Bonus Blog #2

Having taken United States, European, and World History, before I read the readings I already had a somewhat general knowledge of imperialism. However, it is different when you actually have writers focus specifically on the topic of imperialism and as in Queen Liliuokalani’s case, actually write about what life was like growing up under imperialist rule. After reading Twain’s short story I was very surprised at how much the man prays that the enemy be destroyed. Of course the story is a response to the Spanish American war, and this story basically expressed why Twain changed his stance on the war. The man in the story says “O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells;” I couldn’t believe that the character had literally prayed to God to kill the enemy soldier. It is certainly very ironic to say the least. The man also prays for the enemy to be homeless, and to be wanderers without food and water. Again, the irony here is overwhelming, and having read Twain before it certainly fits his style of writing. Clearly the imperialism that the United States took part in Philippines had a huge impact on Mark Twain. However, where I learned more about imperialism was in Queen Liliuokalani’s autobiography. I actually had no idea that most Hawaiian’s actually adopted Christianity. Usually with imperialism you see rebellion against the Christian Missionaries, Hawaii surprisingly was different. I was also surprised that they locked up Liliuokalani even though she really posed no major threat to them. They pretty much did what they wanted, which is pretty consistent with imperialism. Then the clip we watched about how the troops took over the palace where Liliuokalani lived and took down the Hawaiian flag while replacing it with the American one. I also can’t believe that the United States only recently apologized for the events. Finally from the article, it was interesting that Hawaiians did not have the word adopt in their language, and Trask points out that this concept of hanai which means feeding was completely foreign to the imperialists. I also liked her statement that languages are different, and the above example illustrates that perfectly.