Customer Reviews

Little Brown Brother: How the United States Purchased and Pacified the Philippines

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This is the Philippines Centennial Year of celebrating a noble attempt at Independence as a Nation . Incredible that in this day and age, nothing much has changed in the Philippines. Today wears a cloak of sophistication, outward love of all things American by a population that has no idea of the blood that was spilled by America in the process of a rough and dirty attempt at colonization of the Philippines. The Little Brown Brothers were denied their birthright by the American Gatling gun on the pretext of replacing the well known cruel tyranny of Spanish rule with the so called justice of the United States. 100 Years later, - it is just a bit more modern, the action faster. the politics the same, the poor still poor and the rich much, much richer. The Reader is vividly reminded that everything is the same. Powerful authenticated stuff for the modern educated Filipino, far more enlightening than Rizal's "Noli ne Tangere" and should be compulsory reading for all Filipino's. - if it were available

"Little Brown Brother" gives the reader an excellent introduction to the American conquest of the Philippines. With a copyright granted in 1960, the title may be dated, but the narrative is thorough.

This book is concentrated on the Philippine theatre of the Spanish American War. Leon Wolf begins with backgrounds of the Imperialist sentiment in the U. S. and the Philippine struggle for independence. The nature of the Spanish domination of the islands, largely through control of government and church offices, is laid out.

Action in the Far East began with Adm. Dewey's destruction of the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay on May 1, 1898. This left a multi-polar balance of power, with American dominance of the Bay, challenged by German and British fleets and the city under the control of the Spanish, but surrounded to landward by the Filipino insurgents. This state led to a series of discussions during which the Spanish negotiated with the Americans for an arrangement which would satisfy their pride while protecting them from massacre by the Filipinos. The Filipinos, meanwhile, were negotiating with the Americans for support for their revolution. These negotiations would lead to conflicting claims as to what was promised which would be adjusted by the American Army. With the build-up of the American Army the balance of power shifted and the American conquest began. Extending over several years, the Americans occupied first the Bay, next Manila and, after a drive across Luzon, the entire archipelago.

Much attention is devoted to the political struggles over whether the U. S. should take the islands and, if so, how much they should take. Other nations stirred in the troubled pot. Japan's offer to help govern the islands was spurned. German bellicose behavior was opposed by the Royal Navy.

American debate over taking the islands was reminiscent of more recent debates over foreign interventions. Many of the issues are similar to ones which have arisen at other times in history and which continue to arise. As the war with the Filipino insurgents dragged on, the Americans were accused of conduct which was similar to Spanish actions which led to American intervention in Cuba. Imperialists and Anti-imperialists argued over whether or not American treasure should be expended and blood spilled in tropical jungles and whether we were liberating or murdering their inhabitants. The concentration of natives in villages was not only reminiscent of Spanish measures but prescient of American actions decades later in another Asian battleground. American actions in the islands became a political football, while Filipino patriots attacked American troops while awaiting the election of William Jennings Bryan in anticipation of receiving a grant of independence from his hands. With the reelection of William McKinley, Filipino independence was deferred for over 40 years.

Throughout this book I enjoyed reading the history and comparing its issues with those of later eras. The conquest of the Philippines really set the pattern for American victories and defeats throughout the rest of the 20th Century. These comparisons provide fuel for hours of contemplation.

Throughout this work the author maintains a good balance between detail and broad themes, without ever becoming bogged down or detached from reality. It is informative and readable. As you can see from my other reviews, a really good book earns four stars from me. Only the exceptional ones, such as "Little Brown Brother", earn five.

During the Pacific Conflict of WWII, the Japanese where characterized as brutal imperialistic conquerors, hungry for more territory and more resources as well as greater control over their asian neighbors in China, Korea, Southeast Asia, and the Phillipines. The United States is viewed as the pure of heart liberators who had come to rescue and aid such people. It is a sad and shameful fact that America had roughly committed the same act of vicious colonialism on the Phillipines years before Japanese troops set foot on the islands.

After the fall of Spanish-American War, rather than attempting to help the Fillipinos to rebuild their occupied homeland, the United States government, in a deeply disturbing turn to greed and arrogance, opted to occupy them just as their Spanish adversaries had done. Huge divisions of soldiers where sent to the Phillipines. The Fillipino guerillas and resistance fighters found themselves battling an enemy that they had considered a friend and ally only a few years before. Though a "successful" counterinsurgency, the Phillipine Insurrection is often thought of as a precursor to the American experience in Vietnam.

This is a conflict that the history books should stop trying to ignore. I love this country but if we want to avoid brutal and senseless campaigns like those in Iraq and Vietnam we need to take into account the wrongdoings of our country such as the occupation of the Phillipines. In fact, during WWII many Fillipino guerilla groups where reluctant to join forces with the US troops and even considered attacking BOTH sides to ensure that either Japanese or American occupation would not happen.

Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it.

(click the author's name for several other editions of this book)

From: Philippine Daily Inquirer May 26, 2003 SECTION: 8

"LITTLE BROWN BROTHER" is the title of the book Leon Wolff wrote in 1961. It was an eye-opener not just for Filipinos but for Americans as well, most of whom had grown up believing the American seizure of the Philippines, along with Cuba and Puerto Rico, before the turn of the last century was done with the noblest of intentions and wrought through the most benign of intrusions. The original title of the book was "Little Brown Brother: The Forgotten American Bid For Empire Which Cost 250,000 Lives," which was eventually shortened. The subtitle pretty much sums up what the book is about. The 250,000 lives were of course the Filipinos', the American occupation force, as in Iraq more than a century later, suffering few casualties.

Wolff's book told not just of the way a good portion of the new colony's population was wiped out but of the way the entire population's memory was wiped out. The first claimed only 250,000 lives, the latter the souls of nearly every inhabitant of the island. Superimposed on the horrific reality was the general patronage movie version of the occupation, not unlike Fernando Poe's, which told of the making of the "little brown brother," the sidekick, with the face of Dencio Padilla, who would forever be at the hero's side. It was to become the cornerstone of "special relations," relations which have proven especially comfortable for the United States and especially excruciating to the Philippines. "


From The Washington Post, February 24, 1985:
The story of how, and why America liberated the Philippines from Spain and then took the islands back from their inhabitants two weeks later is a complicated one, already well told in one of the classics of American historiography, Leon Wolff's Little Brown Brother, published in 1960.



From BusinessWorld October 21, 1998:

"Little Brown Brother." The author is Leon Wolff, who also wrote the celebrated "In Flanders Field." The subhead on the front cover title and the introduction by the publishers provide an idea of the contents:

"America's Forgotten Bid for Empire Which Cost 250,000 Lives - At the end of the last century, when British imperialism was at its peak, the United States embarked on an acquisitive venture unique in that freedom-loving nation's story. The extra-ordinary circumstances of the annexation of the Philippine Islands and the bloody three-year war that followed the insurrection of its eight million inhabitants (a war in which a quarter of a million U.S. troops and Filipinos died) are today all but forgotten, even in America...

"It was after America's easy Caribbean victory in the war with Spain (1898) that the imperialist faction in American politics, whose leaders included President McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, provoked a political controversy of almost unparalleled bitterness. Meanwhile, ten thousand miles away in the western Pacific, Filipino patriots under Emilio Aguinaldo, who had helped the invading Americans drive out the hated Spaniards, found themselves betrayed by their liberators and saddled with a fresh domination - against which they promptly revolted."

Wolff presents a balanced narrative, depicting an America split between the anti-imperialists, typified by William Jennings Bryant and Mark Twain, and politicians like McKinley, with his delusions of his country's "manifest destiny," and Roosevelt (Theodore), the former Rough Rider, who lumped Filipinos along with the native Americans whom he had fought in the bloody Indian wars.

According to Wolff, in accepting his vice-presidential nomination, Roosevelt declared: "... the presence of (U.S.) troops in the Philippines during the Tagal (Tagalog) insurrection has no more to do with militarism or imperialism than had their presence in the Dakotas, Minnesota and Wyoming during the many years which elapsed before the final outbreaks of the Sioux were definitely put down... (Self-government) under Aguinaldo would be like granting self-government to an Apache reservation under some local chief..."

This attitude was reflected in the way the Americans conducted the war. Two officers of a U.S. regiment leaked a particularly gory episode to the New York World, which wrote:

"... our soldiers here and there resort to horrible measures with the natives. Captains and lieutenants are sometimes judges, sheriffs and executioners... 'I don't want any more prisoners sent to Manila,' was the verbal order from the Governor-General three months ago... It is now the custom to avenge the death of an American soldier by burning to the ground all the houses, and killing right and left the natives who are only 'suspects.'"...

Liberation meant conquest
New York Times Review March 5, 1961
...Wolff also author of "In Flanders Field," condemns a few cruel men, but writes understandingly of the pressures and counter-pressures that led to inhuman conduct. The struggle became, for all the participants, a nightmare war fought in torrential tropical rains and ankle deep mud, involving incessant fatigue and hunger and a sudden horrible death along jungle trails...Wolff, drawing upon a mass of contemporary writing, published documents and the memoirs of Anguinaldo, has succeeded admirably in re-creating both sides of this nearly forgotten conflict. It is a shame that the American troops, fighting with courage and fortitude, were not enlisted in a better cause. At the time it appeared far more noble than it does today, but even then a British magazine commented, "There have never been more wicked wars than this...but never a more shabby war."

Mr Wolff has compiled a classic account of this savage and mostly forgotten conflict that brough America into a war that would be very similar in the sixties. A brilliant telling of both sides of the war, from the political figures, Filipino field commanders, volunteer soldiers from Oregon and Kansas, the "Buffalo Soldiers", Marines, Moros wielding their razor-edged barongs to generals like Lawton, Merritt, Pershing, Funston and Arthur MacArthur. If you are interested in this story, I recommend this book and Muddy Glory by Russel Roth to name but a few. History as it should be taught in school.