William Cameron Forbes (May 21, 1870 – December 24, 1959) was an American

investment banker Investment banking pertains to certain activities of a financial services company or a corporate division that consist in advisory-based financial transactions on behalf of individuals, corporations, and governments. Traditionally associated with ...

and

diplomat A diplomat (from grc, δίπλωμα; romanized ''diploma'') is a person appointed by a state or an intergovernmental institution such as the United Nations or the European Union to conduct diplomacy with one or more other states or internati ...

. He served as

governor-general of the Philippines The Governor-General of the Philippines (Spanish: ''Gobernador y Capitán General de Filipinas''; Filipino: ''Gobernador-Heneral ng Pilipinas/Kapitan Heneral ng Pilipinas''; Japanese: ) was the title of the government executive during the colon ...

from 1909 to 1913 and ambassador of the United States to

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

from 1930 to 1932. He was the son of

William Hathaway Forbes William Hathaway Forbes (1840–1897) was an American businessman. Early life William Hathaway Forbes was born on October 31, 1840 in Milton, Massachusetts. His father, John Murray Forbes, was a French-born railroad magnate. Forbes enrolled at Ha ...

, president of the

Bell Telephone Company The Bell Telephone Company, a common law joint stock company, was organized in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 9, 1877, by Alexander Graham Bell's father-in-law Gardiner Greene Hubbard, who also helped organize a sister company – the New Englan ...

, who was part of the Boston Brahmin family that made its fortune trading in China, and wife Edith Emerson, a daughter of

Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803April 27, 1882), who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champ ...

. He was grandson Sarah Hathaway and John Murray Forbes and Lidian Jackson and Ralph Waldo Emerson. After education at the

Milton Academy Milton Academy (also known as Milton) is a highly selective, coeducational, independent preparatory, boarding and day school in Milton, Massachusetts consisting of a grade 9–12 Upper School and a grade K–8 Lower School. Boarding is offered ...

and Boston's Hopkinson School and graduation from

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

in 1892, he embarked on a business career, eventually becoming a partner in J. M. Forbes and Company. "W. Cameron Forbes for Envoy to Japan; Bostonian Selected by President Hoover to Succeed W.R. Castle Jr.; Forbes was in Philippines; Served There as Vice Governor and Governor General Under Roosevelt and Taft,"
''New York Times.'' June 3, 1930.

Philippines

During the administration of President

William Howard Taft William Howard Taft (September 15, 1857March 8, 1930) was the 27th president of the United States (1909–1913) and the tenth chief justice of the United States (1921–1930), the only person to have held both offices. Taft was elected pr ...

, Forbes was

Governor-General of the Philippines The Governor-General of the Philippines (Spanish: ''Gobernador y Capitán General de Filipinas''; Filipino: ''Gobernador-Heneral ng Pilipinas/Kapitan Heneral ng Pilipinas''; Japanese: ) was the title of the government executive during the colon ...

from 1909 to 1913. Previously, during the administration of President

Theodore Roosevelt Theodore Roosevelt Jr. ( ; October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919), often referred to as Teddy or by his initials, T. R., was an American politician, statesman, soldier, conservationist, naturalist, historian, and writer who served as the 26t ...

, he had been Commissioner of Commerce and Police in the American colonial

Insular Government The Insular Government of the Philippine IslandsThis form of the name appeared in the titles of U.S. Supreme Court cases, but was otherwise rarely used. See Costas v. Insular Government of the Philippine Islands, 221 U.S. 623, 1911. The Admini ...

of the Philippines from 1904 through 1908; and he was Vice Governor from 1908 through 1909. Forbes was an enthusiastic supporter of the summer capital at

Baguio Baguio ( , ), officially the City of Baguio ( ilo, Siudad ti Baguio; fil, Lungsod ng Baguio), is a 1st class highly urbanized city in the Cordillera Administrative Region, Philippines. It is known as the "Summer Capital of the Philippines", ...

Daniel Burnham Daniel Hudson Burnham (September 4, 1846 – June 1, 1912) was an American architect and urban designer. A proponent of the '' Beaux-Arts'' movement, he may have been, "the most successful power broker the American architectural profession has ...

, and had a country club and golf course added to the plans. The summer capital drew resentment from local Filipinos, as it put the government at a distance from the people and was paid for with money earmarked for postwar recovery. Forbes had a low opinion of Filipinos, regarding them as naturally subordinate and unready for self-government. He interacted with them as little as possible. In a 1909 diary entry he recounted an incident when he was playing golf with an

Igorot The indigenous peoples of the Cordillera Mountain Range of northern Luzon, Philippines are often referred to using the exonym Igorot people, or more recently, as the Cordilleran peoples. There are nine main ethnolinguistic groups whose domains ar ...

caddy. Forbes wrote "I said to myself, 'Now how many am I?' and the boy replied, 'Playing five.' I was as much astonished as though a tree had spoken." Of the original 161 country club members only six were Filipino. One of them was future Philippines president

Manuel Quezon Manuel Luis Quezon y Molina, (; 19 August 1878 – 1 August 1944), also known by his initials MLQ, was a Filipino lawyer, statesman, soldier and politician who served as president of the Commonwealth of the Philippines from 1935 until his dea ...

. Forbes likened him to a "wonderfully trained hunting dog gone wild." Quezon in turn remarked that Forbes loved Filipinos "in the same way the former slave owners loved their Negro slaves." In 1908 diary entry, Forbes described how he and the other lawmakers completed their business at Baguio in "about an hour or less" and devoted the remainder of the day to leisure. Forbes, who was a

polo Polo is a ball game played on horseback, a traditional field sport and one of the world's oldest known team sports. The game is played by two opposing teams with the objective of scoring using a long-handled wooden mallet to hit a small hard ...

enthusiast, founded the

Manila Polo Club The Manila Polo Club is the premiere polo club in the Philippines. It was established in 1909 during the American colonial era by Governor General William Cameron Forbes as a venue for polo and leisure for the wealthy elite. It was originally loc ...

in 1919 at Pasay, Rizal. It was the first polo field in the Philippines. Forbes had envisioned the club as a venue for polo and leisure for "gentlemen of a certain class" assigned to work in the Philippines like himself. He served as delegate of the club until the outbreak of World War II. The clubhouse was inaugurated on November 27, 1909. In 1921, President

Warren G. Harding Warren Gamaliel Harding (November 2, 1865 – August 2, 1923) was the 29th president of the United States, serving from 1921 until his death in 1923. A member of the Republican Party, he was one of the most popular sitting U.S. presidents. A ...

sent Forbes and

Leonard Wood Leonard Wood (October 9, 1860 – August 7, 1927) was a United States Army major general, physician, and public official. He served as the Chief of Staff of the United States Army, Military Governor of Cuba, and Governor-General of the Philippi ...

as heads of the Wood-Forbes Commission to investigate conditions in the Philippines. The Commission concluded that Filipinos were not yet ready for independence from the United States, a finding that was widely criticized in the Philippines. As modest legacy from those years of service in

Manila Manila ( , ; fil, Maynila, ), officially the City of Manila ( fil, Lungsod ng Maynila, ), is the capital of the Philippines, and its second-most populous city. It is highly urbanized and, as of 2019, was the world's most densely populate ...

, the

gated community A gated community (or walled community) is a form of residential community or housing estate containing strictly controlled entrances for pedestrians, bicycles, and automobiles, and often characterized by a closed perimeter of walls and fences ...

of Forbes Park in

Makati Makati ( ), officially the City of Makati ( fil, Lungsod ng Makati), is a 1st class highly urbanized city in the National Capital Region of the Philippines. Makati is the financial center of the Philippines; it has the highest concentration ...

, was named after him; and this community is the residence of some of the wealthiest people in the country. Lacson Avenue (formerly Gov. Forbes Street) in

Sampaloc, Manila Sampaloc is a district of Manila, Philippines. It is referred to as the University Belt or simply called ''“U-Belt”'' for numerous colleges and universities are found within the district such as the University of Santo Tomas, the oldest exta ...

is still called "Forbes" by some up to the present day.

Haiti

Forbes was appointed by President

Herbert Hoover Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was an American politician who served as the 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933 and a member of the Republican Party, holding office during the onset of the Gr ...

in 1930 to lead a commission charged with investigating the reasons for ongoing minor rebellions in

Haiti Haiti (; ht, Ayiti ; French: ), officially the Republic of Haiti (); ) and formerly known as Hayti, is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and ...

. Forbes gave Hoover a plan to stabilize Haiti and remove the US Marines. An agreement in August 1931 started the withdrawal and a similar plan led to Hoover's withdrawal of troops from Nicaragua. Franklin Roosevelt later completed the process, calling it the "

Good Neighbor policy The Good Neighbor policy ( ) was the foreign policy of the administration of United States President Franklin Roosevelt towards Latin America. Although the policy was implemented by the Roosevelt administration, President Woodrow Wilson had pr ...

Japan

Forbes was nominated by President Hoover and confirmed as

United States Ambassador to Japan The is the ambassador from the United States of America to Japan. History Since the opening of Japan by Commodore Matthew C. Perry, in 1854, the U.S. has maintained diplomatic relations with Japan, except for the ten-year period between the at ...

. He served from 1930 to 1932. In 1935, Forbes headed an American Economic Mission to Japan and China to promote good business relations. The April 9, 1935 photo to the right presents Forbes meeting with the Japanese Minister of Commerce and Industry,

Machida Chūji was a politician and cabinet minister in the pre-war Empire of Japan. Biography Machida was born in Akita as the fourth son to a samurai in the service of Kubota Domain. However, his father died when he was three years old. He was raised by his ...

, at the official residence of Machida, in Tokyo. Together, they renegotiated agreements that would improve commercial relations between the two nations.

Friendship with George Santayana

W. Cameron Forbes was a life-long friend of

George Santayana Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, known in English as George Santayana (; December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952), was a Spanish and US-American philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. Born in Spain, Santayana was raised ...

, who was a young professor at Harvard during Forbes's last three undergraduate years there. Forbes was one of the models for the protagonist Oliver Arden in Santayana's novel ''

The Last Puritan ''The Last Puritan: A Memoir in the Form of a Novel'' is a 1935 novel by the Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana. Set largely in the fictional town of Great Falls, Connecticut, Boston, and England, in and around Oxford, it relates the l ...

''.

Later years

Forbes received an LL.D. from

Bates College Bates College () is a private liberal arts college in Lewiston, Maine. Anchored by the Historic Quad, the campus of Bates totals with a small urban campus which includes 33 Victorian Houses as some of the dormitories. It maintains of nature p ...

in 1932. He was on the Board of Trustees,

Carnegie Institution of Washington The Carnegie Institution of Washington (the organization's legal name), known also for public purposes as the Carnegie Institution for Science (CIS), is an organization in the United States established to fund and perform scientific research. Th ...

and a Life Member of the Corporation,

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

. He was on the original standing committee of the

Foundation for the Study of Cycles The Foundation for the Study of Cycles (FSC) is an international nonprofit organization that fosters, promotes, and conducts scientific research in respect to rhythmic and periodic fluctuations in any branch of science. It was incorporated on Janu ...

from 1941. He died unmarried in 1959. His seasonal home Birdwood, a mansion built in the 1930s for him in southern

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States Georgia may also refer to: Places Historical states and entities * Related to the ...

, is listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

Head coaching record

Sources

Forbes' papers are in the

Houghton Library Houghton Library, on the south side of Harvard Yard adjacent to Widener Library, is Harvard University's primary repository for rare books and manuscripts. It is part of the Harvard College Library, the library system of Harvard's Faculty of Art ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

. Copies of his annotated journal are at the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...

and the

Massachusetts Historical Society The Massachusetts Historical Society is a major historical archive specializing in early American, Massachusetts, and New England history. The Massachusetts Historical Society was established in 1791 and is located at 1154 Boylston Street in Bost ...

, Boston. The report of the Forbes Commission's Haitian analysis is at the Library of Congress. Philippine administrator: *

Peter W. Stanley Peter William Stanley (born 1940) is an American historian and academic administrator who served as the eighth president of Pomona College. A scholar of Asian studies, his tenure at Pomona coincided with a substantial increase in the college's ...

, ''A Nation in the Making: The Philippines and the United States, 1899–1921'' (1974) * Rev. Camillus Gott, "William Cameron Forbes and the Philippines, 1904–1946" (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1974) * Theodore Friend, ''Between Two Empires: The Ordeal of the Philippines, 1929–1946'' (1965). Ambassador to Japan: * Gary Ross, "W. Cameron Forbes: The Diplomacy of a Darwinist," in R. D. Burns and E. M. Bennett, eds., ''Diplomats in Crisis'' (1974). * Robert H. Ferrell, ''American Diplomacy in the Great Depression: Hoover-Stimson Foreign Policy, 1929–1933'' (1957) * Armin Rappaport, ''

Henry L. Stimson Henry Lewis Stimson (September 21, 1867 – October 20, 1950) was an American statesman, lawyer, and Republican Party politician. Over his long career, he emerged as a leading figure in U.S. foreign policy by serving in both Republican and D ...

and Japan, 1931–1933'' (1963) * James B. Crowley, ''Japan's Quest for Autonomy'' (1966).

Selected works

Forbes wrote the following books and articles: * 1911 -- "As to Polo", Dedham Polo and Country Club. * 1921 -- ''The Romance of Business'' * 1935 -- ''Fuddlehead by Fuddlehead'' (autobiography) the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston. * 1936 -- "A Survey of Developments in the Philippine Movement for Independence," ''Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1932–1936''. * 1939 -- "American Policies in the Far East," ''Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences'' (January 1939).