Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T10:33:48.134Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Celebrating Empire on the Home Front: New York City's Welcome-Home Party for Admiral Dewey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

David Brody
Get access

Extract

The January 3, 1900, edition of the popular, New York City newspaper the World contains an advertisement for a new edition of The Century Dictionary & Cyclopedia & Atlas (Figure 1). The strength of this reference guide, according to the full-page advertisement, is the volume's war maps. The presentation of battle cartography “enable[s] one to trace instantly the movements of every important campaign on land or sea, the routes of invading armies, raids, etc., placing and dating on the maps the battles, sieges and blockades not only of ancient and medieval times, but also those of the year just ended – and this without any complexity in the maps themselves.” In case the reader needed to be reminded about recent wars, the advertisement has enormous graphic representations of “Africa” and the “Philippine Is.” The map of the Philippines would have immediately signified the Spanish-American (1898) and Philippine-American (1899–1902) Wars to readers, conflicts that the pages of the mass media covered widely.

Type
Research Article
Information
Prospects , Volume 25 , October 2000 , pp. 391 - 424
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

NOTES

I completed this article with the encouragement of several individuals. Patricia Hills, Keith Morgan, John Davis, Richard Candee, Michele Bogart, and James Castillo all guided this project in its early stages and several audiences, including the American Studies Association, the Popular Culture Association, and the Dissertation Writing Group in the American Studies Department at Boston University, all heard earlier versions of this material. Tom Lisanti (New York Public Library) helped with questions about where to find images. And finally, I want to thank Jack Salzman for his editorial advice and West Chester University for its generous funding of images.

1. See World, January 3, 1900.

2. The map of Africa would signify any number of colonial conflicts between African and European nations.

3. World, May 3, 1898.

4. McClure's Magazine (May–October 1898). As Amy Henderson pointed out to me, many Americans would have recognized this chair. It is the Morris Chair, named after William Morris, who was the leading, 19th-century British advocate for the Arts and Crafts movement. For more on Morris and his designs, see Thompson, Paul, The Work of William Morris (New York: Viking, 1967)Google Scholar.

5. Two scholars who have examined this aspect of American imperialism in great depth are Kristen Hoganson and Vicente Rafael. See Hoganson, 's Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish—American and Philippine-American Wars (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; and Rafael, , ed., Discrepant Histories: Translocal Essays on Filipino Cultures (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

6. This quote can be found in Rafael, Vicente's important essay “White Love: Surveillance and Nationalist Resistance in the US Colonization of the Philippines,” in Cultures of United States Imperialism, ed. Kaplan, Amy and Pease, Donald (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994), 198Google Scholar.

7. For more on this entire phenomenon and specifics about the Spanish—American and Philippine—American Wars, see my Ph.D. dissertation “Fantasy Realized: The Philippines, Orientalism, and Imperialism in Turn-of-the-Century American Visual Culture” (Boston University, 1997)Google Scholar. Also, Said, Edward discusses this movement from the fantasy of the “Oriental” to the realization of colonialism through the matrices of Orientalism in his book Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1979), 14–15Google Scholar. Scholars, such as Young, Robert in White Mythologies: Writing History and the West (London: Routledge, 1990)Google Scholar, have started to find theoretical problems with Said's work, and it is important to acknowledge their contributions to the field of postcolonial studies.

8. For more specifics on military history in relation to these events, see Linn, Brian McAllister, The U.S. Army and Counterinsurgency in the Philippine War, 1899–1902 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

9. Again, Said is the key figure who informs my discussion of Orientalism, but scholars such as Homi Bhabha and Gayatri Spivak are actively engaged in opening the study of Orientalism to questions of gender, psychology, and class. Their work has been critical to my project. See Moore-Gilbert, Bart, Postcolonial Theory: Contexts, Practices, Politics (London: Verso, 1997)Google Scholar, for more on these theoretical matters.

10. “Opposed Dewey Appropriation,” World, 06 7, 1899Google Scholar, in Charles R. Lamb Scrapbook on the Dewey Arch, Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C.

11. Proceedings of the Board of Aldermen of the Municipal Assembly of the City of New York 3 (07 11, 1899): 20Google Scholar.

12. “Dewey $150,000 Fund Queerly Apportioned,” World, 08 24, 1899Google Scholar.

13. See Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975), 168Google Scholar.

14. “Dewey $150,000 Fund Queerly Apportioned.”

15. “Dewey Wants No Fetes at Home,” World, 08 9, 1899Google Scholar.

16. “Dewey the Boy,” World, 09 24, 1899Google Scholar.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.

19. Beebe, Mabel Borton, The Story of George Dewey for Young Readers (Chicago: Werner School Books, 1899), 21Google Scholar.

20. This concern over masculine culture was especially critical in relation to boyhood culture. See Rotundo, E. Anthony, American Manhood (New York: Basic Books, 1993)Google Scholar.

21. “George Dewey, the Man, at Close Range; Minutely Described by World Reporters,” World, 09 28, 1899Google Scholar.

22. For more on physiognomy, see Kasson, John F., Rudeness & Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-Century Urban America (New York: Noonday, 1990), 96Google Scholar.

23. Hearst, William, “Dewey as Modest as He Is Brave,” New York Evening Journal, 09 27, 1899Google Scholar.

24. Ibid.

25. For this image, see World, September 18, 1899. This issue of “separate spheres,” or the historical notion of the 19th-century domestic realm versus the world outside of the home, has an enormous historiography. For a helpful and critical review of this material, see Kerber, Linda, “Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Women's Place: The Rhetoric of Women's History,” Journal of American History 75 (06 1988): 9–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26. For this image, see the World, August 21, 1899. Other examples of Dewey imagery include “Admiral Dewey's Latest and Best Picture” (World, 08 16, 1899)Google Scholar, and objects were also used as stand-ins for Dewey's presence, such as the photograph captioned “With this Gun Dewey Began the Fun at Manila” (New York Evening Journal, 09 7, 1899)Google Scholar.

27. For this image, see the New York Evening Journal, September 11, 1899. A similar map can be found in the New York Evening Journal with the headline “Dewey at Villefrance” in the August 22, 1899 edition. For more on the whole issue of armchair travel via the news media, see Bloom, Lisa, Gender on Ice: American Ideologies of Polar Expeditions (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

28. The image can be found in the World, September 18, 1899.

29. “Brooklyn Bridge Will Be Illuminated When Dewey Arrives,” New York Evening Journal, 08 26, 1899Google Scholar.

30. See World, August 31, 1899. For more information on the symbolic importance of the Brooklyn Bridge, see Trachtenberg, Alan, Brooklyn Bridge: Fact and Symbol (1965; rept. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979)Google Scholar.

31. Proceedings of the Board of Alderman of the Municipal Assembly of the City of New York 3 (09 5, 1899): 415Google Scholar.

32. See “Dewey Celebration,” New York Mail and Express, 07 29, 1899Google Scholar, in National Sculpture Society Records, Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C.

33. Proceedings of the Board of Aldermen of the Municipal Assembly of the City of New York 3 (09 5, 1899): 413Google Scholar.

34. Stewart, Susan examines this dichotomy of the carnivalesque (hiatus in the law) atmosphere juxtaposed with the regulatory space of the parade in her On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (1984; rept. Durham: Duke University Press, 1994), 84–85Google Scholar. Stewart's work with this trope comes from Bakhtin, Mikhail, who explores the realm of carnival in his Problems with Dostoevsky's Poetics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35. “You Can Go and See Dewey,” New York Evening Journal, 09 26, 1899Google Scholar.

36. Official Programme of the Reception to Admiral George Dewey by the City of New York, 1899, Daniel Chester French Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LOC)Google Scholar.

37. “Official Route of the Dewey Land Parade,” World, 09 7, 1899Google Scholar.

38. Again, see Stewart, , On Longing, 84–85Google Scholar.

39. King, Moses, The Dewey Reception: New York (New York: Chasmar-Winchell, 1899), 145Google Scholar.

40. “Women's Plans to Welcome Dewey,” New York Evening Journal, 08 30, 1899Google Scholar.

41. Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 246Google Scholar.

42. See Dawson, Graham, Soldier Heroes: British Adventure, Empire and the Imagining of Masculinities (London: Routledge, 1994)Google Scholar. Though Dawson's study deals with British history, his work has numerous implications in relation to this analysis of Dewey as a “soldier hero.”

43. “Women's Plans.”

44. For this front page, see the World, September 30, 1899.

45. “City Ablaze with Flags to Welcome Admiral Dewey,” New York Evening Journal, 09 25, 1899Google Scholar.

46. See “World's Dewey Day Help for Visitors Now Complete,” World, 09 4, 1899Google Scholar; and “Free Legal Aid in Dewey Week” and “Journal Bomb Exploded Flags,” New York Evening Journal, 09 29 and 30, 1899Google Scholar.

47. This advertisement for “The Wanamaker Store” can be found in the World, 09 28, 1899Google Scholar.

48. The Siegel Cooper Company advertisement can be found in the New York Evening Journal, September 20, 1899; the Hunter advertisement can be found in the World, September 29, 1899; and, the Childs Cigar advertisement can be found in the New York Evening Journal, September 28, 1899.

49. Again, see “Wanamaker Store.”

50. “The Sculptors' Patriotism,” Harper's Weekly, 08 9, 1899Google Scholar, in Charles R. Lamb Scrapbook.

51. Bogart, Michele clearly defines the arch in relation to an imperialist imagination in “An Art of Conquest: The Dewey Arch” in her Public Sculpture and the Civic Ideal in New York City, 1890–1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 97–110Google Scholar. Again, this article would not have been possible without Michele Bogart's scholarship and generosity.

52. Ibid., 5. Also, see Wiebe, Robert, The Search for Order, 1877–1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967)Google Scholar, for more on the professionalization of American culture.

53. Lamb, , Charles R. Lamb ScrapbookGoogle Scholar.

54. “Dewey Day to Be a Record Breaker,” World, 07 21, 1899Google Scholar, in the Charles R. Lamb Scrapbook.

55. “Work on Dewey Arch Begun,” New York Telegraph, 07 29, 1899Google Scholar, in National Sculpture Society Records.

56. “Aldermen Hold Up Dewey Ceremonies,” New York Journal, 08 5, 1899Google Scholar, in National Sculpture Society Records.

57. Proceedings of the Board of Aldermen of the Municipal Assembly of the City of New York 3 (08 9, 1899): 241Google Scholar.

58. “Work on the Dewey Arch Is Progressing Slowly,” Brooklyn Eagle, 08 27, 1899Google Scholar, in National Sculpture Society Records.

59. “Progress of the Dewey Arch,” New York Evening Journal, 09 22, 1899Google Scholar. I have used a similar image from the American Monthly Review of Reviews (October 1899): 460.

60. “How the Dewey Arch Looks To-Day,” New York Evening Journal, 09 26, 1899Google Scholar.

61. “New York's Stolen Arch,” undated and without source in the National Sculpture Society Records.

62. There are countless works of architectural history written on this topic. For a recent discussion, see Landau, Sarah Bradford and Condit, Carl W., Rise of the New York Skyscraper: 1865–1913 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

63. Bogart, , “Art of Conquest,” 107Google Scholar.

64. See, for example, Du Bois, Henri Pene, “Arch of Dewey Like That of Titus,” New York Journal, 09 1899Google Scholar, in the National Sculpture Society Records. Beaux-Arts is, of course, a reference to the school (École) in Paris where many American artists studied the importance of classicism.

65. “Dewey Arch Completed,” Boston Globe, 09 30, 1899Google Scholar, in National Sculpture Society Records.

66. See Trachtenberg, Alan, The Incorporation of America: Culture & Society in the Gilded Age (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982)Google Scholar. His final chapter focuses on the 1893 fair.

67. Bogart, , “Art of Conquest,” 103Google Scholar.

68. Ibid., 104.

69. Caffin, Charles H., The Dewey Triumphal Arch (New York: Noonday, 1899)Google Scholar.

70. For this image, see King, , Dewey ReceptionGoogle Scholar.

71. See the front cover of Harper's Weekly (October 7, 1899) for an image of Dewey reviewing the parade from the arch, and see Bogart (“Art of Conquest,” 106) for the ironic fact that Dewey never marched through the arch.

72. Bogart, “Art of Conquest,” 108; and Piehler, G. Kurt, Remembering War the American Way (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995), 89Google Scholar. The Board of Aldermen did, however, try to save the arch. See Proceedings of the Board of Aldermen of the Municipal Assembly of the City of New York 5 (12 29, 1899): 1062Google Scholar.

73. “Vandals with Knives Hack Dewey Arch,” World, 10 2, 1899Google Scholar, in National Sculpture Society Records.

74. “Dewey Arch is Disappearing,” New York Thlegraph, 10 5, 1899Google Scholar, in National Sculpture Society Records.

75. For more on the cultural significance of the photograph as a material object during the 19th century, see Wajda, Shirley Teresa's American Studies Ph.D. dissertation “‘Social Currency’: A Domestic History of the Portrait Photograph in the United States, 1839–1889” (University of Pennsylvania, 1992)Google Scholar.

76. Stewart, , On Longing, 135Google Scholar.

77. City of New York, Triumphal Arch Erected in Honor of Admiral Dewey (New York, 1899)Google Scholar.

78. See Hoganson, , Fighting for American ManhoodGoogle Scholar.

79. See the fourth chapter of my dissertation “Fantasy Realized” and my forthcoming “Building Empire,” in Journal of Asian American Studies (06 2001)Google Scholar.