William Cameron Forbes

William Cameron Forbes (May 21, 1870 – December 24, 1959), and an investment banker and diplomat.

He was the son of William Hathaway Forbes, president of the Bell Telephone Company, and wife Edith Emerson, a daughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson, nephew of James Grant Forbes and grandson of Francis Blackwell Forbes. After graduating from Harvard in 1892, he embarked on a business career, eventually becoming a partner in J. M. Forbes and Company. [http://select.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F00D16FF395C157A93C1A9178DD85F448385F9 "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, Forbes was governor-general of the Philippines, 1909-1913. [ [http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9E07E4DE113AE633A25751C2A9609C946396D6CF "Gov. Forbes Ill; Worn Out by Eight Years Under High Tension in the Philippines,"] "New York Times." June 22, 1912.] Previously, during the administration of President Theodore Roosevelt, he had been Commissioner of Commerce and Police in the Philippine government from 1904 through 1908; and he was Vice Governor from 1908 through 1909. [see above] ] As modest legacy from those years of service in Manilla, the gated community of Forbes Park in Makati City is named after him; and this community is the residence of some of the wealthiest people in the country.

In 1921, President Warren G. Harding sent him as head of the Woods-Forbes Commission to investigate conditions in the Philippines. [see above] ]

Haiti

Forbes was appointed by President Herbert Hoover in 1930 to lead a commission charged with investigating the reasons for ongoing minor rebellions in Haiti. [see above] ]

Japan

Forbes was nominated By President Hoover and confirmed as United States Ambassador to Japan, 1930-1932. [see above] ]

Later years

Forbes received an LL.D. from Bates College in 1932. He was on the Board of Trustees, Carnegie Institution of Washington and a Life Member of the Corporation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was on the original standing committee of the Foundation for the Study of Cycles from 1941. He died unmarried in 1959.

ources

His papers are in the Houghton Library at Harvard University. Copies of his annotated journal are at the Library of Congress and the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston. The report of the Forbes Commission's Haitian analysis is at the Library of Congress.

Philippine administrator:
* Peter W. Stanley, "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 and Japan, 1931-1933" (1963)
* James B. Crowley, "Japan's Quest for Autonomy" (1966).

elected works

He wrote the following books and articles:
* 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).

Notes

References

* [http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F00D16FF395C157A93C1A9178DD85F448385F9&scp=9&sq=William+R.+Castle&st=p "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.