Advance agent of expanding empires: George F. Becker and mineral exploration in South Africa and the Philippines

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn the late nineteenth century, American mining engineers and geologists fanned out to potential or existing mines around the world. This paper examines the work of George F. Becker—a forty-year veteran of the United States Geological Survey—in South Africa and the Philippines during the 1890s. Becker’s work on the world above and below ground provided a diverse audience with direct observations of attempted empire building underway and helped to reorganize the world of American imperial imagination in a way that used British experience in South Africa to explain and justify U.S. efforts to displace Spain in the Philippines. He derived his authority both from the knowledge he generated about minerals and geological formations underground and from the experience he garnered as one of the only Americans to observe these two empire building projects underway on two continents in this critical period of economic, political and foreign policy upheaval.