12. Women and Expansion
Where US imperialism went, so did women, and of course women were already in places where the US went. US imperialists gave indigenous people they encountered two choices: the male soldier, or the female teacher. They were going to Americanize them one way or the other. Indigenous people responded differently depending on the location and their unique history. Two great examples of US imperialism are in Hawaii and the Philippines, where important and powerful women resisted US expansion, all while American women took up the "White-Woman's Burden."
How to cite this source?
Remedial Herstory Project Editors. "12. WOMEN AND EXPANSION." The Remedial Herstory Project. November 1, 2025. www.remedialherstory.com.
When the Civil War ended, America could turn outward again. The islands in the Pacific dotting the path to China were alluring. As were the raw materials in the Caribbean and South American countries only recently freed from Spanish colonization. So while men in government devised plans to conquer these places, white women were instrumental in the implementation and efficacy of American imperialism. On the receiving end, women were both victims and resistors of American imperialism. To understand more deeply, this essay will explore and contrast the experiences of women in Hawaii and the Philippines. Both nations were annexed, one peacefully, the other violently. As always, when we discuss armed conflict, sexual violence against women is present, so trigger warning for discussion of rape and sexual assault.
American imperialism in the Americas and Pacific goes back before the Civil War. In the 1820s and ‘30s missionaries traveled to distant places to uplift and Christianize the indigenous people that lived there. Their goal was to convert these “heathens'' and help them embrace a Western, Christian lifestyle. People believed that male missionaries, traveling without a wife, would be unable to resist the exotic women they encountered abroad, so married men were preferred. These ceremonies were often rushed with husband and wife knowing very little about one another before being shipped to some remote location. Sybil Moseley Bingham married her husband after only knowing him a couple of weeks. They sailed to Hawaii 12 days after they were married! Bingham wrote in her journal, "I believe God appoints my work… and it is enough for me to see that I do it all with an eye to his glory." What’s important here is that white women were seen as essential to the success of the mission because they would civilize the men. They were also complicit in religious imperialism, not just bystanders.
A powerful visual image of the role that women played in US imperialism is that of Uncle Sam, holding up an American soldier and an American teacher. The inhabitants of these various islands are faced with a choice: war or education. Gendered analysis about the male soldier and the female teacher notwithstanding, the takeaway is that women were being mobilized for a different kind of imperialism. Due to prevailing gender norms, women were expected to provide for the education of children. In the case of imperialism, education was weaponized as a tool to strip these indigenous people of their traditions, culture, and heritage and replace them with a white, Christian, American version of democracy.
Hiram and Sybil Moseley Bingham, Public Domain
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Hawaii
The islands of Hawaii are a powerful example not only of US imperialism, but of the patriarchal US overthrowing a kingdom of powerful women. To illustrate this it’s important to back up. Polynesian people navigated to the islands of Hawaii in the early Middle Ages using only the stars. Unique cultures emerged on each of the islands. British explorer James Cook landed with his team in Hawaii becoming the first European known to have landed. He was killed by the Hawaiians a year later while trying to kidnap the king of the island Hawaii. His presence and the strength of his vessels were a bitter warning to the Hawaiians of their military weakness by comparison. The Hawaiians worked to unify the surrounding islands and by 1810, under the reign of King Kamehameha I, they were successful.
One of the major conquests was his victory over the island of Maui in 1790 while the island’s King was away at Oahu. Keōpuolani, a descendant of the King whose subjects killed James Cook, the current King’s grand-niece and interestingly also the niece of Kamehameha, was just 11 years old during the conflict, yet she played a crucial role in unifying Hawaii.
She and other royal family members fled Kamehameha’s attack. Her grandmother, Kalola fell sick as they fled and they stopped to rest, but the two women and their entourage were taken captive. Kalola was forced to offer her granddaughter as a future bride to Kamehameha in order to secure peace. Maui came under the rule of a unified Hawaii and 11-year old Keōpuolani awaited marriage to her mom’s half-brother.
Keōpuolani & Ka’ahumanu
Keōpuolani became the highest ranking wife of Kamehameha when they married five years later, giving her immense power over the newly unified islands. She gave birth to at least eleven children, but only three survived to adulthood and two went on to be kings. Her children were considered sacred, so sacred Kemehameha would lie on his back and place them on his chest as a sign of their superiority to him. In Hawaiian tradition, her children were taken away to be educated by others. But Keōpuolani broke this tradition with her daughter, Nāhienaena. She was not a very politically involved woman and deferred to Kamehameha’s favorite wife Kaʻahumanu.
Around the world, in 1808, Obookiah, a Hawaiian man traveled to Connecticut and converted to Christianity, convincing New Englanders of the necessity to travel to these distant islands to help convert the “heathen.” Before he could return home he died. His memoir became a best seller in New England. Christian Missionaries departed Boston in 1819, but since these men were required to be married, many hastily married–with four weddings taking place before departure. These white Christian newlyweds arrived in Hawaii in 1820.
On the islands, Kaʻahumanu had become regent to Keōpuolani’s son after Kamehameha died. Their roles were essentially King and Prime Minister. In the aftermath of Kamehameha’s death, she was instrumental in putting down a rebellion from the island Kauaʻi by capturing the island's leader and forcing him to marry her. When he died, she captured his son and made him marry her too. The kingdom secured, Ka'ahumanu went about a plan to modernize and solidify her influence.
She colluded with Keōpuolani to overthrow the Hawaiian kapu system, which banned women from eating meals with men. Violations of kapu, which were an ancient system of traditions, were punishable by immediate death. When Kamehameha declined to enforce kapu and Hawaiians watched as offenders were not punished by the gods, kapu as a tradition and belief system was broken. Just as Hawaiian women solidified, literally, their place at the table, Christian missionaries arrived.
The white, New England missionaries were a sight to see in Hawaii. Similarly, they were shocked by the bare bodies of the native Hawaiians.
Missionaries set to work building New England-style frame houses, which looked odd on the beaches of Hawaii, and a church. They helped the Hawaiians craft a written language and created a reading primer in Hawaiian. To aid in their mission, they translated the Bible and preached Christian ideas.
The Hawaiians had little interest in what the missionaries found important. Hawaiians were hunters and foragers, the New Englanders were farmers. Hawaiians wore very little clothing, still the New Englanders taught them to sew. But since traditional Hawaiian religion was already declining, this was a way the missionaries could build connections.
Seeing the power of Christian Britain and the United States and inspired by Christianity, Keōpūolani and Kaʻahumanu converted to Protestant Christianity in 1823 and 1824 respectively, setting an example for other Hawaiians They also adopted western-style dress. As regent, Ka’ahumanu also crafted Hawaii’s first codified laws. She took the name "Elizabeth" when she was baptized a year later. Against her wishes, Kamehameha II and his wife traveled to Britain for an audience with the King in hopes of building a stronger alliance. But like other native peoples who traveled to Europe (think Pocahontas), they both died in the summer of 1824 from measles to which they had no immunity.
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Keōpūolani, Public Domain
American Missionaries
Ka’ahumanu stayed on as regent of Kamehameha II, further cementing her power and influence. In 1830, she banned the hula and as part of her path toward Christianizing and westernizing Hawaii. The hula was and is a sensual mimetic religious dance performed before the king to honor the gods or praise the chief. It was a symbol of polytheism in a rapidly Christianizing Hawaii. Ka’ahumanu and the king negotiated treaties with the encroaching American businessmen who had sugar and pineapple plantations on the island, granting them free trade on the islands and the opportunity to represent themselves in Hawaiian courts– a dangerous move.
The Americans and the missionaries thought little of the Hawaiian people. Maria Loomis described the natives as “indolent and not inclined to excitement or activity. She even asserted that women did no work at all. Her condemnation of the “lazy Hawaiians” reveals how little she understood their culture.
In 1832, Mary Chapin, described Hawaii in negative terms, highlighting what she called a “heathonish culture.” She was obviously discouraged and frustrated at this clash of cultures. But, two months later, she gradually admitted "Although much enlightened, still they are ignorant people, and need much instruction.”
There was clearly a difference between the desires of the elites in Hawaii and the average Hawaiians. The throne passed between Hawaiian monarchs several times, the traditional monarchy was replaced by a constitutional monarchy, relations with Americans became tense, and the throne finally landed on Hawaii’s first and only female monarch: Queen Liliuokalani.
Queen Ka’ahumanu with her servant on rug, Public Domain
Lili’uokalani
Lili’uokalani came to power after the death of her brother Kalakaua. He had been elected to the Hawaiian throne under the new constitutional system and was forced to sign treaty after treaty with the United States that undermined Hawaiian autonomy over their own land. One treaty even allowed sugar to be sold to the US tax free. Still, white American businessmen distrusted the Hawaiian monarchy and worked to undermine it. One reason for their distrust was Kalakaua’s revival of Hawaiian traditions they did not understand, like Hula. Under the threat of violence Kalakaua was forced to accept a new constitution that stripped the monarchy of executive powers and put businessmen inside the executive cabinet. The new constitution effectively disenfranchised native Hawaiian voters in favor of descendents of American businessmen and missionaries. Kalakaua died in 1891, a diminished king, leaving his sister, Lili’uokalani, in an impossible situation.
Lili'uokalani was bold and drafted a new constitution to restore native rights and powers. In response, an executive committee that was tasked with deciding whether Hawaii should become part of the US, a process called “annexation” that brought in the big guns, literally. Marines from the warship USS Boston surrounded the Queen’s palace and placed her under house arrest in a bloodless coup in 1893. While there, she spent her days looking out upon her kingdom and sewing a vast quilt that told her story. She later wrote an autobiography about that experience. She said, “That first night of my imprisonment was the longest night I have ever passed in my life; it seemed as though the dawn of day would never come. I found in my bag a small Book of Common Prayer… It was a great comfort to me.”
Now this was an interesting event even from a US perspective. This coup was performed without express permission from the US State Department. Within the US, annexation of new lands was hotly debated. Americans supported missionary work and expansion of US power, but deeply embedded racism led many to fear the inclusion of so many indigenous people as potential American citizens. Despite this, American President Benjamin Harrison signed the treaty, but before the Senate could approve it, Grover Cleveland replaced him as president and withdrew the treaty. Cleveland was anti-imperialism and demanded an investigation into US actions in Hawaii. They found that Americans were in the wrong and ordered them to lower the US flag from Hawaiian buildings, and restore Queen Lili’uokalani to power. But the new Hawaiian president, Sanford Dole, descendent of missionaries and owner of a large pineapple plantation, refused arguing the US had no right to meddle in Hawaiian affairs. The Provisional Government proclaimed Hawaii a republic in 1894, later recognized by the United States.
Queen Liliuokalani wrote of this experience: “a paper was handed to me… which, on examination, proved to be a purported act of abdication for me to sign. It had been drawn out for the men in power by their own lawyer… For myself, I would have chosen death rather than to have signed it; but it was represented to me that by my signing this paper all the persons who had been arrested, all my people now in trouble by reason of their love and loyalty towards me, would be immediately released. Think of my position, – sick, a lone woman in prison, scarcely knowing who was my friend, or who listened to my words only to betray me, without legal advice or friendly counsel, and the stream of blood ready to flow unless it was stayed by my pen.”
Her overthrow was against the will of the Hawaiian people. Native Hawaiians staged mass protests against the overthrow and to prevent the likely annexation. Protests morphed into an overthrow attempt in 1895. The leaders and Queen Lili’uokalani were temporarily jailed and in March of 1897 the imperialist president from a far off land, William McKinley, signed a treaty of annexation.
Before it could be ratified, Queen Lili’uokalani herself traveled to Washington, DC, to rally against annexation. Women in protest groups back in Hawaii worked tirelessly to petition the US government. Their petitions were signed by 21,269 native Hawaiian people, more than half the native Hawaiians, but nothing changed. Queen Lili’uokalani wrote: “I have never expected the revolutionists of 1887 and 1893 to willingly restore the rights notoriously taken by force or intimidation; but this act, obtained under duress, should have no weight with the authorities of the United States, to whom I appealed.” Unfortunately, it did. Although the US apologized for the overthrow of Queen Lili’uokalani a hundred years later under President Clinton, no steps have ever been taken to separate Hawaii from US control.
US annexation was justified among Americans as a proper way to uplift and Christianize these unknown people in a far off land. Americans knew little of Hawaii, and definitely did not know that Hawaiians were already Christian and that the Queen's palace included more modern features than the White House. These weren’t backward people. Queen Lili’uokalani wrote of this hypocrisy. She said: “And where else in the world's history is it written that a savage people, pagan for ages, with fixed hereditary customs and beliefs, have made equal progress in civilization and Christianity in the same space of time? And what people has ever been subjected during such an evolution to such a flood of external demoralizing influences? Does it make nothing for us that we have always recognized our Christian teachers as worthy of authority in our councils, and repudiated those whose influence or character was vicious or irreligious? That while four-fifths of the population of our Islands was swept out of existence by the vices introduced by foreigners, the ruling class clung to Christian morality, and gave its unvarying support and service to the work of saving and civilizing the masses?” Despite her losses, Queen Lili’uokalani never failed to speak truth to power.
US imperialism in Hawaii was bloodless. It involved the work of countless women teaching reading and writing, spreading faith and integrating themselves and their families into Hawaiian lands, businesses, and culture. The effect was the same: indigenous people were stripped of their autonomy over their own lands. It is the only case in this period of US imperialism where the US overthrew a recognized and legitimate constitutional monarchy.
“Lili’uokalani”, the last sovereign of the Hawaiian kingdom, Public Domain
Philippines
Hawaii was a strategic refueling station for the American Navy, whose eyes were set on the Philippines, but unlike Hawaii, US annexation would not be bloodless. Tensions between the US and Spain had been rising for a century. Spanish control over territories like Cuba were frustrating given the proximity to the US sphere of influence. Spanish treatment of the Cubans was growing increasingly hostile as the Cubans demanded independence, and the US supported them in their goal. In 1898, the United States went to war with Spain after the USS Maine accidentally exploded off the coast of Havana, Cuba. The American media blamed the explosion on Spain.
But then US intentions became clear: control of the Philippines. Spain had long colonized the Philippines. American ships departed from San Francisco within hours of the explosion in Havana to assist the Filipinos in their independence struggles against Spain that had raged since before 1896. The leader in charge of Philippine resistance was Emilio Aguinaldo, a temporary dictator operating under the title of president. William McKinley referred to American imperialism as “benevolent assimilation,” but US actions were far from benevolent. He sent American women to the Philippines and elsewhere to convince the world that their intentions were good. Women were seen as passive and mothering and thus benevolent. These white women, symbolizing innocence abroad, were central to the imperial mission. The assumption that all women adopted these gender norms proved problematic for US efforts to colonize the Philippines.
Native Filipino women were characterized as children who needed a mother’s guidance: white women. As a result, white women living in the Philippines were granted some power and autonomy within the public, political sphere. Emily Bronson Conger, the wife of Colonel Arthur Latham Conger, described with disdain the Filipino women she encountered in her book
An Ohio Woman in the Philippines. Like missionaries in Hawaii, she wrote: “So many of the women are deformed and unclean, both the makers and the sellers that it seemed utterly incongruous that they should handle the most delicate materials… in our happy country we do not think of seeing a whole class of people diseased or maimed. In the Philippines one seldom sees a well-formed person; or if the form is good, the face is disfigured by small-pox.” American imperialists like her, wrongly associated nakedness with “savageness.” American women used gendered concerns over the morality of Filipino women to position themselves for greater influence in society at a time when back home American women were debating and discussing women’s suffrage.
But not all American women held these notions of Filipino inferiority. Helen Calista Wilson, wrote about the horrors she observed in A Massachusettes Woman in the Philippines. She described a merciless American teacher whipping an indigenous Filipino boy for not attending school. She said, “The little fellow shrieked with the pain, and the other children, thoroughly frightened, stopped their ears, shut their eyes, and wept with him.” One can assume this was a pattern of behavior in such racially charged climates.
Philippine-American War
After the defeat of Spain in 1898, the US bought the Philippines from Spain at a treaty meeting in Paris and annexed Puerto Rico and Guam. Instead of independence, the Philippines became an American territory, or colony, transferring one colonizer for another– in a very undemocratic process. For the Filipinos who fought alongside the Americans in that war, this was a betrayal. Aguinaldo had received advanced notice of the treaty and resumed fighting. A guerilla war ensued for the next 17 years. Filipino women and their families were both caught in the conflict and active participants in it.
In 1899, Rudyard Kipling looked back on four centuries of British imperialism and encouraged the rising American empire to do the same. He wrote:
Take up the White Man’s burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go send your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need
His use of masculine terms ignored the fact that white women joined the “sons” in “exile.” In exile, or robust, often Christian, cities, Filipino women lived among the invaders and refused to submit.
Filipino women were caught between competing Filipino and American concepts of masculinity. Men were active agents in their society serving in the public sphere as shopkeepers, saloon operators, and in brothels. At the forefront of many economic transactions with American service men and formed a sort of active resistance against them. When servicemen cheated them out of money, they raised prices. Americans remarked that women operated most of the businesses, but his observation is hard to take at face value because emasculating foreign men by saying their wives did everything was also a tool of imperialists.
A cartoonist in the Philippines captured this perfectly with a quip about Filipino male laziness. Portraying two women doing all the work while the men sit in the background, he asked, “Why make a fuss about the ‘White Man’s Burden’? The native girls did not.” Clearly gender norms differed within these societies and Filipino women were caught in the middle.
As often happens in war zones, Filipino and American women earned money as prostitutes. Sexually transmitted diseases were rampant in both the American and Filipino forces, so instead of finding alternative sources of income for these women, they decided to subject the Filipino women, not men or white women to demeaning inspections. Filipino women of course resisted by forging documents, hiding among civilians, and disappearing when inspectors came by.
Filipino women and American soldiers by wall of Old Manila, Intramuros, ca. 1899, Public Domain
Women's Resistance
Filipino women resisted US occupation of the Philippines militarily as well. Some estimates suggest that one in ten guerilla insurgents was a woman. American men, heavily influenced by traditional gender norms, did not suspect the active resistance of Filipino women who helped move weapons, funnel escapees, and undermine US control on the islands. American officials concealed women’s involvement by insisting the continued resistance was due to a few male leaders, not a general resistance from an outraged population sick of colonial rule.
Living in a war zone was chaos, and rarely do women as a group fare well. There were reports of individual men seizing and holding Filipino women as personal sex slaves. Caught in a time and place where usual law and order protections were abandoned for military strategy, these women experienced unimaginable horror. Women were often spotted carrying weapons through the countryside where most of the fighting occurred, this was more likely for personal protection than for the overall military strategy. One woman who was not able to defend herself was stabbed 13 times by fellow Filipinos who had aligned with the US.
For American soldiers, the conflict was complicated. Caught up in the prevailing racism many contributed to the horrors while others were repulsed by it. For Black soldiers, the war was complicated because they were fighting an enemy with dark skin degraded by white men with similar words. One soldier wrote home to his parents about the plight of civilians: “The town… was surrendered to us a few days ago, and the two companies to occupy the same. Last night one of our boys was found shot and his stomach cut open. Immediately orders were received from General Wheaton to burn the town and kill every native in sight; which was done to a finish. About 1,000 men, women and children were reported killed. I am probably growing hard-hearted, for I am in my glory when I can sight my own gun on some dark skin and pull the trigger.”
"Over our blood and our dead bodies": In 1899, Filipino women crafted a poem of resistance that was circulated widely:
When, when at every house they enter,
Should they violate every woman they capture?
These are the acts of brutality in war.
This is the height of cruelty in battle.
Let us fight for our independence
And struggle, till the last fighter breathes
Never again should we let anyone conquer us
Over our blood and over our dead bodies.
Their position was clear. Their struggle was one of personal defense as well as Philippine nationalism and they were not backing down. Women in rural areas faced unimaginable dangers as scorched earth tactics were used to route out Filipino insurgents. Entire villages were burned to the ground and survivors were forced into occupied territories as refugees.
Aginaldo’s wife, Hilaria del Rosario, was the head of the Philippines Red Cross during the war and also held extreme nationalistic perspectives. She wrote: “We must, therefore, think of the best means to defend our Philippine country, even by treacherously, killing them, one by one which, in the long run, will exterminate them, since we are short of arms, and have sufficient rights. Although we are women, we can aid you.” Women helped the resistance by hiding supplies and weapons in their homes. One woman whose home was in sight of the American base was arrested, although she resisted in an epic brawl, and became one of only two women actually exposed for her espionage work. Another woman helped funnel funds from the city to the guerillas fighting outside. Women across the Philippines continued to resist colonization through the end of the war using strategic military tactics not taken seriously by the Americans.
The situation in the Philippines calmed after Emilio Aguinaldo was taken captive by the US. The US remained in control of the Philippines until the island nation gained its independence in 1946. The Japanese attacks on both Hawaii and the Philippines taught the indigenous populations a bitter lesson in the limits of US protections. Aguinaldo embraced the Japanese, whom he imagined would finally give the Philippines their independence. After the war, the new, independent, Philippine republic rejected him as their future president.
Portrait of Hilaria Aguinaldo, Public Domain
Conclusion
Although different, US actions in Hawaii and the Philippines reflect a pattern of both passive and aggressive imperialist actions by the US government. Territories faced missionary teachers, soldiers, or both. Women, as missionaries, wives, and teachers played instrumental roles in integrating American ideals on local populations that would later be used to seize power and land from the indigenous people. US actions in Hawaii and the Philippines were replicated in Puerto Rico, the Panama Canal, Guam, and elsewhere. Everywhere they misunderstood cultural differences over the roles of women, exploited political conflict and economic uncertainty, and seized land and power. Indigenous women found ways of resisting and enduring. Today, the Philippines thrive as an independent democracy, while Hawaii gained statehood after World War II. Puerto Rico and Guam remain US territories.
By the end of this era, so much remained in question. How would Hawaiian and Filipino women endure in these new governments? What would happen to the men and women in Guam, Puerto Rico, and other territories touched by the US in this period?
