US Colonialism’s Philippine Legacy
Nations often forget their sins, and Americans rarely reflect on their 50-year colonization of an archipelago thousands of miles across the ocean. Fortunately, historians such as Chris Capozzola at MIT refuse to let their compatriots forget the legacies of American imperialism in the Asia-pacific. His gripping book sheds light on US history while giving agency to Filipinos, colonial subjects turned Cold War allies.
Deeply researched and engagingly written, it focuses on the Us-philippine relationship’s military dimension, starting with the 1898 US war against Spain that devolved into an imperialist campaign to exterminate local “insurgents.” Within a decade, Filipinos became a vital source of US Navy recruits as Teddy Roosevelt planned a Pacific show of naval power known as the Great White Fleet.
Capozzola documents how the Philippines played a key role in the conflicts that defined US interests in the first Pacific Century — the Pacific War against Japan, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, even the global War on Terror. A notable absence in this tangled tale is the role of China, which barely merits a footnote in the litany of great-power struggles and regional conflicts until we get to the past decade. It remains an open question how the Us-philippine relationship will evolve in the face of China’s rise, which seems likely to shape the second Pacific Century as America’s rise did the first.
Capozzola’s gripping book sheds light on US history while giving agency to Filipinos.