All Preaching the Same Gospel: American Colonial Service and Missionary Nurses in the Philippines 1900–17

This paper explores the intersection between nursing education and the U.S. colonial agenda for Americanization in the Philippines during the early U.S. colonial occupation. It examines the overlapping messages from Protestant missionaries and the U.S. colonial agenda in the Philippines from 1900-1917 and highlights U.S. nurses’ active participation in those messages. Annual Episcopal and Presbyterian mission reports and Philippine Commission reports to the Department of War reveal a strong connection between the evangelical mission goals and the U.S. colonial goals in the Philippines, particularly regarding the power of nursing training to “improve” Philippine society.  Trained nursing, still a young profession, had become completely absorbed into the idea of proper American health care. The U.S. colonial government promoted nursing skills as essential to self-governance in the Philippines. Trained Filipino nurses would minister to their countrymen and women and demonstrate proper sanitation and health practices. Similarly, Protestant missionary nurses expected that Filipino nurses trained in mission schools would offer health care to their communities while evangelizing the gospel.
There was no tradition of trained nursing in the Philippines prior to the American occupation. Care was provided by Roman Catholic nursing sisters in Manila and indigenous healers in more remote areas. U.S. style nursing was inherently different from the existing Filipino services, and it was outside the established social structure that had no custom of education for women or for women rendering care beyond their own families. U.S. nurses’ presence in the islands as colonial and mission workers influenced gender norms by setting an example of professional women. Nurses’ own writings demonstrated that nursing was vitally important to the task of Americanizing the Philippines. American nurses in the Philippines could not (and did not want to) separate the American from the nursing, no matter what setting they worked in: secular colonial or mission.