Jose Rizal Quotes
Perhaps the great American Republic, whose interests lie in the Pacific and who has no hand in the spoliation of Africa, may someday dream of foreign possession.
Rizal, José. The Philippines A Century Hence. Translated by Austin Craig, Philippine Education Company, 1912, p. 110.
Referring to the proposal to Annex Hawaii in 1887:
The Russian communists were very ambivalent about the League (see {600375}).
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910
There are many who disagree with Say’s claim that the ancient system of colonization produced more friends then the system was at the beginning f the 19th century. Alexander the Great may have been the only large conqueror in world history where the conquered people thought they were better off than before. Certainly the Romans did not make friends, and the French Normans who conquered England were never considered “friends” by the Saxons.
The reason that his quotation is memorable is that it illustrates how rapidly political norms can change. Here in 1872, there was general agreement that imperialism was undesirable. By the turn of the century—only 27 years later, imperialism would be the accepted foreign policy of the United States with only a minority holding to is undesirability such as Mark Twain and his Anti-Imperialist League.
José Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda was a Filipino nationalist and polymath during the tail end of the Spanish colonial period of the Philippines. He is tagged as the national hero (pambansang bayani) of the Philippines. An ophthalmologist by profession, Rizal became a writer and a key member of the Filipino Propaganda Movement, which advocated political reforms for the colony under Spain.