The Forbidden Book: The Philippine-American War in Political Cartoons

by Abe Ignacio

Art. Asian & Asian American Studies. Filipino American Studies. Co-authored by Abe Ignacio, Enrique de la Cruz, Jorge Emmanuel, and Helen Toribio. THE FORBIDDEN BOOK uses over 200 political cartoons from 1898 to 1906 to chronicle a little known war between the United States and the Philippines. The war saw the deployment of 126,000 U.S. troops, lasted more than 15 years and killed hundreds of thousands of Filipinos beginning in February 1899.

The book's title comes from a 1900 Chicago Chronicle cartoon of the same name showing then-President William McKinley putting a lock on a book titled "True History of the War in the Philippines." Today, very few Americans know about the brutal suppression of Philippine independence or the anti-war movement led at that time by the likes of writer Mark Twain, peace activist Jane Addams, journalist Joseph Pulitzer, steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, labor leader Samuel Gompers, and Moorfield Storey, first president of the NAACP.

The book reveals how the public was misled in the days leading to the war, shows illustrations of U.S. soldiers using the infamous "water cure" torture (today referred to as "waterboarding"), and describes a highly publicized court martial of soldiers who had killed prisoners of war. The election of 1900 pitted a pro-war Republican president against an anti-war Democratic candidate. In 1902, the Republican president declared a premature "mission accomplished" as the war was beginning to expand to the southern Philippines.

The book shows political cartoons glorifying manifest destiny, demonizing the leader of the Filipino resistance President Emilio Aguinaldo, and portraying Filipinos, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Hawaiians, Chamorros, and other colonials as dark-skinned savages in need of civilization. These images were used to justify a war at a time when three African Americans on average were lynched every week across the south and when the Supreme Court approved the "separate but equal" doctrine.

More than a century later, the U.S.- Philippine War remains hidden from the vast majority of Americans. The late historian Howard Zinn noted, "THE FORBIDDEN BOOK brings that shameful episode in our history out in the open... The book deserves wide circulation."

Genres: History

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Nick Klagge · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a valuable collection documenting contemporaneous public commentary, in the form of political cartoons, on a war that American popular culture and mainstream history has done its best to "disappear" over the past century. The book mostly reproduces the cartoons, which are organized into sections with a small amount of commentary. Although the balance is probably pro-imperialist and anti-Filipino, it's interesting to see representation of the anti-imperialist perspective too (although only American perspectives are represented at all--I wonder if there were any Filipino political cartoons at the time?). I've read a decent amount about the Philippine-American war, but I was interested to read here the view that the declaration of the end of the war in 1902 was basically a political move to remove public attention and delegitimize the remaining armed opposition (which continued for more than ten more years, through the Battle of Bud Bagsak in 1913)--basically a "Mission Accomplished" a century avant la lettre.

Be prepared for a LOT of racist imagery. I guess I had a rational awareness that America was an openly racist society in 1900, but it was still a little shocking to see on the page.

[Paolo · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child."
- Rudyard Kipling, 'The White Man's Burden'

And boy, did America ever take Rudyard's words to heart. Nothing like paying a cool $20 million to a former empire, Spain, for your first-ever colony, then proceeding to harness your insurgent subject over the next thirteen years by decimating a sixth of his population. In the U.S., the racialization of the Filipino was in full display in the political cartoons of the period, which appeared in mainstream rags such as Life Magazine and McClure's, and collected now in 'The Forbidden Book'. These cartoons potrayed the Phil Am War as a conflict between a benevolent Western master against a darkie savage, often rendered as a distorted/exaggerated African pygmy. You really have to see these images to believe it.

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

This should be circulated more - they need to print more copies cause it's a freaking amazing compilation.

[Camden · Rating 3 out of 5]

The actual collection of political cartoons is a really good tool and is organized and picked well- but the analysis and framing of them in the actual text isn't quite as good