The American Colonial State in the Philippines: Global Perspectives

by Julian Go (Editor), Anne L. Foster (Editor)

In 1898 the United States declared sovereignty over the Philippines, an archipelago of seven thousand islands inhabited by seven million people of various ethnicities. While it became a colonial power at the zenith of global imperialism, the United States nevertheless conceived of its rule as exceptional—an exercise in benevolence rather than in tyranny and exploitation. In this volume, Julian Go and Anne L. Foster untangle this peculiar self-fashioning and insist on the importance of studying U.S. colonial rule in the context of other imperialist ventures. A necessary expansion of critical focus, The American Colonial State in the Philippines is the first systematic attempt to examine the creation and administration of the American colonial state from comparative, global perspectives. Written by social scientists and historians, these essays investigate various aspects of American colonial government through comparison with and contextualization within colonial regimes elsewhere in the world—from British Malaysia and Dutch Indonesia to Japanese Taiwan and America's other major overseas colony, Puerto Rico. Contributors explore the program of political education in the Philippines; constructions of nationalism, race, and religion; the regulation of opium; connections to politics on the U.S. mainland; and anticolonial resistance. Tracking the complex connections, circuits, and contests across, within, and between empires that shaped America's colonial regime, The American Colonial State in the Philippines sheds new light on the complexities of American imperialism and turn-of-the-century colonialism.


Contributors. Patricio N. Abinales, Donna J. Amoroso, Paul Barclay, Vince Boudreau, Anne L. Foster, Julian Go, Paul A. Kramer

Genres: Nonfiction

328 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Julian Go is a Professor of Sociology and Faculty Affiliate in the Center for the Study of Race, Politics & Culture & The Committee on International Relations at the University of Chicago.

Julian Go’s research explores the social logics, forms and impact of empires and colonialism; postcolonial/decolonial thought and related questions of social theory, epistemology, and knowledge; and global historical sociology.

Much of Go’s work has focused on the US empire. His other work is on postcolonial thought and social theory. His most recent book, Policing Empires: Militarization and Race in Britain and America, 1829-present (Oxford, 2023) explores imperialism’s impact upon police militarization in the US and Britain. He is also working on a project that recovers anticolonial thought as a critical form of social theory.

His scholarship has won prizes from the American Sociological Association, the Eastern Sociological Society, the American Political Science Association, and the International Studies Association, among other institutions. He is the winner of Lewis A. Coser Award for Theoretical Agenda Setting in Sociology given by the American Sociological Association. In 2021-2022, Julian serves as the President of the Social Science History Association.

Reviews

[Abby Morris]

i read this for my research paper

[Derrick Rowe · Rating 3 out of 5]

“The American Colonial State in the Philippines” is a collection of essays that examine the US Colonial State in the Philippines. This collection cover various aspects of American colonial experiment, such as examine the opium trade, race, and the progressive machine politics in the Philippines. This work is useful for those who wish to understand the various different facets of the American colonial experience. Two essays of note are "Empires, Exceptions, and Anglo-Saxons” and “The Chains of Empire.”

[Earl · Rating 4 out of 5]

I admit to not having understood everything, but at least the objective was achieved: to get a more comprehensive understanding of the history of the Philippines as an American colony. Lots of things to really think about and ponder on.