In Our Image Quotes

“Everybody who is anybody in the Philippines today, except for a few Spanish mestizos, has Chinese ancestors.”
― Stanley Karnow, In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines

“The United States continued to practice forms of economic and political imperialism in the years ahead, but territorial conquest began and ended in the Philippines.”
― Stanley Karnow, In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines

“she had inherited a sprawling archipelago of disparate languages and cultures that owed its semblance of unity mainly to the legal definition of Filipino citizenship and an allegiance to the Catholic Church. Despite its modern trappings, it was still a feudal society dominated by an oligarchy of rich dynasties, which had evolved from one of the world’s longest continuous spans of Western imperial rule.”
― Stanley Karnow, In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines

“Americans neglected to establish an effective and impartial administration in the Philippines—as the British did in the creation of the Indian Civil Service, still a model of efficiency. So Filipinos turned to politicians instead of the bureaucracy for assistance, a practice that fostered patronage and corruption. Nor were the Americans, with all their professions of righteousness, as racially tolerant as the French or the Dutch. Prior to World War II, an American who married a Filipino woman was banished from the American community in Manila.”
― Stanley Karnow, In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines