there is a cluster of 7 000 islands that
looks like one of the most beautiful
places on earth
people have been living here for over 30
000 years traveling between these
islands trading with each other and with
the region and developing religion
identity and culture it eventually
became a country called mae and while
all of these advancements were happening
here on these islands another group of
humans had been evolving in another part
of the world over here in europe
but this other group had a different
culture a different religion
many of their advancements were achieved
through expansion not collaboration
and their religion thrived when they
stomped out others
[Music]
they wanted to conquer
[Music]
these island these people this culture
would soon be swallowed stripped of what
made them
them and soon their name would be
changed after the name of the king of
their conquerors
this isn't a story just about a big
powerful military
taking over new lands we know that story
pretty well the story of these people
offers a new perspective to anyone who
will listen it's a perspective that has
been wiped from our history books
because of the inherent discomfort and
tension with this fact that the united
states once a colony that heroically
threw off an empire to become
independent soon became
an empire itself it contradicts our
founding belief that it is quote
self-evident that all men are created
equal and this story isn't just history
that empire still exists today with
colonial possessions and subjects it's
all wrapped up in the story of these
seven thousand islands and their people
so i wanna tell you the story of how the
u.s stole the philippines there are
still american citizens today who do not
have equal voting rights these are
citizens of america's iowan territory
[Music]
the u.s constitution grants citizenship
to everyone born on u.s soil except in
one jurisdiction
[Music]
quick pause
because i want to tell you about
something that is important to me and
happens to also be the sponsor of
today's video which is better help i'm a
big believer in therapy i've been in
therapy for almost two years now and it
has changed my life for many years i
didn't think therapy was for me i
thought it was for everyone else and so
i sort of avoided it but when i finally
started going last year i really started
to realize that there was so much that i
could be working on
day in and day out
that could dramatically reshape how i
think about the world and ultimately
making more happy better help is a
platform that is trying to make therapy
more accessible to people it's a virtual
platform so you have access not just to
the therapists that are in like your
town but to a huge network of like 15
000 therapists so you can find the right
fit for you finding the right therapist
is sometimes difficult and with better
help you can for free switch to a new
therapist as many times as you need to
until you find the right fit your
therapist is in touch with you you can
message them right in the app throughout
the week if needed and it is an
affordable and approachable way to get
in on therapy
whenever you want and better help is
available worldwide anywhere in the
world that you are that has an internet
connection
you can get in on counseling this isn't
a crisis line
this is a professional counseling and
therapy by like certified professional
therapists therapy can be expensive and
with better help it is more affordable
than traditional therapy and they even
offer financial aid when needed so
they really are trying to make this more
accessible which is something i deeply
believe in i think that in our culture
we don't value
therapy enough and we really should
because i think all of us have stuff we
can work on thank you betterhelp for
supporting this channel for sponsoring
this video there's a link in my
description it is betterhelp.com johnny
harris going to that link will get you
10 off your first month of better help
if you want to get started today so
let's get back to the video
this video could be called how spain
stole the philippines since spain was
the first nation to conquer and control
these islands like 500 years ago
actually exactly 500 years ago
and indeed spain left a very deep
influence on these islands not least the
name itself which is named after king
philip spain brought their religion
their language their culture which is
why the most common last names in the
philippines are like reyes or del
rosario de la cruz de los santos but the
heyday of the spanish empire came and
went and by the 1800s it was kind of
crumbling but it was the arrival of a
new superpower that i believe had a
bigger imprint not just on the
philippines but on the us itself it
established rules and behaviors that we
still grapple with today and that's why
this is the story of how the us stole
the philippines so let's go to this day
we can see the traces of the almost 400
years of spanish rule over the
philippines
but even more striking is the more
recent influence of the united
u.s stand sort of looks like this
it's all happening on this mainland and
at this point there sort of became a big
debate of like
do we keep going some people wanted to
keep expanding the us outside of this
mainland the president at the time
wasn't a big expansion guy but he was
surrounded by people who loved war
specifically this guy and these people
who surrounded the president had their
eye on this spanish colony right off the
american coast called cuba where the
locals were rising up against spain
wait a minute isn't this a video about
the philippines why are we talking about
cuba we're getting there in just a
second okay so anyway cuba americans
didn't want to go to war with cuba
they're like we don't need more war but
thanks to the explosion of an american
submarine in cuba which is probably an
accident and thanks to some highly
unethical journalism that blamed the
explosion on spain and a big thanks to
again this guy teddy roosevelt who at
this point was just a peon he was
literally the assistant secretary of the
navy but he somehow cajoled his boss's
boss the president of the united states
to go to war in cuba to like liberate
the cubans from spain so the u.s
declared war on spain in 1898. but this
begins a new era of war in the united
states no longer can you just go into
war and just like take over land you
need an angle you need to sell the war
to the american people so the angle on
this war was liberation we are
liberating the people the people you
liberate will witness the honorable and
decent spirit
of the american military no no no that's
that's later we're talking about 1898
but yes the whole idea of selling war to
the american public didn't really go
away after this why did the us go to war
in iraq we're in the early stages of
military operations
so anyway the us is now at war with
spain which is an empire that is deeply
in decline as i mentioned it's not going
to be hard to win but soon it's not just
cuba the us really meaning teddy
roosevelt who again is just an assistant
secretary of the navy he's like not a
big decision maker he somehow maneuvers
the situation to say like let's liberate
next door puerto rico and while we're at
it let's go into the pacific and
liberate guam and the philippines from
spain as well teddy didn't even ask his
boss to do this he literally sent off a
cable to the navy commander in asia that
was like george dewey go attack the
philippines where spain is that is what
your mandate is and george dewey's like
okay i'm being told to go to war with
spain in the philippines teddy was sort
of of the mind like better to ask
forgiveness than permission i mean i get
that but
kind of nuts that he pulled it off
anyway and now because of teddy
roosevelt who we literally named the
teddy bear after
side note we are at war not in the
caribbean only but also in the pacific
the u.s arrives to the philippines and
sees that the locals had already been
fighting against the spanish for like
years the spanish were weak and were
totally declining so it's like the top
of the ninth inning or like the fourth
quarter of the spanish in the
philippines and the u.s shows up and is
like let us liberate you and the
philippines were like well we've sort of
already been fighting this bloody war
for years against the spanish so yeah i
guess united states if you want to come
help us deal the final blow to spain
like sweet so george dewey this navy
commander and his fleet show up to
manila meanwhile back in the u.s people
are like
wait weren't we just supposed to invade
cuba what are we doing in the
philippines now and the u.s government's
like because the philippines is a
perfect hub for commercial opportunities
in asia and we think that if we don't
take it japan or germany might take it
which would clearly diminish our
geostrategic advantage in the pacific
no
they didn't say that they said we want
to liberate the people
of the philippines liberate the people
you liberate will witness the honorable
and decent spirit
of the american military so the spanish
see the u.s arrive to the philippines
and they're like great we're done so the
spanish military commanders asked to
meet with the us military commanders
they meet in secret and spain's like
listen i know we're losing but we really
want to save some face here we don't
want it to look like we lost to the
filipino revolutionaries and i'm not
kidding the spanish commander literally
said that he would quote be willing to
surrender to white people but not to the
filipinos so the u.s commander's like
okay there's an opportunity here we said
we were here to liberate the filipinos
but we haven't promised anything yet
so we would much rather it look like the
us defeated spain instead of
helped the filipinos defeat spain much
better for our brand says the united
states so together the united states and
spanish militaries organize a fake
battle
a fake battle in which the u.s would
fight the spanish in manila and the
spanish would intentionally lose and the
climax of this whole theatrical battle
according to the plan was that at the
end the u.s would storm towards the
inner walled city of manila the last
stronghold of where the spanish are oh
and the key detail in this whole plan
they would not let the filipino fighters
the ones that had been doing all the
actual fighting against the spanish join
them as they stormed towards the walled
city to deal the final blows to the
spanish empire and this would mean that
the filipinos technically didn't gain
their independence it was actually the
us who conquered the spanish and then
the spanish were like oh can you give us
20 million dollars for our troubles and
the us was like yeah sure so now the u.s
wins the war and they claim sovereignty
over the philippines
so yeah this happened they did the fake
battle they won the war instead of
liberating the filipinos they just say
hey we're your new colonizers
psych meanwhile back in the united
states they gotta keep up this white
savior liberation narrative that they
created to justify going to war with
spain so you see a lot more theatrical
pr by the government they staged this
giant military parade in new york city
where this military commander who did
the fake war george dewey marches down
they called it dewey day it was like a
two-day parade in new york city they
created a big like military arch for him
he became like a military hero for
having like liberated all these people
from the spanish and then you start to
see these like crazy advertisements like
this soap advertisement that has george
dewey the commander
washing his hands with the caption quote
the first step towards lightening the
white man's burden is through teaching
the virtues of cleanliness
and on the sides you have soap being
offloaded in the philippines and being
given to the locals the u.s had to frame
this not as conquest but as the
honorable duty of the us to civilize
these people or in the words of the
sopad
to brighten the dark corners of the
earth
geez
this is insane and was not that long ago
okay so this is where things really heat
up it's 1900 now spain loses the war
obviously and the us now owns puerto
rico guam and they claim the philippines
but the local filipinos who have been
fighting for their freedom for years are
like no no no no you just waltzed in
here on our rebellion and conspired with
the spanish to make it look like you
were liberating us no this is our
country we don't need another colonizer
and this is where things really heat up
[Music]
the filipinos start fighting again for
their independence and this time against
the united states it is a pretty
horrible bloody war one that i never
learned about in school it include
massacres of men women and children by
the united states and hundreds of
thousands of civilian deaths but the us
eventually won
and they established a government in the
philippines back in the u.s the appetite
for expansion continued to go down and
people sort of just forgot about the
philippines they forgot that there was a
war there one newspaper summed it up by
saying americans didn't know if the
philippines were islands or canned fruit
but the fact remained that the u.s went
to war and now owned the philippines in
addition to puerto rico and guam so this
begged a very important question one
that hadn't been asked before which is
is all of this land america
are these people americans this was a
huge question and the answer to that
question
affects how we see these territories
still today okay so a few years after
these wars
there's a guy in new york city who's
importing oranges from one of these
territories puerto rico and he's paying
tariffs on these imports because you
know that's what you do when you're
importing oranges from another country
wait a minute another country
this guy was like didn't we conquer
puerto rico and guam and the philippines
isn't that america the constitution says
that you can't put tariffs on stuff
coming from other parts of the us like
new jersey can put tariffs on like
avocados from california so he sued and
his case and a bunch of others like it
made it to the supreme court so now the
supreme court must decide is this land
where we just won a war is this america
are these americans if they are do they
get all the same rights as other
americans do they get to vote do they
get to participate in the u.s economy
without tariffs like any other state
does and honestly this isn't a question
about oranges and tariffs the real
question at stake here is is america the
land of the free where all are created
equal or are we an empire no different
than any other empire that scoops up
colonial possessions in war and rules
the people who are usually black and
brown as subjects not fully a part of
the country
that was the question that was at stake
and in this series of cases in the early
1900s the supreme court decided that
america
was the latter
is the latter they created a new
category of land called unincorporated
territories where the people don't have
any representation in the democracy but
where congress could create laws on
their own particularly laws dealing with
revenue which would not be allowed by
the constitution for states within the
union
we can create revenue laws stuff that's
totally unconstitutional for other parts
of our country in other words
unincorporated territories are
land we control and exploit for revenue
but whose people don't get to vote and
don't get the right to trial by jury so
yeah the philippines in addition to
puerto rico and guam remained
unincorporated territories a place that
the u.s could kind of just ignore
without a lot of consequence they
weren't important enough or strategic
enough to
be considered to become states like
hawaii or alaska so they sort of faded
from
american consciousness like this is why
we never heard about this in school like
it didn't make it into the history books
in any salient way and how far the
philippines had faded from people's
minds became very clear in december of
1941 during world war ii the us had
owned the philippines for like 40 years
when a fleet of japanese bombers flew
across the pacific and bombed an
american naval base in hawaii
[Music]
but what we don't really remember is on
that day japan bombed
guam and the philippines two american
territories as well as several other
american and british territories
yesterday
december
7th 1941
a date which will live
in infamy
here's the draft of this speech
this is the original draft that fdr
spent the day marking up before he gave
it zoom in a little bit and you'll see
on this draft that it mentioned the
philippines originally
but fdr crossed it out he crossed out
the mention of manila
yes the philippines was on some map
somewhere yes we technically owned it
but the people really didn't want to
hear about it because these people
weren't americans
the supreme court had decided that they
weren't going to become states anytime
soon so why mention them after that day
japan actually full-on invaded the
philippines they didn't do that to
hawaii but they did to the philippines
until the end of the war at which point
the philippines were finally granted
independence in 1946 fast forward to
today
and this we own you but you're not
really americans precedent established
by the supreme court still applies to
four million people who live in
unincorporated territories or let's just
call a spade a spade let's call them
what they are these are colonial
possessions the people who live here
don't experience the full rule of law
they don't get trial by jury they don't
have full representation in our
democracy and they don't get to vote for
the president this is why when a
hurricane hits puerto rico the
government response is not nearly what
it should be the way trump talked about
puerto rico as almost another country as
not a part of us mirrors exactly how the
supreme court talked about these
unincorporated territories they're for
revenue not to compete with american
farmers we conquered these places
but we didn't want to bring the people
fully into the american project we left
them out
and there they remained today
[Music]