Exemplar of Americanism

Dean C. Worcester (1866–1924) had a multifaceted Philippine career. Scientist, writer, polemicist, administrator, and entrepreneur, he first visited the Philippines as a junior member of an American scientific expedition in 1887, and died there, a successful businessman in 1924. One of only a handful of Americans with first-hand experience in the archipelago at the onset of the Spanish-American War, he was appointed to the First Philippine Commission, charged with the civil administration of the new American colony. He thus embarked upon a long and controversial Philippine career, embracing in time the varied roles of government official, scientist, writer, propagandist, and entrepreneur. In many ways Worcester typified the American colonial mission. He was talented, pragmatic, tireless, unquestioning, and ruthless in the pursuit of what he considered right. Heralded for nearly two decades as America’s foremost expert on the Philippines, he was scathingly critical of Filipino society and its values, unable to comprehend the validity of a culture that did not conform to an American ideal. Described by more than one of his countrymen as an “exemplar” of Americanism, a colonial statesman making “lasting contributions to mankind,” from the Filipino perspective he represented merely the “immovable column” of a “hypocritical foreign administration.”