The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines

by Paul A. Kramer

In 1899 the United States, having announced its arrival as a world power during the Spanish-Cuban-American War, inaugurated a brutal war of imperial conquest against the Philippine Republic. Over the next five decades, U.S. imperialists justified their colonial empire by crafting novel racial ideologies adapted to new realities of collaboration and anticolonial resistance. In this pathbreaking, transnational study, Paul A. Kramer reveals how racial politics served U.S. empire, and how empire-building in turn transformed ideas of race and nation in both the United States and the Philippines.

Kramer argues that Philippine-American colonial history was characterized by struggles over sovereignty and recognition. In the wake of a racial-exterminist war, U.S. colonialists, in dialogue with Filipino elites, divided the Philippine population into "civilized" Christians and "savage" animists and Muslims. The former were subjected to a calibrated colonialism that gradually extended them self-government as they demonstrated their "capacities." The latter were governed first by Americans, then by Christian Filipinos who had proven themselves worthy of shouldering the "white man's burden." Ultimately, however, this racial vision of imperial nation-building collided with U.S. nativist efforts to insulate the United States from its colonies, even at the cost of Philippine independence. Kramer provides an innovative account of the global transformations of race and the centrality of empire to twentieth-century U.S. and Philippine histories.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Race, Grad School, United States, 19th Century, Politics

552 pages, Paperback

First published April 17, 2006

Reviews

[Michael Skora · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paul Kramer is probably my favorite historian on U.S. imperialism/foreign relations.

[Eleanore · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is entirely unfortunate that this volume, reflecting truly impressive research conducted by Paul Kramer in examining racial relations between the US and the Philippines during the colonial period, is almost entirely obscured by his relentless use of jargon and the often abstract, esoteric quality of his analysis.

Thoroughly saturated by such traditional social-science terms as "discourses" and "minoritize," Kramer goes on to employ new terms such as "exterminism," "indigenism," and "imaginaries" repetitively without defining or justifying their use in the place of perfectly adequate alternate phrases. He also fatally disconnects his analysis of US and Philippine racial perceptions, colonialism and imperialism from its historical context, setting his conclusions and judgments adrift against the comparative background of race relations in a global perspective and European colonialism more broadly. For example, the struggle of the British "dominions" to gain recognition and status (not to mention to resolve their own ongoing racial issues) during this period would surely have provided significant and interesting context to the Philippine experience. Furthermore while noting differing racial perceptions amongst groups of Filipinos and Americans, Kramer often fails to take up these various perspectives with any serious consideration, subordinating the complexity of mutual race relations and forestalling more nuanced and potentially valuable analysis. We are left to fall back on the singularity of his personal moral and theoretical judgment.

"The Blood of Government" nonetheless provides useful and important insight into the US experience with the Philippines, particularly through the author's careful analysis of the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair and his narrative tracing the emergence of the Tydings-McDuffie act of 1934 (wherein the noble sentiments of liberty had very little to do with its passage), holding up a bright mirror to the darker reflection of the American character.

[Derrick Rowe · Rating 3 out of 5]

“The Blood of Government” is one of the most important works relating to Philippine-American history. This work surveys the racial attitudes of Americans and Filipinos and the importance of race in building the American colonial state. This book focuses primarily on the American colonial state in the Philippines but surveys the American colonial adventure in the context of the wider imperial world at the turn of the twentieth century. “Blood of Government” further explores race and race relations in the emerging American-Philippine colonial state and how race was not directly imported into the Philippines from the US but developed due to the collaborative nature of the American colonial experiment. “Blood of Government” is, however, not for the casual reader and this work is very dense and a slog to read. For those deeply interested in the working of the American colonial state in the Philippines, and its imperil and racial context, this is a must read.

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was hard to read. Not because of the author or the way it was written but do to the racial epithets throughout the first part of the book. I understand that is the way the soldiers talked but it was hard to read as I have grown to love the people of the Philippines.

Overall this was a very good book on the history of the American relationship with the Philippines after the Spanish American war and is a good read.

[Gabby Gagno · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was an interesting take on American imperialism in the Philippines. While in the end, America's imperialist drive is still fueled by economic need to accumulate, this book gives us an idea of how the Americans actually did it.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great companion to Takeshi Fujitani’s Race for Empire. Excellently written. Americans need to know more about this.

[Abby Morris]

i read this for my research paper

[Ueli Brunner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Comprehensive and detailed description of the period when Philippines were under US rule. A very good book on the history of the American relationship with the Philippines after the Spanish American war and is a good read.

[Evangeline Reyes · Rating 3 out of 5]

racial hierarchy in the Philippines detailed

[Gretchen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sonoma State Teach American History project.

[Sohum · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've never read such a tragically boring monograph.