Colonial culture in the Pacific, in Robert Louis Stevenson and Jack London

Race & Class ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 63-82
Author(s):  
Lawrence Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Jack London ◽  
Robert Louis Stevenson ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
Old World ◽  
Colonial Culture ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Caribbean

One intriguing aspect of western colonisation at the turn of the nineteenth century in the South Pacific is the development within the US of a distinctly ‘Old World’ imperial imaginary. This happened after the Spanish-American War of 1898 through which the US acquired extra-territorial possessions in the Caribbean and the Pacific-the inspiration for Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘The White Man’s Burden’. This essay explores this transition from one phase of colonialism to another through the work of two prominent authors who lived and worked in the region during this tumultuous period: Robert Louis Stevenson and Jack London.

Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart White
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
Guerrilla War ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The Us ◽  
Santiago De Cuba

The Spanish-American War is best understood as a series of linked conflicts. Those conflicts punctuated Madrid’s decline to a third-rank European state and marked the United States’ transition from a regional to an imperial power. The central conflict was a brief conventional war fought in the Caribbean and the Pacific between Madrid and Washington. Those hostilities were preceded and followed by protracted and costly guerrilla wars in Cuba and the Philippines. The Spanish-American War was the consequence of the protracted stalemate in the Spanish-Cuban War. The economic and humanitarian distress which accompanied the fighting made it increasingly difficult for the United States to remain neutral until a series of Spanish missteps and bad fortune in early 1898 hastened the American entry to the war. The US Navy quickly moved to eliminate or blockade the strongest Spanish squadrons in the Philippines and Cuba; Spain’s inability to contest American control of the sea in either theater was decisive and permitted successful American attacks on outnumbered Spanish garrisons in Santiago de Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Manila. The transfer of the Philippines, along with Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Guam, to the United States in the Treaty of Paris confirmed American imperialist appetites for the Filipino nationalists, led by Emilio Aguinaldo, and contributed to tensions between the Filipino and American armies around and in Manila. Fighting broke out in February 1899, but the Filipino conventional forces were soon driven back from Manila and were utterly defeated by the end of the year. The Filipino forces that evaded capture re-emerged as guerrillas in early 1900, and for the next two and a half years the United States waged an increasingly severe anti-guerrilla war against Filipino irregulars. Despite Aguinaldo’s capture in early 1901, fighting continued in a handful of provinces until the spring of 1902, when the last organized resistance to American governance ended in Samar and Batangas provinces.

South Sea Tales

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Louis Stevenson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Robert Louis Stevenson ◽  
Global Culture ◽  
Cultural Encounters ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
South Sea ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Subject Material

The literary world was shocked when in 1889, at the height of his career, Robert Louis Stevenson announced his intention to settle permanently on the Pacific island of Samoa. His readers were equally shocked when he began to use the subject material offered by his new environment, not to promote a romance of empire, but to produce some of the most ironic and critical treatments of imperialism in nineteenth-century fiction. In these stories, as in his work generally, Stevenson shows himself to be a virtuoso of narrative styles: his Pacific fiction includes the domestic realism of ‘The Beach at Falesé, the folktale plots of ‘The Bottle Imp’ and ‘The Isle of Voices’, and the modernist blending of naturalism and symbolism in The Ebb-Tide. But beyond their generic diversity the stories are linked by their concern with representing the multiracial society of which their author had become a member. In this collection - the first to bring together all his shorter Pacific fiction in one volume - Stevenson emerges as a witness both to the cross- cultural encounters of nineteenth-century imperialism and to the creation of the global culture which characterizes the post-colonial world.

The Story of Defeat Havana

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Czyżewska
Keyword(s):  
Sugar Cane ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Christopher Columbus ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The Us ◽  
African Slaves ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The 19Th Century

Pleasure Island - Cuba is an intriguing island which, since the day it was discovered by Christopher Columbus, has been fighting for independence and freedom and has never quite succeeded in achieving this aim to this day. Almost all of the native Cubans whom Columbus would have encountered in 1492 were either killed by Spanish colonialists or passed away infected with European diseases such as measles and smallpox, to which their bodies were not immune. People who today call themselves Cuban are, in most cases, decedents of Hispanic colonialists or of African slaves brought across the Atlantic on Spanish galleons to cultivate sugar cane farms. A series of rebellions throughout the 19th century failed to end the Spanish rule. However, in 1898 the Spanish – American War resulted in Spain withdrawing from the island and, following three-and-a-half years of subsequent US military rule, Cuba gained formal independence in 1902. The US helped to revive the ravaged island’s infrastructure and economy, though not without considerable self-interest (Perur, 2015). For many decades the Cuban economy depended heavily on sugar cane which was exported first to Spain and later to the US. Together with the socio-cultural changes of the twentieth century, another industry started playing a key role; this was tourism. Thanks to a relaxed approach to alcohol, gambling and other leisure pursuits, Cuba turned into a convenient backyard playground for US tourists, especially during the prohibition of the 1920s, carrying this reputation well into the 1950s.

The Caribbean, Carlos Finlay, Walter Reed, and Serendipity

2021 ◽  
pp. 182-197
Author(s):  
Robert N. Wiedenmann ◽  
J. Ray Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Aedes Aegypti ◽  
Yellow Fever ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
Spanish Colonies ◽  
Series Of Experiments ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Post War

This chapter reviews the role of expanding sugarcane plantations throughout the Caribbean in the movement of slaves, mosquitoes and disease, as world empires jockeyed for dominance in world sugar markets. It relates how increased sugarcane production and exports to Europe led to increased importation of slaves to work the fields. As the African embarkation point of slaves moved north to the Slave Coast, yellow fever and the mosquito Aedes aegypti came into play, though when England banned slaveholding, sugar production shifted to the Spanish colonies of Puerto Rico and Cuba. The brief Spanish-American War of 1898, over control of Cuba, cemented the fame of Colonel Theodore Roosevelt but resulted in more deaths from yellow fever than combat, with the outbreak continuing during the post-war occupation of Cuba. Serendipity played a significant role in the subsequent discovery of the cause of the disease, connecting the Yellow Fever Commission, led by Major Walter Reed, with Cuban physician, Dr. Carlos Finlay, whose early experiments pointed to mosquitos and others while a series of experiments by Reed's team showed Aedes aegypti was the vector.

William Crawford Gorgas and the Panama Canal

2021 ◽  
pp. 198-212
Author(s):  
Robert N. Wiedenmann ◽  
J. Ray Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Yellow Fever ◽  
Panama Canal ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Theodore Roosevelt ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
Control Plan ◽  
Breeding Sites ◽  
Successful Strategy ◽  
The Us ◽  
Mosquito Breeding

This chapter relates how yellow fever continued to cause casualties during the US occupation after the Spanish-American War ended and how Major William Crawford Gorgas created a successful strategy to eliminate the disease from Cuba by attacking mosquito breeding sites. It goes on to tell the story of the plan to link the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, proposed earlier that century, with the Panama Railroad transporting military goods and soldiers, plus those seeking gold in California. A canal was proposed, but the first, French effort to build it cost hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of workers’ lives lost before capitulating to yellow fever in 1889. Subsequent US construction, begun in 1904, was soon threatened by disease. When Colonel Gorgas brought his yellow fever control plan to Panama he faced criticism from his superiors but gained the support of President Theodore Roosevelt. The chapter relates how his plan, though seemingly improbable, worked, defeating yellow fever, saving countless lives, and allowing the completion of the canal.

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