Editing Mark Twain (section)

====Imperialism====
Before 1899, Twain was largely in favor of [[American imperialism|imperialism]]. In the late 1860s and early 1870s, he spoke out strongly in favor of American interests in the [[Kingdom of Hawaii|Hawaiian Islands]].<ref>David Zmijewski, "The Man in Both Corners: Mark Twain the Shadowboxing Imperialist", ''Hawaiian Journal of History'', 2006, Vol. 40, pp. 55–73</ref> Twain said the war with Spain in 1898 was "the worthiest" war ever fought.<ref>Paine, ed. ''Letters'' 2:663; Ron Powers, ''Mark Twain: a life'' (2005) p. 593</ref> However, he reversed course in 1899. In the ''[[New York Herald]]'', October 16, 1900, Twain describes his transformation and political awakening, in the context of the [[Philippine–American War]], to [[anti-imperialism]]:

{{blockquote|I wanted the American eagle to go screaming into the Pacific&nbsp;... Why not spread its wings over the Philippines, I asked myself?&nbsp;... I said to myself, Here are a people who have suffered for three centuries. We can make them as free as ourselves, give them a government and country of their own, put a miniature of the [[Constitution of the United States|American Constitution]] afloat in the Pacific, start a brand new republic to take its place among the free nations of the world. It seemed to me a great task to which we had addressed ourselves.

But I have thought some more, since then, and I have read carefully the [[Treaty of Paris (1898)|treaty of Paris]] (which ended the [[Spanish–American War]]), and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem.

It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.<ref>From Andrew Jay Hoffman, ''Inventing Mark Twain: The Lives of Samuel Langhorne Clemens'' (New York: William Morrow, 1997), cited in Helen Scott's "The Mark Twain they didn't teach us about in school" (2000) in ''International Socialist Review'' 10, Winter 2000, pp. 61–65</ref><ref name=NYHerald19001016>{{cite news |title=Mark Twain Home, An Anti-Imperialist |url=http://fultonhistory.com/Newspaper%2014/New%20York%20NY%20Herald/New%20York%20NY%20Herald%201900/New%20York%20NY%20Herald%201900%20-%208960.pdf |page=4 |date=October 16, 1900 |newspaper=[[New York Herald]] |access-date=October 25, 2014 |archive-date=October 16, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151016211319/http://fultonhistory.com/Newspaper%2014/New%20York%20NY%20Herald/New%20York%20NY%20Herald%201900/New%20York%20NY%20Herald%201900%20-%208960.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref>}}

During the [[Boxer Rebellion]], Twain said that "the Boxer is a patriot. He loves his country better than he does the countries of other people. I wish him success."<ref>{{cite book|last=Twain|first=Mark |title=Mark Twain Speeches |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dhWMWs_7J3UC&pg=PA116|date=2007|isbn=978-1-4346-7879-9|page=116|publisher=BiblioBazaar }}</ref>

[[File:Mark Twain's proposed flag for the American-controlled Philippines (1901).svg|thumb|In 1901, Twain wrote a satirical essay titled ''[[To the Person Sitting in Darkness]]'', in which he expressed his strong anti-imperialist views against ongoing conflicts such as the Boxer Rebellion, the Second Boer War and the Philippine–American War. At one point in the essay, Twain made a sardonic suggestion for a flag of the Philippines under American control; "''And as for a flag for the Philippine Province, it is easily managed. We can have a special one—our States do it: we can have just our usual flag, with the white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by the skull and cross-bones.''"<ref>{{cite web |url=https://guides.loc.gov/world-of-1898/mark-twain#:~:text=And%20as%20for%20a%20flag,the%20skull%20and%20cross%2Dbones. |title=World of 1898: International Perspectives on the Spanish American War / Mark Twain |author= |date= |work=Library of Congress |access-date=16 October 2024}}</ref>]]

From 1901, soon after his return from Europe, until his death in 1910, Twain was vice-president of the [[American Anti-Imperialist League]],<ref name=zwick>''Mark Twain's Weapons of Satire: Anti-Imperialist Writings on the Philippine–American War''. (1992, Jim Zwick, ed.) {{ISBN|0-8156-0268-5}}</ref> which opposed the annexation of the Philippines by the United States and had "tens of thousands of members".<ref name="helen-scott" /> He wrote many [[Pamphlet|political pamphlets]] for the organization. The ''Incident in the Philippines'', posthumously published in 1924, was in response to the [[First Battle of Bud Dajo|Moro Crater Massacre]], in which 600 [[Moro people|Moros]] were killed. Twain wrote: "In what way was it a battle? It has no resemblance to a battle...We cleaned up our four days' work and made it complete by butchering these helpless people."<ref>{{cite book |title= Comments on the Moro Massacre |isbn = 9788026878148|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=o101DwAAQBAJ&q=twain+complete+works+comments+moro&pg=PT5120|last1 = Twain|first1 = Mark|date = 2017| publisher=E-artnow }}</ref><ref>[http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/clemensmoromassacre.html "Comments on the Moro Massacre". by Samuel Clemens (March 12, 1906)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180206080228/http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/clemensmoromassacre.html |date=February 6, 2018 }}. History is a Weapon.</ref> Many of his neglected and previously uncollected writings on anti-imperialism appeared for the first time in book form in 1992.<ref name=zwick />

Twain was critical of imperialism in other countries as well. In ''Following the Equator'', Twain expresses "hatred and condemnation of imperialism of all stripes".<ref name="helen-scott" /> He was highly critical of European imperialists such as [[Cecil Rhodes]] and [[Leopold II of Belgium|King Leopold II of Belgium]], both of whom attempted to establish colonies on the African continent during the [[Scramble for Africa]].<ref name="helen-scott" /> ''[[King Leopold's Soliloquy]]'' is a [[political satire]] about the monarch's private colony, the [[Congo Free State]]. Reports of outrageous exploitation and [[Atrocities in the Congo Free State|grotesque abuses]] led to widespread international outcry in the early 1900s, arguably the first large-scale [[human rights]] movement. In the soliloquy, the King argues that bringing [[Christianity]] to [[Congo Free State|the colony]] outweighs "a little starvation". The abuses against Congolese forced laborers continued until the movement forced the [[Government of Belgium|Belgian government]] to take direct control of the colony.<ref>{{cite book |title=King Leopold's ghost : a story of greed, terror, and heroism in colonial Africa |author=Adam Hochschild |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |year=1998 |isbn=978-0-395-75924-0 |oclc=39042794 |url=https://archive.org/details/kingleopoldsgho000hoch }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |newspaper=The New York Times |title=Into Africa |author=Jeremy Harding |date=September 20, 1998 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1998/09/20/books/into-africa.html |access-date=February 11, 2017 |archive-date=February 12, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170212165426/http://www.nytimes.com/1998/09/20/books/into-africa.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

During the [[Philippine–American War]], Twain wrote a short [[Pacifism|pacifist]] story titled ''[[The War Prayer]]'', which makes the point that humanism and Christianity's preaching of love are incompatible with the conduct of war. It was submitted to ''[[Harper's Bazaar]]'' for publication, but on March 22, 1905, the magazine rejected the story as "not quite suited to a [[Women's magazine|woman's magazine]]". Eight days later, Twain wrote to his friend [[Daniel Carter Beard]], to whom he had read the story, "I don't think the prayer will be published in my time. None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth." Because he had an exclusive contract with [[Harper & Brothers]], Twain could not publish ''The War Prayer'' elsewhere; it remained unpublished until 1916.<ref>{{cite web |title=Harper's |url=https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Harper%27s |website=Wikisource |access-date=December 26, 2021 |archive-date=February 13, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230213165611/https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Harper%27s |url-status=live }}</ref> It was republished in the 1960s as campaigning material by [[Opposition to the Vietnam War|anti-war activists]].<ref name="helen-scott" />

Twain acknowledged that he had originally sympathized with the more moderate [[Girondins]] of the [[French Revolution]] and then shifted his sympathies to the more radical [[Sansculottes]], indeed identifying himself as "a [[Jean-Paul Marat|Marat]]" and writing that the [[Reign of Terror]] paled in comparison to the older terrors that preceded it.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2011/08/that-older-and-real-terror/244113/|title=That Older and Real Terror|last=Coates|first=Ta-Nehisi|date=August 25, 2011|website=[[The Atlantic]]|access-date=July 29, 2018|archive-date=July 29, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180729230900/https://www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2011/08/that-older-and-real-terror/244113/|url-status=live}}</ref> Twain supported the [[Russian Revolution (1905)|revolutionaries in Russia]] against the reformists, arguing that the [[Tsar]] must be got rid of by violent means, because peaceful ones would not work.<ref>Maxwell Geismar, ed., ''Mark Twain and the Three Rs: Race, Religion, Revolution and Related Matters'' (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973), p. 169, cited in Helen Scott's "The Mark Twain they didn't teach us about in school" (2000) in ''International Socialist Review'' 10, Winter 2000, pp. 61–65</ref> He summed up his views of revolutions in the following statement:
{{blockquote|I am said to be a revolutionist in my sympathies, by birth, by breeding and by principle. I am always on the side of the revolutionists, because there never was a revolution unless there were some oppressive and intolerable conditions against which to revolute.<ref>Maxwell Geismar, ed., Mark Twain and the Three Rs: Race, Religion, Revolution and Related Matters (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973), p. 159</ref> }}