From 1898 to 1920 the Anti-Imperialist League in its many forms produced a wealth of opinions and distributed them through various forms, released annual reports, and published speeches, broadsides, and addresses to the American people.

Speeches at Faneuil Hall, June 15, 1898.

Report of the Annual Meeting, Anti-Imperialist League, 1899-1920

The first annual meeting took place on November 25th 1899, and every year afterwards, usually in the same month, the League met. Please note that some of the later annual meetings have not been reproduced in their entirety.

1st           2nd          3rd           4th           5th           6th           7th

8th           9th           10th         11th         12th         13th         14th

15th         16th         17th         18th         19th         20th

Compiled Publishings, Pamphlets, and Speeches by the Anti-Imperialist League

Contextualizing Anti-Imperialism: Important Documents of the Era

Literature and Anti-Imperialism: A Survey of Popular Anti-Imperial Prose

Oppositional Solidarity: Filipino and American Anti-Imperialists

As well as the League's publishings, this site is dedicated to providing representations of the League. Included below are historians like Maria Lanzar-Carpio, autobiographical works, opinions, and other rare or difficult to find publications.

Maria Lanzar-Carpio, The Anti-Imperialist League.

Quite possibly the first historical account of the League, its members, and events. Published as a series over three years it can now be accessed here.

Senator Richard Franklin Pettigrew, Imperial Washington

Pettigrew was a Silver Republican from South Dakota, a boisterous anti-imperialist who wrote extensively on the evils of plutocracy and the destruction of American ideals.

Morrison Isaac Swift, Imperialism and Liberty

Swift was a political philosopher dubbed both a "genius" and a "lunatic." (See William O. Reichert's article, 'The Melancholy Political Thought of Morrison I. Swift,' The New England Quarterly, Vol. 49, No. 4 [December, 1976])

Edward Atkinson, The Anti-Imperialist

Economist Edward Atkinson attempted a one-man propaganda campaign against the moral, economic, and legal transgressions of imperialism in U.S. foreign policy. Published from 1899-1900, The Anti-Imperialist was sponsored by Andrew Carnegie (among others) and supported officially by the Anti-Imperialist Leagues. The popularity of the series reached its height before the 1900 election but Atkinson had given up distribution and publication soon after McKinley's victory.

Charles Eliot, The Conflict Between Individualism and Collectivism in the Democracy

Harvard President Charles W. Eliot wrote this book not about anti-imperialism at all, but more about the shift the United States has taken away from individual rights to secure social needs. It is featured here because as a metaphor, collectivism represents the role of incorporation and how these ideas changed foreign policy. Brook Thomas and Alan Trachtenberg talk more about this in their works relating incorporation to the broader trends in the American psyche. (Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America, 1982; Brook Thomas, Foreign in a Domestic Sense Ed. Christina Duffy Burnett and Burke Marshall, 2001).

David Starr Jordan, Life's Enthusiasms

President of Stanford University, Jordan produces this work as a series of musings about life, its meaning, and the enjoyments to be reaped from living. Not a directly anti-imperial manifesto by any means, but a philosophical approach to worthwhile endeavors that acts as a metaphor.

Liberty Poems: Inspired by the Crisis of 1898-1900

This is an excellent collection of anti-imperialist poetry, reproduced editorials, and prose. Liberty Poems was part of a literary attempt to rile the public through verse.

 

M. Patrick Cullinane, Liberty and Anti-Imperialism, June 22, 2007.

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