoint in persuading Americans that the Philippines must be given its long-desired freedom. 

Following the Spanish-American War and the US intervention in Cuba, Spain eventually ceded the Philippine Islands to the United States through the Treaty of Paris in 1898. The Conquest of the Philippines by the United States, 1898–1925 exposes the historical context of America’s colonization of the Philippines and lays out the brutal trajectory of the Philippine-American War.

At the time of the book’s first publication, the New York World called it “an argument in a laudable cause, the cause of Philippine Independence. We have plenty of treatises addressed to the question whether it is expedient to free the islands at once or not, it is well to have one which also reviews the question of their historical right to independence.”

Another review in the Christian Science Monitor said, “The authors are right in their assertion that the Filipino point of view has never been adequately represented to the American people, and they have no doubt contributed to a better understanding of the question setting forth that view in a capable and vigorous fashion.” 

Nine decades after its first publication, this second edition celebrates Storey and Lichauco’s work as a significant part of the Philippine independence campaign and underlines its relevance as a historical text for present-day readers and scholars. 

 

"When The Conquest of the Philippines by the United States, 1898–1925 was published in the US in 1926, the book merited full-page treatment on the first page of the New York Times Book Review… The authors—described by the Times reviewer as “fair-minded and judicious”—laid out the case for the occupation of the Philippines to end before an uninformed or misinformed American public. This cooperative effort by a US legal thinker and a young Filipino intellectual was a prodigious attempt to set the record straight about a period of their history of which most Americans are still unaware. The truths they present about American politics and adventurism in the world are as relevant as ever."

— Alejandro Reyes,
senior fellow of the Centre on Contemporary China and the World at the University of Hong Kong and scholar-in-residence at the Asia Society Hong Kong Center

"Conquest is a cogent rendering of the Philippine-American War, presented clearly and persuasively to the American public to be used by the young Marcial P. Lichauco with other Filipino delegates traveling to Washington, DC, several years later appealing for full independence for the then American colony. For three years, the Filipino delegation badgered, cajoled, and reasoned with the American Congress in the midst of a depression. Lichauco had both his oratory skills and the Conquest book to help him make his point, which in the end won for the delegation a ten-year commonwealth interim and eventually full sovereignty.

— John L. Silva,
executive director of the Ortigas Foundation Library

 

Contents

Foreword by E. San Juan Jr. 

Preface to the First Edition 

Preface to the Second Edition by Rolando O. Borrinaga

The Cuban Insurrection 

The Philippine Situation before the American Conquest 

The Beginning of the Conquest 

Filipino-American Relations before August 1898 

Conquest by Treaty 

Conquest by Force of Arms 

Progress of the War 

Conduct of the War 

The Campaign of 1900 

The Taft Policy Analyzed 

The Taft Policy in Practice 

The Attitude of President Coolidge 

An Appeal to Reason 

Acknowledgments 

Appendix 

Bibliography 

Photo Credits 

Index 

About the Authors 

About the Editors 

About the Authors

MARCIAL P. LICHAUCO was a lawyer, author, and diplomat. He was the first Filipino to attend and graduate from Harvard College. In 1923, he went to Harvard Law School, and eventually became a partner in Manuel Roxas’s legal firm. In the 1930s, he was appointed secretary of the Osmeña-Roxas (OsRox) Mission, which lobbied for Philippine independence from the United States. During the administration of President Diosdado Macapagal, Lichauco served as the Philippine ambassador to Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

Among his published works are Dear Mother Putnam: Life and Death in Manila During the Japanese Occupation 1941–1945 (1949) and President Manuel Roxas’s biography Roxas: The Story of a Great Filipino and of the Political Era in which He Lived (1952).

MOORFIELD STOREY was a lawyer, civil rights leader, and anti-imperialist. He entered civil service after graduating from Harvard Law School and worked as a private secretary for Senator Charles Sumner. He was the first president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and also served as president of the American Anti-Imperialist League, the American Bar Association, and the Boston Bar Association. Storey championed the rights of Black Americans and indigenous people, and vocally opposed the acquisition of the Philippines and Cuba as American territories. He wrote Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar: A Memoir (1911), and his writings have been published as part of the American Statesman and Harvard Godkin Lectures series.

 

About the Editors

ROLANDO O. BORRINAGA, PhD is a former health sciences professor at the University of the Philippines Manila and a history writer. He is the author of Leyte-Samar Shadows: Essays on the History of Eastern Visayas (2008) and Surát Binisayâ: Deciphering Ancient Bisayan Writing and Language (2017), as well as The Balangiga Conflict Revisited, a finalist for the 2003 Philippine National Book Award in History. He collaborated as editor and translator with Cantius J. Kobak on The Colonial Odyssey of Leyte (1521–1914), winner of the 2006 National Book Award for Translation, and he was also the coeditor of Hidden in Leyte: The Orville A. Babcock Diary of WWII, 1941–1945 (2019). Borrinaga is a lifetime member of the Philippine National Historical Society (PNHS), where he is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of History and has edited several of its issues. He served as Visayas representative in the National Committee on Historical Research of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCHR–NCCA) and as secretary of the NCHR Executive Council.

CORNELIA “NELLY” LICHAUCO FUNG is an education advocate, philanthropist, and history writer. She has lived in Hong Kong since 1967, having spent her formative years in the Philippines and earned her bachelor’s degree from Wellesley College in the US and her postgraduate certificate in education from the University of London. Her book Beneath the Banyan Tree (2009) chronicled four generations of her family, including her father, Ambassador Marcial P. Lichauco. Fung also coauthored Fung Ping Shan: The Man, His Life, and His Library (2012), detailing the life of her grandfather-in-law, businessman Fung Ping Shan. She is a cofounder of the Chinese International School and founder of the ISF Academy. She is married to Kenneth Hing Cheung Fung, with whom she has three children.

 

Copyright © 2024 Vibal Foundation, Inc.
200 pages; 17.78 x 25.4 cm