"What General Pershing Was Really Doing in the Philippines" Topic

"…In 1898, the United States annexed the Philippines, with a full-scale invasion and a $20 USD million payoff to the Spanish, who had colonized the islands for the previous 300 years. U.S. officials, including President William McKinley and his imperialist assistant secretary of the navy, Theodore Roosevelt, saw an opportunity to colonize the islands and take their land, resources and markets for trade—a new outpost of expansion at a moment when, for the first time since the arrival of European settlers, there was nothing left to conquer on North America. From 1899 to 1902, U.S. troops battled Filipino nationalists on the predominantly Catholic northern and central islands, until the provisional government was finally captured and surrendered.

As thousands of Americans and as many as 220,000 Filipinos died in that phase of the war, the U.S. had mostly avoided conflict in the southern, predominantly Muslim islands, including Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago. Locals there, whom the Spanish had called "Moros" (the Spanish word for "Moor," as in the Muslims of North Africa who had once controlled Spain) were as wary of the Catholic nationalists, who spoke different languages and had long had designs on their islands, as they were the white invaders.

An initial treaty between the U.S. and Muslim tribes was brokered by the sultan of the Ottoman Empire. But once the Americans defeated the northern revolutionaries, the Americans decided to take control over the southern islands, changed the agreement, and a new war broke out. The so-called Moro Rebellion ushered in a second wave of guerrilla and counterinsurgency campaigns, in which Americans used tactics they had picked up in the earlier wars: search-and-destroy missions, waterboarding captives, and forcing civilians into concentration camps—a word Americans learned for the first time during the period…"
Main page
link

Amicalement
Armand

Interesting article, thanks for posting.

Garbage article by a biased writer.

Pershing was NOT a racist and was probably more enlightened than many people of his day.

His work in the Philippines brought about an end to the conflict and significantly improved the lives of the people in the area under his administration.

The nickname given to him was not "Black Jack" it was originally "N-word" Jack. It had nothing to do with discipline used against black troops. It was used by some troops who didn't like Pershing's strict discipline and officers who were angry about Pershing's promotion to General by President Roosevelt.

Pershing is routinely called a racist because he sent most of the American black combat units to the French Army. Which was actually a very smart way to appease people who were putting pressure on him.

On one hand the French who were insisting that Americans not form their own army but instead act as replacements for the Allied armies and the American Officers and Politicians who insisted that Blacks not be allowed to fight under any circumstances.

Pershing knew that black troops could fight just as well as white troops and that the French would accept them as they had their own colonial troops. It was a win win situation.

Glup!….

Amicalement
Armand

The statement that Pershing was not a racist is interesting. That would probably made him unique in the whole international western military establishment, and I can find no evidence to support that. Though he may well have been no worse than the best of the rest.

The man CHOSE to serve in a Black Infantry Regiment early in his career. This was hardly the "fast track" to acceptance and promotion in the professional army.

I think part of the problem is the continuing ambiguity of the word "racist." It is too liberally used today for political purpose, and is commonly applied in one meaning retroactively to history.

No, I'm not going to open the ultimate can of worms with definitions and gradations of "racism," but I do agree the article's author seems to feel very smug about someone else's.

TVAG