Protectorates and Dependencies. By 1898, when the
Spanish‐American War was fought, American territorial claims already included the vast area of
Alaska as well as several guano‐producing islands in the Pacific. It was the war with Spain, however, that marked the United States’ emergence as a colonial power. As a war measure, the United States annexed the Hawaiian Islands, which were already dominated by American sugar interests and had been the focus of several annexation attempts during the 1890s. With the treaty of peace signed in Paris on 10 December 1898, Spain ceded to the United States control over
Puerto Rico, the
Philippines, and Guam. It also relinquished sovereignty over Cuba, which subsequently became a U.S. protectorate. Panama, too, became a protectorate with the signing of the Hay‐Bunau‐Varilla Treaty in 1903. In addition, an agreement among Britain, Germany, and the United States in 1899 resulted in the partition of the Samoan Islands between Germany and the United States.
To administer its territories and dependencies, the United States did not establish a centralized colonial bureaucracy like those of the European powers. Instead, responsibility for managing the affairs of different possessions devolved upon various existing government agencies. An office created within the War Department, called the Division of Customs and Insular Affairs (later the Bureau of Insular Affairs), took responsibility for Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. Guam, American Samoa, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, first administered by the navy, were transferred to the Division of Territories and Island Possessions within the Department of the Interior.
The provisions for governing American possessions as well as their status vis‐à‐vis the United States have varied greatly over time. A series of
Supreme Court decisions in 1900 and 1901 known collectively as the
Insular Cases distinguished between two groups of U.S. territories: incorporated and unincorporated. Incorporated territories such as
Hawai'i followed the path taken by other contiguous portions of the United States toward eventual statehood and citizenship for the inhabitants. Unincorporated territories, the Court held, were “appurtenant and belonging to the United States, but not a part of the United States.” Residents of unincorporated territories were not granted U.S. citizenship.
Cuba.
As war with Spain loomed in 1898, Congress passed the Teller Resolution, which renounced “any disposition or intention to exercise sovereignty” over Cuba. While never formally a territory of the United States, Cuba nevertheless became its dependency after Spain relinquished control the following year. After a brief period of direct U.S. military government (1899–1901), Cuba was forced to incorporate into its constitution the protectorate provisions known as the Platt Amendment. These provisions, confirmed by treaty in 1903, stipulated that Cuba could not enter into treaties or financial relationships with any other countries and gave the United States the right to intervene in Cuba and to maintain a naval base on the island. The Platt Amendment remained in force, providing the rationale for several interventions by the United States, until 1934, when it was abrogated by President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt as part of his
Good Neighbor policy toward Latin America. The American naval base at Guantánamo Bay remains as a legacy of Cuba's U.S. dependency.
Puerto Rico.
U.S. military government in Puerto Rico ended on 1 May 1900, when the Foraker Act took effect. This law established a government for Puerto Rico in which both the island's governor and the upper house of the legislature were appointed by the United States. Representatives to the lower house were elected by Puerto Ricans. The Foraker Act also defined Puerto Ricans as “citizens of Puerto Rico,” an ambiguous status that was not resolved until the Jones Act of 1917 extended U.S. citizenship to Puerto Ricans and gave them the right to elect members to both houses of the legislature. In 1952 the island became the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico by an act of Congress. Commonwealth status increased local autonomy and provided for a new constitution, but it did not increase Puerto Ricans’ participation in the U.S. federal government or erase the unequal status that was the legacy of colonialism.
The Philippines.
An easy early victory over Spain in the Philippines turned into a bloody three‐year war of conquest, as Filipinos resisted American attempts to take possession of the archipelago. Estimates of Filipino casualties in the war ran into the hundreds of thousands; some four thousand American troops also died. As in Puerto Rico, an organic act passed for the Philippines in 1902 provided for an American‐appointed governor and upper house and an elected lower house. In 1916 the Jones Act declared “the intention of the people of the United States to withdraw their sovereignty over the Philippine Islands and to recognize their sovereignty as soon as a stable government can be established.” The Tydings‐McDuffy Act, signed by President Roosevelt in 1934, made the Philippines a self‐governing commonwealth of the United States for ten years, after which the act promised independence. Delayed slightly by
World War II, during which the Philippines were occupied by Japan, independence was proclaimed on 4 July 1946.
Hawai'i.
As early as 1842, Secretary of State Daniel
Webster warned European nations that the United States was more interested “in the fate of the [Hawaiian] islands and of their government than any other nation can be.” Hawai'i became an important supplier of sugar to the North during the
Civil War, and in 1875 a reciprocity treaty guaranteed Hawaiian sugar duty‐free entry to the United States. Twelve years later, an amendment to the reciprocity treaty granted the United States exclusive right to establish a coaling station at Pearl Harbor. In 1893, pro‐U.S. sugar planters overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy and called for annexation to the United States, but the U.S. Senate refused to act until the islands became an important staging ground for U.S. troops in the Philippines during the Spanish‐American War. Hawai'i was annexed to the United States by joint resolution of Congress on 7 July 1898, and the Organic Act of 30 April 1900 made it an incorporated territory. After the Japanese bombing of
Pearl Harbor and American entry into World War II, Hawai'i was placed under martial law. It became a state in 1959.
Guam.
One of the Mariana Islands, Guam lies 5,200 miles west of San Francisco. Seized to serve as a coaling station for American ships en route to the Philippines during the Spanish‐American War, Guam acquired new significance for American military and commercial interests with the completion of the
Panama Canal in 1914. The island was administered by the U.S. Navy from 1899 until 1950, except for two and a half years of Japanese occupation during World War II. Civil government was initiated by its transfer to the Department of the Interior and the passage of the Guam Organic Act in 1950. Despite political initiatives aimed at redefining Guam's status as a U.S. commonwealth, it remained an unincorporated territory as the twentieth century ended. Several other islands in the Mariana chain were incorporated as U.S. territory in “political union” with the United States in 1975 as the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. Inhabitants of the Northern Marianas became U.S. citizens in 1986.
Panama.
The Panamanian isthmus—then a part of Colombia—became the focus of U.S. attentions after the Spanish‐American War as the possible site of a canal that would facilitate interocean military and commercial shipping. After lending support to a Panamanian separatist movement, the United States, under the Hay‐Bunau‐Varilla Treaty of 1903, secured a permanent lease on a ten‐mile‐wide Canal Zone and also retained the right to intervene in the new, nominally independent nation. Panama remained a U.S. protectorate until 1936. In the Panama Canal Treaties of 1978, control over the Canal Zone reverted to Panama, and the United States passed jurisdiction over the canal itself to Panama in 2000.
The U.S. Virgin Islands.
The United States purchased the Virgin Islands (formerly the Danish West Indies) from Denmark in 1917 as a strategic precaution to keep them out of German hands and to maintain control over the Caribbean passage to the Panama Canal during
World War I. The U.S. Navy administered the Virgins until 1936, when an organic act established municipal government under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Interior. A second organic act (1954) provided for a more centralized government and more local autonomy, although not until 1970 did Virgin Islanders begin to elect their own governor.
The Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands.
After World War II, as part of a
United Nations (UN) program of administering territories formerly belonging to Germany, Turkey, and Japan, the United States became the “administering authority” for the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, comprising more than two thousand islands spread among three archipelagoes: the Marshalls, the Carolines, and the Marianas (excluding Guam). In 1986, the United States, with the approval of the UN Trusteeship Council, terminated the Trust Territory agreement. While the United States retained responsibility for their defense, the Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of the Marshall Islands became independent states at that time.
See also
Expansionism;
Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with Asia;
Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with Latin America.
Bibliography
Noel Kent , Hawaii: Islands under the Influence, 1933.
Julius W. Pratt , America's Colonial Experiment: How the United States Gained, Governed, and in Part Gave Away a Colonial Empire, 1950.
Philip Foner , The Spanish‐Cuban‐American War and the Birth of American Imperialism, 1895–1902, 1972.
Gordon K. Lewis , The Virgin Islands: A Caribbean Lilliput, 1972.
Peter H. Stanley, ed., Reappraising an Empire: New Perspectives on Philippine‐American History, 1984.
George Black , The Good Neighbor: How the U.S. Wrote the History of Central America and the Caribbean, 1988.
Louis Pérez , Cuba under the Platt Amendment, 1902–1934, 1991.
Robert F. Rogers , Destiny's Landfall: A History of Guam, 1995.
Walter La Feber , The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860–1898, 1998.
Katharine Bjork
