William Cameron Forbes (May 21, 1870 – December 24, 1959) was an American investment banker and diplomat. He served as governor-general of the Philippines from 1909 to 1913 and ambassador of the United States to Japan from 1930 to 1932.

Early life and career

William Cameron Forbes, nicknamed "Cam", was the son of William Hathaway Forbes, son of John Murray Forbes and president of the Bell Telephone Company, and Edith Emerson, a daughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson. The Forbes were a Boston Brahmin family which made its original fortune in the Old China Trade. Despite his descent from the greatest American Transcendentalist, Forbes would later distance his business and diplomatic career from his grandfather's work, saying that he "had his line in material affairs."

He was educated at the Milton Academy and Boston's Hopkinson School and graduated from Harvard in 1892. Afterwards, he embarked on a business career, in 1899 becoming a life partner in J. M. Forbes and Company, an investment firm founded by his grandfather. He would return to Harvard in order to coach the Harvard Crimson in 1897 and 1898, in the latter year, the team was undefeated. Forbes was a passionate polo player, even authoring a guide to the sport, As to Polo, during his tenure in the Philippines in 1911. Along with his tenure at J.M. Forbes and Co., Forbes served as director of several companies, including the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, the First National Bank of Boston, Stone & Webster, and United Fruit Company.

Philippines

During the administration of President William Howard Taft, Forbes was Governor-General of the Philippines from 1909 to 1913. Previously, during the administration of President Theodore Roosevelt, he had been Commissioner of Commerce and Police in the American colonial Insular Government 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 designed by Daniel Burnham, 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 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. 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 enthusiast, founded the Manila Polo Club in 1919 in 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. The Commission concluded that Filipinos were not yet ready for independence from the United States, a finding that was widely criticized in the Philippines.

The gated community of Forbes Park in Makati, 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 is still called "Forbes" by some up to the present day.

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. 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."

Japan

Forbes was nominated by President Hoover and confirmed as United States Ambassador to Japan. He served from 1930 to 1932.

In 1935, Forbes headed an American Economic Mission to Japan and China to promote good business relations. In 1935, Forbes met with the Japanese Minister of Commerce and Industry, Machida Chūji, to renegotiate 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, 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.