West Across the Pacific: American Involvement in East Asia from 1 ...

Meanwhile, the annexations of Hawaii and the Philippines triggered the great debate on imperialism in the United States, which carried into the election campaign of 1900. We could say it began with President Cleveland’s withdrawal of the first Hawaiian annexation treaty from the U.S. Senate pending the report from his skeptical investigator of the Hawaiian revolution of 1893, J. H. Blount. Annexationists quickly dubbed him Paramount Blount for his unwanted probing into the unseating of Queen Liliuokalani. However, Cleveland had not made a federal case of antiannexationism. His message rejecting the annexation proposal at that time had indicted his Republican predecessors’ methods more than the expansionist urge; he not only made no move to restore the Queen, but also encouraged the Hawaiian Republic’s minister to Washington that his administration would not tolerate interference by Japan in the Islands’ affairs.¹²

However, William Jennings Bryan and his populist followers did not shrink from the black and white facts of Americans crushing a budding republic in the Philippines, and with help from “Old Republicans” like Carl Schurz, Senator Hoar, and George Boutwell, who had long observed and lamented the handwriting of Manifest Destiny on the wall, he did not hesitate to challenge annexationist senators like W. E. Chandler, John T. Morgan, Mark Hanna, and Albert Beveridge and their Mahanist-Rooseveltian apologists and take the imperialism issue directly to the people in the dramatic election of 1900.¹³

They lost. But they threw such a scare into the annexationist camp that a definition of American Far Eastern policy much more in line with traditional American ideals and approaches to foreign relations than empire building clearly became a necessity. Out of this realization, plus many pressures of various sorts, came the Open Door policy. However, before proceeding to this, it may be well to examine one or two points about the annexations, particularly in relation to Japanese reactions.

The first concerns the reason for Japan’s withdrawal of her protest to the annexation of Hawaii and her subsequent mildness toward that and the Philippine annexation by the United States.