There are two very good reasons Leon Wolff won the Parkman Prize for history literature for his landmark book Little Brown Brother: How the United States Purchased and Pacified the Philippine Islands at the Century’s Turn (1960, ISBN 1-58288-209-6). First of all, it’s a compelling book. And second, there remains a dearth of literature pertaining to U.S. involvement in the Philippines. 

In the WoWasis review of Sterling Seagrave’s The Marcos Dynasty, we discussed the frustration of finding books in English in the Philippines regarding the history of that country. There’s very little for the traveler to pick up while there, and it doesn’t get much better when you return to your home country. While Seagrave’s book does a great job of explaining the Marcos era, Wolff’s book is the one we’d recommend for events in the early 20^th century, where a U.S. – fueled Manifest Destiny philosophy first succeeded in in “liberating” the Philippines from Spain and then proceeded to take over the country. The price? 200,000 civilians dead of pestilence or disease, 16,000 Filipino rebels killed, 4,234 Americans buried in the Philippines, 2,818 wounded. It cost the U.S. $600 million in 1900 money. 

Wolff describes how the U.S. public was goaded by religion, politicians, and newspapers into backing the war effort, and discusses the aspirations of Emilio Aguinaldo, who made a vain attempt to form a government with U.S. backing. He discusses the battles, personalities, strengths and failures of numerous parties in the struggle for control of the Philippines. In doing so, it goes a long way to explaining why a percentage of the citizenry of the Philippines will always have a distrust of the Yanks, even though they’ll always be happy to take their money. Buy it now at the WoWasis estore, powered by Amazon.