Liberty and American Anti-imperialism, 1898-1909

In a concisely written and accessible book, Michael Patrick Cullinane offers a fresh perspective on the anti-imperialist movement that peaked at the turn of the last century. In recounting the debates surrounding the 1898 Treaty of Paris (ending the Spanish-American War) and the subsequent election of 1900, he situates the rise of the movement within a long historical trajectory. He argues that anti-imperialist sentiment in 1898 was rooted in earlier critiques of American expansionist policies. Likewise, he extends his analysis beyond 1900, showing the movement's efforts to resist the extension of Euro-American imperial dominion in the first two decades of the twentieth century. He illustrates how anti-imperialist organizing seeded the peace movement and other social causes of the Progressive Era. Cullinane traces the evolution in strategy of the anti-imperialists. They first tried to exert political influence in the Treaty of Paris negotiations and the election of 1900, then shifted to judicial challenges (the Insular cases), and finally created a broader social movement intended to mobilize public opinion by exposing atrocities committed against Filipinos and other colonized peoples. Whereas the historiography of anti-imperialism has largely dismissed the movement as a failure, this book's greatest achievement is recalibrating the narrative to recognize the movement's striking persistence and at least partial success without obscuring the deep political and social divisions among its members. Cullinane accomplishes this feat by broadening the scope of anti-imperialist activism beyond the political and legal spheres and tracing networks of transnational collaboration among activists opposing imperialism throughout the world, in such places as the Philippines, South Africa, and the Congo

Dominion · Expansionism · Historiography · Literature · Narrative · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Revolutionary movement · Social movement · Sociology · Treaty · Victory · Asian American and Pacific Histories · Australian History and Society · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · History · Law