Organizer and Chair: Patricio N. Abinales, Ohio University
Discussant: Glenn A. May, University of Oregon
This panel features an analysis seldom utilized in Philippine studies: the use of the comparative method to understand the American colonial state in the Philippines. The treatment of the Philippines in isolation may be explained by the persistence of the unstated but prevalent assumption that its colonial state was exceptional in Asia. As an American "clone," the Philippines evokes more similarities with Latin America than with its neighbors. Within Asia, too, there is a tendency to treat each colonial state as unique, airtight within its own borders, interacting in a solitary drama with the history and culture of its subjects.
Yet, colonial officials themselves were aware of connections between the states. These actors operated, at least implicitly, in a comparative/competitive environment, watching each other as they sought to consolidate and expand their presence in the region. The Americans were no exception. The panel participants argue that different lines of comparative inquiry can meaningfully examine the American colonial state in relation to its British and Dutch counterparts in Asia, its Spanish predecessor, and its Pacific sister colony, Guam. What this panel hopes to do is (re)initiate discussion by focusing on two lines of comparative inquiry. The first approach explores why colonial institutions with similar goals and justifications (representative assemblies, police forces, and bureaucracies) yielded distinct outcomes. The second examines the approaches of different colonial states to similar situations (nationalist agitation, "ethnic" classification, etc.).
Colonial Parliaments and Passive Revolutions: British India and the Philippines
Chiharu Takenaka, Meiji Gakuin University
The First World War put an end to classical colonialism in Asia, placing such new agendas as self-determination, democracy and revolution in colonial societies. The British colonial state in India, facing challenges from mass nationalist movements, introduced a quasi-parliamentary form of government at the state level, based on limited franchise and communal electorates, for the purpose of "the gradual development of self-governing institutions." The introduction of those liberal representative institutions to the colonial state, however, bounded the limits of nationalist imagination and curtailed the prospects for social revolutions: a development reminiscent of the Philippine experience. A comparison of two 'liberal' colonial states-British India and the Philippines-will reveal the paradoxical relationship between representative government and social change in colonial societies.
Inheriting the "Moro Problem": Muslim Authority and Colonial Rule in
British Malaya and the Philippines
Donna Amoroso, Wright State University
At the turn of the century, the United States was a new Asian power inheriting a territory known to Americans only through its definition by Spain. U.S. officials were confident of their ability to bring the newly-conquered people of the un-rechristened Philippine Islands within their scientific and educative grasp, but were faced with learning about a multiplicity of peoples, religions, and cultures. The U.S. had several possible reference points in this undertaking, including not only its Spanish predecessor but also neighboring colonial powers like Britain.
This paper examines the different influences on early U.S. efforts to know, categorize, and rule Muslim inhabitants of the Philippines. Initially reliant on Spanish terminology and assumptions, U.S. officials accepted the "Moros" as both a category and a "problem." But Americans also explicitly considered the experience of the British, and some were sympathetic to ruling Muslims through their sultans and datos. In evaluating the impact of Spanish and British precedent, the paper will focus on two institutions. The Bureau of Non-Christian Tribes formulated knowledge about Muslims as a minority (whereas Islam constituted the norm in British Malaya). The Army rejected the British model and effectively established direct rule.
Several underlying issues will also be raised: How did notions of civilization and barbarism change as they moved from Spanish to American usage? Was the American view of Islam influenced more by the Spanish or the British? How important was the abolition of slavery in the establishment of British and American rule over Muslims?
The Project of the Police: Colonial Police Forces in the Philippines and
Netherlands Indies, 1900-1940
Anne L. Foster, Cornell University
Issues of law and order are of primary concern to colonial states. Investigation of the structure and projects of police in the colonial Philippines and Netherlands Indies illuminates how colonial officials viewed the nature of threats to the state and the terms on which Filipinos and Indonesians could participate in wielding state power.
The Philippine Constabulary, established in 1901, had a broad mandate: "chasing down ladrones, killers, pirates, and opium and contraband smugglers," capturing rebels, and enforcing quarantines and school attendance. Colonial officials believed the Constabulary, almost completely Filipinized by the 1920s, could become a force for instruction in self-government for all ethnic groups. The Dutch colonial state had four different police forces by 1920. The village police were staffed and officered by local residents, while the others were staffed by loyal ethnic groups under Dutch officers. All were used to preserve rust en orde (peace and order), which the Dutch hoped would prevent disruptive social change.
This paper compares the composition of these colonial police forces and how they were used in two compelling projects: the suppression of anti-colonial movements and opium smuggling. It asks whether the forces' structures were designed with the governments' larger social goals in mind and whether bureaucrats in Manila and Batavia agreed with local police about the nature of threats to state power. Finally, did the different nature and goals of police in the Philippines and the Netherlands Indies result in different experiences of state power by the subjects of each colony?
Tutelage, Tyranny, and Colonial State-Formation in the Philippines and Guam: An
Asia-Pacific Comparison
Julian Go, University of Chicago
This paper will analyze colonial state-formation in the Philippines through a comparative lens not often employed. Rather than using the Southeast Asia "region" as the a priori analytical context or premise for comparatively situating Philippine state-formation, I will take the contingencies of colonial history in the Asia-Pacific "region" as the point upon which my analysis turns. Specifically, I will compare the Philippine case with Guam. Both Guam and the Philippines were subjected to a long history of Spanish rule, and both were subjected to American colonialism. The Americans were particularly penetrative, attempting in both cases to uproot the authoritarian legacies of Spanish rule and replace them with the "benevolence" of American democratic "tutelage." Yet despite these similarities, only the Philippines emerged as a full-fledged independent nation, and just as importantly, only in the Philippines did a powerful national oligarchy arise within the ostensible hegemony of American colonial rule. Tracking and explaining such differences in the face of a host of similarities provides insights, it is hoped, into the specificity of Philippine colonial state-formation not otherwise afforded.