Beyond the Black Legend: Catholicism and U.S. Empire-Building in the Philippines and Puerto Rico, 1898−1914

In 1898, the United States occupied two territories with long Catholic histories and large Catholic populations: the Philippines and Puerto Rico. While existing scholarship on U.S. colonial empire has focused on anti-Catholicism, Manifest Destiny, and Protestant evangelism (and Catholic responses to these), the turn of the twentieth century also saw new calls for cross-confessional understanding and collaboration, tied to a growing appreciation (on the part of both Catholics and non-Catholics) for the role the Catholic Church could play in the United States’ path to global power. Many American writers and government officials celebrated the export of religious liberty to both the Philippines and Puerto Rico as a mark of the exceptional nature of U.S. empire. They acknowledged the Catholic Church as a powerful, legitimate, and even useful institution in the colonies, and championed the export of an “Americanized” Catholicism to the islands. Yet the different religious histories of each place, and different responses to the U.S. occupation, led to the development of diverse ideas about the particular role that Catholicism could play in each colony.