Storm Miller – The Friars Question

As part of their time with us, we ask our digital cataloging interns to write a blog post to share some of their experiences and “finds” while working in the Roosevelt collections. As they start to wrap up their internship hours, we will start to share their blog entries with you. This one is from Storm based in Texas.

Having researched the administrations of Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson, I have been awed by the complexity of the problems faced by U.S. presidents, and by the degree to which the actions of each president often confound the stereotypes bestowed upon them by conventional historical narratives. When I undertook the Theodore Roosevelt Center project, I looked forward to exploring the difficult policy-making choices weighed by Roosevelt and his administration, as well as discovering the extent to which Roosevelt pursued unexpected or counter intuitive policy trajectories. For example, Roosevelt’s most famous quote—“Speak softly and carry a big stick”—might suggest that he was a heavy-handed imperialist, bent on extending U.S. hegemony into Latin America and the Pacific with little regard for the will of local populations. For many of the college students I have taught he was just that. In this trope, Roosevelt-as-exporter-of-American-power functions as a static, black-or-white character, to be either celebrated or denounced. To me, however, the story of U.S. foreign relations with the Pacific and Latin America—during the 1890s and beyond—has always been about more than simple intervention. Quite often it is a complicated blend of intervention and cooperation, and I have been gratified to see some glimmers of this combination at play during my work on the Roosevelt documents. I am further gratified to have found a singular example of this idea, as well as fodder for future research projects for my students, in Roosevelt’s handling of the “Friars” question during the summer and fall of 1902.

Not having previous knowledge of this affair prior to my internship, I faced a bit of a learning curve. As I currently understand it, by the time of the Spanish-American War the Catholic Friars had been in possession of much of the best lands in the Philippines for generations, making them perhaps the most despised foreigners on the islands. At the same time, many Filipinos resisted the U.S. occupation following Spain’s defeat in the war, thus launching a three-year guerrilla war. While much has been made of the insurgency and U.S. efforts to combat it—especially in light of later U.S. counterinsurgency efforts in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan—little light has been shed on Roosevelt’s nuanced handling of the Friars problem. Most Filipinos wanted immediately to force the Friars from the islands, by violence if necessary. U.S. Catholics and ardent proponents of imperial expansion, however, saw no reason to support the imperatives of natives over Westerners. As the documents show, Roosevelt navigated this storm deftly. He pointed out that, in opposing the continued presence of the Friars, he was supporting local needs and local desires, thus remaining consistent with stated U.S. war aims of freeing oppressed populations in preparation for self-determination and democracy. Yet he also sought some sort of compromise, whereby the Friars would be compensated for the loss of their lands, perhaps even from the treasuries of the United States. Here, Roosevelt acted in the interests of due process and law and order, also principles central to American notions of right conduct in the international arena.

So, clearly, there is more to Roosevelt than a soft voice and a big stick. The documents show that he did become angry and “warlike,” and that he was certainly a master of the soothing and reasonable voice. Yet, it seems to me, the caricature of him as one who sort of reveled in the big stick, and who regarded the negotiation as a mere preamble to force, remains just that, a caricature that distorts reality. As the “Friars question” documents show, Roosevelt and his advisers always engaged in a constantly shifting effort to blend negotiation and force in a manner that furthered and satisfied the interests of as many constituencies as possible, both at home and abroad. As much as Roosevelt sought to expand U.S. power, it also seems that he really was trying to do so in a manner that ensured close and mutually beneficial cooperation for populations such as those in the Pacific and Latin America.

Aragorn Storm Miller is a Ph.D. Candidate in the History Dept. at the University of Texas at Austin. A longtime resident of Austin, Storm trained to teach Social Studies at area middle and high schools before deciding to pursue graduate education. He researches U.S.-Latin American relations, with a focus on the Cold War period. Storm is proud of the fact that he has squeezed visits to nearly 20 minor and major league baseball parks into various research trips across the United States.