How Not to Write the History of U.S. Empire - Japan Focus
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The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 16 | Issue 24 | Number 3 | Dec 15, 2018
How Not to Write the History of U.S. Empire
Paul A. Kramer
Historical scholarship on U.S. overseas patterns, and institutional structures; and the
colonialism in the twentieth century, a crucial limits of U.S. colonial power as it confronted
subset of a broader literature on U.S. empire, popular and elite resistance, institutional
has blossomed with unprecedented vitality over dysfunction, environmental obstacles, and
the past two decades. Working on U.S. colonial inter-imperial challenges.
rule and military occupation in the Philippines,
Hawai‘i, Guam, Samoa, Puerto Rico, the They have also advanced the project of
Panama Canal, Haiti, the Virgin Islands, and unraveling the formidable, counterproductive
other locations under military-colonial control, distinction between “formal” and “informal”
from positions in U.S. history, American empire by revealing both the spectrum of
Studies, Southeast Asian history, Pacific sovereignties that lay between “dependency”
history, and Caribbean history, scholars have and “independence” in U.S. imperial practice,
produced a stunning variety of works that have and the profound reliance of U.S. commercial
complicated familiar narratives, uncovered the expansion and military projection—the usual
voices of previously silenced agents, excavated stuff of “informal empire”—upon U.S. overseas
neglected events and processes, altered colonies, as infrastructural and commercial
conventional timelines, and brought new anchors, military platforms, and institutional
analytic categories to bear on studied and and ideological laboratories. Finally, these
unstudied pasts. Thanks to this scholarship, scholars have seriously challenged the spatial
historians know more than ever about frames with which many U.S. historians have
colonialism’s complex impacts on the lands and confined overseas colonialism to a distant,
people that came under U.S. control, the fleeting (and sometimes forgettable) “out
specific operations of a diverse array of colonial there,” revealing the myriad ways that U.S.
regimes, as well as and the many and colonial empire came “home” to the
conflicting roles played by colonized subjects in metropolitan United States in the form of
shaping U.S. impositions (resisting and migrating colonial subjects, circulating
delimiting, facilitating and enabling, initiating commodities, refluxing innovations, and new,
and enacting). Their research is wide-ranging, colonizing modes of nationalist, racialized, and
covering: the dialectical relationships between gendered ideology. Without subordinating
asymmetrical sovereignties and these histories to the requirements of U.S.
exceptionalizing ideologies of race, religion, national history, they have transformed the
gender, and sexuality; colonialism’s historiography of the United States in the world
politicaleconomic operations, from modes of by insisting on and demonstrating the
commodity production to regimes of labor centrality of U.S. colonialism to twentieth-
discipline to systems of financial control; century U.S. history generally.
1
Americans’ ideological, institutional, and
material exchanges with other colonial This scholarship’s depth, richness, and
regimes; the deep legacies of Spanish colonial sophistication make the field Daniel
history in shaping U.S. colonialism’s outlooks, Immerwahr depicts in his 2016 essay “The
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Greater United States,” difficult to schoolhouse “logo map” that conventionally
recognize.2 Adapted from his SHAFR Bernath defines the nation.
Lecture Prize address and published in
Diplomatic History, the piece is an odd Every one of these arguments is problematic,
summons which calls upon U.S. historians to but the article is nonetheless instructive: in just
pay attention—finally—to what the author under twenty pages, it condenses, repackages,
depicts as the stillneglected history of U.S. and celebrates nearly all the major flawed
overseas colonies. Immerwahr’s essay is worth assumptions that have compromised the
highlighting as an example of modes of historiography of U.S. overseas colonialism
thinking about U.S. empire that, despite many since its beginnings, even as it brands this
breakthroughs, stubbornly persistent. perspective a bold, original, forward-looking
conception of U.S. imperial historiography.
The article’s main lines of argument are as Strangely, the essay’s principle interpretive
follows. The United States’ post-1898 “formal” moves are precisely those which the best of the
colonies have not been adequately studied by last decade’s scholarship have rejected. But
U.S. historians writing in “mainstream” there may be something here for historians: a
settings, while historians of U.S. empire have conversational, easy-to-digest model of exactly
long over-emphasized “informal empire” at the how they should not write histories of U.S.
expense the United States’ “formal” empire. overseas colonies, U.S. empire, or the United
These territories and the people who lived States in the world.
there ought to be viewed as part of the
“domestic” history of the United States. In In what follows, I will discuss the main
framing the colonies this way, historians should problems with this piece and others, with an
follow the lead of early twentieth century eye towards what historians might take away.
Americans, some of whom viewed them as part Much of the critique that follows may be
of a cartographic imaginary of “Greater obvious to the many scholars doing innovative
America.” Approaching post-1898 history in work on the history of the United States in the
this manner reframes nineteenth-century world. But the effort is worth making, among
continental expansion as part of a longer, more other reasons, because Immerwahr’s article
global history of irregular “territory.” The reflects problematic assumptions that have a
United States’ overseas “territories” should be long history and remain in wide circulation.
seen as significant, to historians and others, What follows, then, is offered in the hope that a
because if one adds up all the populations discussion of this essay’s shortcomings,
governed by the United States in the common to many past and present-day histories
midtwentieth century—not only the island of U.S. empire, might shed light on
colonies, but military bases and post-World War questionable, long-standing, and prevalent
II occupation zones—they are impressive when historical practices and, through this critique,
compared to both other modern global empires point towards more generative modes of
and U.S. “domestic” society as conventionally inquiry.
understood. While the “Greater United States”
experienced a striking expansion during and The first problem is the conflation of U.S.
immediately after World War II, equally colonialism with “empire.” Here Immerwahr’s
striking was the United States’ essay rides a wave of faulty nomenclature and
“unprecedented” shedding of territory periodization that began with the opponents of
immediately afterwards. Embarking on the U.S. overseas colonialism in the wake of 1898.
study of the “Greater United States” will enable For many early twentieth-century critics of U.S.
historians to move beyond the traditional, overseas colonialism—the selfdescribed “anti-
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imperialists”—the conquest and annexation of American foreign relations than the
overseas colonies represented a great, tragic lateVictorian critics, and often did so in
break-point, the time and place where an distinctly structuralist, anti-nationalist, and
4
American “empire” began. Built to gather the anti-exceptionalist ways. Later, the Wisconsin
movement’s multitudes—liberal Republicans, School reframed U.S. history around a concept
white supremacist Democrats, labor activists, of “informal empire” that, while rigid and in
Northern intellectuals—around a racialized, some ways exceptionalist, gained critical and
nationalist jeremiad, this definition of empire analytical power among other things from its
as limited to overseas territorial annexation decisive break with early twentieth century
5
was and is notable for its strategic narrowness. framings.
It wrote off indigenous dispossession, the
Mexican-American War, territorial annexation Nevertheless, as the result of self-conscious
in North America, gunboat diplomacy in East politics and terminological inertia, “empire”
Asia and Latin America, and navalist and “imperialism” continued to cleave tightest
competition, for example. “Imperialism” cast to U.S. histories involving the Philippines,
the post-1898 colonialist surge as a reversible Puerto Rico, Hawai‘i, Guam, Samoa, the Virgin
lapse, an exception that proved the rule of Islands, and the Panama Canal Zone. Permitted
peaceful, commercialist, republican expansion relatively free rein in this terrain, “empire”
across and beyond North American space. remains contested elsewhere. Indeed, to a
significant degree, the uncomplicated presence
Rhetorically and conceptually, this reduction of of “empire” in discussions of the post-1898 U.S.
U.S. empire to post-1898 overseas colonialism colonies helped produce its necessary absence
proved a generous gift to those seeking to elsewhere. (To be sure, this kind of selective
legitimate and depoliticize most expressions of outrage is also a common feature of other
American global power in the twentieth historiographies: the especially brutal,
century. “Empire” was just a chapter in the scandalized colonialism that normalizes the
textbook, a fleeting “moment” in U.S. history other, quieter ones; the flagrantly exploitative
amid other moments. Shrinking U.S. empire to capitalist who draws indignation away from
an island in history was helped along by the more prosaic systems of exploitation, etc.)
fact that post-1898 U.S. colonialism involved
actual islands. Despite the intensifying, This narrow definition of “empire” as territorial
asymmetrical impacts of U.S. metropole and control is extremely common among influential
colony on each other, and the structural historians working in a number of fields, and
necessity of overseas colonies to other projects writing over many decades. On some occasions,
of U.S. global power, the post-1898 U.S. this definition is presented openly, as when
colonies were and are separated off, the Ernest May wrote in 1968, on the origins of
historical and ethical partitions built from post-1898 colonialism, that his book “deals with
oceans.3 imperialism narrowly defined as direct
territorial acquisition....”6 In other cases, the
There were, importantly, formidable efforts to definition is implicit in the kinds of intervention
challenge apologetic definitions of empire. that are included and excluded from the
During the interwar period, pacifist, socialist, category. In a 2009 essay that argues against
feminist, and Christian opponents of U.S. great- the applicability of “empire” to nearly all
power politics, arms build-ups, and aspects of U.S. foreign policy, Jeremi Suri
militarycolonial interventionism in the makes an exception for the post-1898 colonies.
Caribbean enlisted idioms of empire to make “Beyond this band of islands in the Caribbean
critical sense of a far broader swath of and Pacific where Washington acted as a
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colonial power,” he writes, “the term empire dominance, neglected “the empire”—the
cannot capture the complexities of American colonies—he is going to fill in the map.
influence in a wider global arena encompassing
China, Europe, and the Middle East, as well as A second problem involves Immerwahr’s
other regions.” 7 In a recent, monumental adoption of historical actors’ categories as his
interpretation of U.S. empire, A. G. Hopkins own. Specifically, the essay argues
writes that “the United States ... had an empire prescriptively that American historians ought
between 1898 and 1959,” its “insular empire,” to see U.S.-governed spaces overseas as
but that after 1945, it “ceased to be an empire” “domestic” to U.S. history because many
and was, rather, a “world power without having Americans in the early twentieth century
territorial possessions.”8 themselves represented these colonies as part
of a “Greater America.” 1 0 The essay’s
Despite the durable hold of this narrow discussion of this term’s usage and “Greater
definition of empire among some scholars, by America” maps from the era is novel and
the early twenty-first century, the conditions of compelling. It raises many questions, beyond
possibility for critical histories of U.S. global the article’s scope, that are worth asking: Who
power that used empire for more subtle used this imagery, and who didn’t? In what
analytical purposes were emerging. The fading venues did it circulate, and not circulate? Was
of nationalist-exceptionalist commitments it publicly or privately debated or contested?
among historians of the United States in the How important was it, given its rise and fall
world; the United States’ unbounded, between 1898 and 1917, and why exactly did it
unilateralist military engagements after 9/11; disappear? And where did it come from in the
debates about the United States’ first place? Strikingly, the essay neglects the
disproportionate consumption of ecological obvious reference-point of “Greater Britain,” a
resources and contribution to global climate gap that is remarkable given that it quotes a
catastrophe; and the conceptual impact of primary source which compares “Greater
colonial and post-colonial criticism within U.S. America” to “Greater Britain” explicitly.11
history and American Studies have, for more
and more scholars, made the need for a critical While historians clearly need to know much
vocabulary—including a more agile language of more about “Greater America” as an actor’s
empire but not hemmed in by it—entirely category, the argument that historians should
obvious.9 take their analytical cues from early twentieth
century Americans is ill-advised. Immerwahr is
But not here. Indeed, the territorial definition quite explicit that the term “Greater America”
of empire Immerwahr’s essay offers would have (from which he develops his “Greater United
been recognizable to most mid-twentieth States”) is a phrase he takes from the
century U.S. diplomatic historians and, further “intellectually transformative” years following
back, to the anti-colonialists of 1898–1902. the conquest of the remnants of Spain’s
Immerwahr’s essay is mostly typical in overseas empire. He nonetheless finds the
committing this misstep, even as the conception worth reviving. Immerwahr is not
interpretation arrives after significant alone among historians in turning,
scholarship has moved past it. In revealing the problematically, to historical actors’ framings
importance of the post-1898 overseas colonies for his analysis. When circling around fraught
to U.S. history, Immerwahr is going to—at long questions of U.S. empire, for example, U.S.
last—put “empire” back in U.S. history. Where historians have for a long time, in effect, asked
the Wisconsin School, in foregrounding the permission from the historical actors they
pursuit of American commercial and military studied. The United States was not or did not
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possess “an empire,” they have argued, that many other scholars seek to interrupt.
because most Americans did not imagine or
talk about themselves or their country using The contrast with robustly critical
the lexicon of empire. Similarly, for historians historiographies, which insist on breaking with
on the other side of this (endless, fruitless) the past’s dominant vocabularies in order to
debate, the U.S. can be said to have been or properly historicize them, is striking. Take, for
had “an empire” because some Americans, example, gender and critical-race
especially between the late eighteenth century historiography. Gender historians do not wait
and the Civil War, at the turn of the twentieth for past patriarchs to use the language of
century, and in the wake of 9/11, employed this “patriarchy” to figure out whether they actually
vocabulary affirmatively.12 lived in male-dominated societies. While many
white supremacists in U.S. history did and do
This collapsing together of primary document use “white supremacy” as a selfdesignation,
and analytical frame is characteristic of larger historians of racism do not feel the need to
problems facing U.S. foreign relations history, consult them about whether the term is within
a field still struggling—unevenly—to decolonize bounds as they make sense of racializing
itself intellectually from the U.S. national- institutions, practices, and ideologies. Many
security state and its modes of knowing and past and present capitalists are skittish about
legitimating itself. Within this field and others the term “capitalism” (with its ambivalent
like it, power systems in the past have connotations, some of them critical and/or
traditionally been allowed to provide many of Marxist) and prefer more marketable
the key analytic terms with which they are euphemisms; this does not mean that historians
understood historically. Take, for example, do not get to study American capitalism. This
Suri’s discussion of why “empire” is of almost strange permission-seeking around the
no analytical utility to U.S. foreign relations vocabulary of empire indexes continuities
historians. Again and again, he relies upon between Cold War and “war on terror”
historical actors’ self-descriptions and ideologies, and historians’ willing and
statements of their intentions to determine the unwitting complicity in them.
kinds of categories historians should and
should not use. He writes, for example, that Immerwahr is right that historians could use an
early twentieth century foreign policy should intellectual, cultural, and cartographic history
not be collapsed into the term “empire” of “Greater America.” But historians will only
because of “the significance and enduring be able to learn what they need to about
influence of the anti-empire thinking about “Greater America”—and numerous other
democracy and war that guided the American terms—to the extent that they establish
state....” 13 In other words, what historical analytical distance between past and present
actors (or, at least, certain historical actors) worlds. To make sense of the concept and its
thought and said they were doing was, in fact, inventors, scholars cannot, by definition,
what they were actually doing. Immerwahr’s continue their work. To understand, in the
reliance on early twentieth century writers is present case, “Greater America” as a rhetorical
somewhat different: rather than taking past and visual salvo in a historically-specific
actors’ statements of their intentions as struggle over the boundaries of the United
descriptions of historical reality, he takes his States—spatial, juridical, representational,
analytical lead from inherited categories racial— historians need to maintain an
without critically questioning them. But both understanding of “inside” and “outside” that is
create and spin conceptual revolving doors in self-conscious tension with actors’
between historical actor and historical analyst definitions, and not derivative of them.
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A third problem is what can be called the simple majority?— Immerwahr tosses
sovereignty blender. Having begun with a population chunks into a kind of historical food
discussion of the post-1898 overseas U.S. processor. At one point, the whirring blades
colonies—“U.S. empire” as narrowly strike an enabling caveat—“To occupy a
defined—the essay swoops back to the origins country temporarily is obviously different from
of North American continental expansion, annexing it”—but it does nothing to impede
reminding readers of the heterogeneity of U.S. their progress. Sure enough, when you liquefy
political space from the nation’s founding. This together every place the United States asserted
is a worthwhile note for any twentieth century some kind of politico-military control in 1945
historians who might reify the “logo map” outside of the continental United States, it
United States. But the casual leap back to the represents “51%” of the U.S. population as
earlier Euro-American conquest of North conventionally defined: the “Greater United
America, and later segue forward to the United States” statistically revealed. All it has taken is
States’ late twentieth and early twenty first- the flattening of a spectrum of sovereignties
century globally networked empire of bases, into a polarized dichotomy between irregular
involves a shell game: the homogenizing of territory and “normal” political space.15
radically different political spaces and modes of
empire-building into a multistage, overlapping In turn, the artificial inflation of a “Greater
sequence of irregular “territory.” What glues United States,” especially through the addition
Oklahoma, Puerto Rico, occupied Germany and of the occupations of Germany and Japan,
Japan, and Diego Garcia awkwardly together is allows Immerwahr to paint a misleading
that they and other “territories” are made to portrait of the post-World War II period, one
represent a unified exception to reified, that foregrounds a dramatic “shedding” of
“regular” U.S. space. Where the essay’s other territory. This skewed emphasis turns the least
problems are common to much of the surprising dimension of post-World War II
scholarship on U.S. empire, this one is American power—that Germany and Japan
relatively distinct to this piece, at least as far as were granted formal independence and that the
it includes the post-1945 era; a sweeping United States did not permanently take over
together of Western continental empire- additional territory on the scale of entire
building and post-1898 overseas colonial countries—into a major story. Given the clear
empire was common to an older scholarship on priorities of postwar U.S. policymakers (global
American “expansionism” that used this access to markets, resources and military
expansive, nebulous category to stress bases, and dominance over alliance structures
continuities and similarities between U.S. and multilateral institutions), a crisis of
imperial projects across North America and European colonialism, and key American
beyond.14 officials’ increasingly sharp sense of overseas
territorial control as retrograde, unnecessary
Attempting to prove the significance of these and politically costly overhead, the fact that the
overseas “territories” for the United States, United States did not hold onto or annex
Immerwahr adds up the population figures for newlyoccupied areas after 1945 is not
all areas outside the continental United States counterintuitive or in need of elaborate
that were under some kind of U.S. control in explanation. Furthermore, the article’s
1945. The differences between these cases emphasis on the significance of post-World War
dissolve into the pleasingly fungible abstraction II territorial handovers channels apologetic
of numbers and the amorphous, undefined narratives that date back to the mid-twentieth
category of “territory.” In the interest of century itself. How, for example, are readers to
building towards something—could it be a square Immerwahr’s claim that the United
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States “set the Philippines free” after World writers, and activists in both the United States
War II with the 1946 Bell Trade Act, which and its overseas colonies have subjected U.S.
required that the newly “independent” colonial empire to study—celebratory and
Philippines grant the United States preferential condemnatory, scholarly and
tariffs and Americans “parity rights” in the popular—beginning in 1898 itself. By the late
exploitation of Philippine natural resources; the twentieth century, they were joined by
1947 Military Bases Agreement, which required academic historians, as well as scholars located
the Philippines to allow the United States to within Area Studies (Southeast Asian Studies
retain its bases in the islands and use them as and Latin American Studies, in particular) and
“required by military necessity”; or the violent American Studies, ethnic studies and cultural
suppression of Filipino radicals by U.S.- studies departments, many of whom used
16 21
sponsored counterinsurgency? historically-informed methods.
The piece also does injustice to the intellectual Then, of course, there was a burst of historical
labor of scholars studying U.S. colonies within attention to post-1898 century U.S. colonialism
former and present-day U.S. colonies and the during the “war on terror” and U.S. invasion of
U.S. metropole. 17 While the essay concedes Iraq. Take, for example, the conference and
there are many histories of twentieth-century edited volume organized by McCoy and
U.S. overseas colonies—indeed, an Scarano, which gathered together dozens of
“accelerating avalanche” of them— Immerwahr scholars of the United States’ Caribbean,
argues that the colonies have not received Pacific, and Southeast Asian colonies in wide-
sufficient attention in “mainstream” ranging explorations of the dynamics,
18
narratives. He asks, for example, why Puerto variations, and multi-directional impacts of U.S.
Rican nationalist Pedro Albizu Campos is “not rule between colony and metropole. 22 The
part of mainstream U.S. historiography?”19 anthology makes it into the essay’s footnotes,
What exactly is going on with Immerwahr’s use but apparently does not clear the hurdle of the
of the term “mainstream,” with its unsubtle “mainstream.” Can “we” say that overseas
marking of insider and outsider? Who is on the colonies “drove key episodes in [U.S.] national
outside of “mainstream” history and why history,” Immerwahr asks, using the analogy of
doesn’t their scholarship really count? Here African-American history: “Not yet.”23
the relevant historiography is limited to works
published in prestigious, U.S.- centered Strikingly, the denial of a significant historical
journals based in the United States, “our most scholarship on U.S. empire is one recurrent
prominent historical journals.” Scans of the feature of a decades-old historical scholarship
Journal of American History, Diplomatic on U.S. empire. As in Immerwahr’s essay, the
History, and the American Historical Review usual move is not to deny outright that such a
for references to U.S. overseas colonies serve scholarship exists (which becomes increasingly
as proxies for the state of the literature.20 These challenging, but not impossible), but rather to
scans say nothing about these fields’ actual bracket it wholesale as lacking some necessary
locations, but do say a great deal about what feature which, once the decks are cleared in
nationalist maps of intellectual authority look this way, the author will generously provide in
like. the interest of properly starting the
conversation. Writing on U.S. empire in the
More straightforwardly, Immerwahr’s claim Journal of American History in 2002, well into a
that U.S. overseas colonialism has long been flourishing historical, American Studies and
inadequately studied is completely without post-colonial literature on this topic, Ann Stoler
basis. Academics, policymakers, intellectuals, noted that such a scholarship existed, even as
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she claimed in broad strokes that many U.S. “enriched national history.” The point of U.S.
historians were behind the times, “still historians reaching out into the world, in other
unfamiliar with the new currents in words, was a more cosmopolitan history of the
scholarship that have animated colonial studies United States. Louis Perez powerfully identified
over the last fifteen years,” specifically this as a “We are the World” sensibility. 27
scholarship like her own work centering on Scholarship that widened historical frames
empire’s “intimacies.” 24 In other cases, the might, as intended, challenge American
minimizations and erasures are more exceptionalism, but where this scholarship
ambitious. Hopkins writes—in a volume merely followed U.S. actors, discourses or
published this year—that books on U.S. colonial institutions or asked U.S.-oriented questions on
empire are “few in number” and have “rarely a broader geographic terrain, without opening
achieved popularity.” Studies of the war of out onto or engaging with other sets of
1898 “rarely give it the importance it merits”; inquiries, it might serve to advance
after 1898, “the insular empire disappears from unacknowledged U.S. nationalist purposes. If
view” when it comes to treatment by historians. going “global” simply meant enlarging U.S.
Like Immerwahr, he concedes that there is a national histories, then U.S. historians could
“remarkable array of detailed studies of the venture “abroad” without ever really leaving
islands that fell under U.S. rule,” but these “home.” Immerwahr’s essay represents a
have “yet to be coordinated and made programmatic, annexationist version of this
accessible to a wider audience.” His own larger nationalizing of historiographic stakes.
chapters on these themes, however, will
“attempt to resuscitate a subject that has been What of Immerwahr’s specific criticism of the
left to wither from neglect.” 2 5 Doubtless historiography: is it factually accurate to claim
versions of such sidelining can be found in that the existing research under-addresses the
many (maybe all) fields of scholarship, but one impacts that colonized spaces had on the
cannot help but wonder if historians who work metropolitan United States? By this point,
on the topic of U.S. empire—which past actors historians have powerfully shown colonial
have tried so hard to make vanish— are not state-building to be a complex crucible of U.S.
themselves tempted to try and make the state technologies, from policing and
scholarship on U.S. empire that came before surveillance to public health, many of which
them vanish. found their way from colony to metropole.
Political-economic historians have explored in
A final problem is Immerwahr’s assertion that depth both the importation of commodities
histories of U.S. colonial empire matter produced in overseas colonies to the U.S.
because of what they can tell U.S. historians metropole and political battles over their
about U.S. history, as distinguished from the status, battles that involve metropolitan
histories of colonized areas or those that competitors and often charged, racialized
connect across national divides.26 This type of debates about where the United States’
argument exemplifies what I will call boundaries did and should lay. Scholars
nationalist transnationalism. Like the essay’s working across the disciplines have discussed
other problematic claims, this one is quite the influence that colonial empirebuilding had
common among important historians. In on Americans’ popular culture and social
Thomas Bender’s influential framing of a imaginaries, in genres ranging from children’s
transnationalized U.S. history from the early books to expositions to motion pictures.
2000s, for example, he argued that the point of Migration historians have reconstructed the
this innovation was not to “subvert the nation” lives of colonial migrants in often hostile
through “postnational history” but, instead, an metropolitan environments and the ways their
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presence prompted wide-ranging debates about United States comes first. Readers are told that
their rights and duties vis-a-vis the United Albizu joined the U.S. Army, “inspired by
28
States, as well as the broader boundaries of Wilsonian rhetoric of self-determination.” (Did
U.S. citizenship and social membership to anything in Puerto Rico’s decades of struggle
which this question was inseparably attached. over the island’s relationships to Spain and the
An extensive scholarship on U.S. military United States shape either his decision or his
basing is highly attuned to the ways that read of Wilson?) We learn that his followers
overseas and metropolitan installations were blew up U.S. government buildings. (Was there
wired together in terms of infrastructure, any aspirational vision of Puerto Rican society
logistics, economics, and mobility. In brief, the in play here, or just an animosity towards
claims that existing scholarship insufficiently federal architecture?) Assessing Albizu’s
addresses the United States “proper” may significance, Immerwahr could have quoted any
reflect what scholars choose to neglect or of a number of accomplished scholars of Puerto
ignore, but bears no recognizable relationship Rican society and politics, but he turns instead
to the state of the field. to J. Edgar Hoover, who declares him Puerto
Rican nationalism’s “guiding light.”29 The fact
Recent approaches have challenged nationalist that Albizu has not yet been mentioned in the
transnationalism, arguing that a Journal of American History—regardless of
transnationalized U.S. history requires not only where and how he has been studied in the vast
a wider geographic and archival scope and universe of scholarship—is made a very big
post-exceptionalist commitments but a post- deal. He has apparently not yet arrived, and it
nationalist sense of which questions to ask, is not incumbent upon U.S. historians to learn
which concepts to employ and, ultimately, who about him by reading the journals in which he
constitutes the community of inquiry itself. has long been discussed. (Incidentally, while
From this point of view, the best histories of Immerwahr’s essay stages a parade of
the United States in the world were likely to be canonical Americans who anoint the overseas
generated by scholars positioned either colonies with significance through their
“outside” of U.S. history or in the rich involvement—Theodore Roosevelt, William
interstices between the United States and the Howard Taft, John J. Pershing, George C.
rest of the world. By the mid-2010s, this sense Marshall, Douglas MacArthur, Dwight D.
of the field’s aspirations had become Eisenhower, etc.—Albizu Campos is the only
widespread, even if its actual implementation person from the overseas colonies who goes
remained a work in progress. By stark contrast, named.)
this essay offers an analytically flimsy We are
the World approach, and a cautionary example So Albizu and the resistance movement he
of what can happen when historians practicing stands in for are legible and significant only to
nationalist transnationalism build walls. the extent that they reflect the glare cast by a
narrow Americanist spotlight. Albizu matters,
To close, let’s return to Immerwahr’s account in other words, because the likes of J. Edgar
of Pedro Albizu Campos. At first glance, his Hoover had something to say about him; he
choice to begin the essay with a Puerto Rican commands “our” attention as historians when
nationalist seems to suggest that he takes he or his followers explode something
Puerto Rican history, culture, and agency “American.” Searching for a palpable symbol of
seriously. But how exactly are readers U.S. overseas colonialism’s enduring legacies,
introduced to this decisive Puerto Rican figure? Immerwahr does not turn to poverty,
Immerwahr’s approach illustrates a common unemployment, and inequality on the island,
pattern of selective memory in which the born of U.S. colonial policy and American-led
9APJ | JF 16 | 24 | 3
corporate and agricultural concentration. He it in fresh and striking ways. This work
does not tell readers about the ongoing mass continues into our own time with unparalleled
exodus of economically-displaced Puerto Ricans vigor and creativity. This essay concludes with
to the mainland United States. He provides a bibliographic appendix of dissertations and
instead a bullet hole Puerto Rican nationalists published books completed since 2007 dealing
left in a desk in Washington, DC. with U.S. colonialism in the Philippines and
Puerto Rico; similar bibliographies can be
Ultimately, Immerwahr’s essay may prove most compiled for other sites of U.S. empire. There
educational as a primary document, a telling are many more such works on the way.
artifact of the very histories it purports to
describe, reflecting deep historical currents of BIBLIOGRAPHIC APPENDIX:
nationalist arrogance and short-sightedness.
Yes, these lands are already peopled, and those This appendix includes published books and
people may have their own maps, but the dissertations relating to U.S. colonialism in the
inhabitants only count once they are marked Philippines and Puerto Rico, published or
down on the “mainstream” charts. These completed since 2007. These dissertations are
regions seem strange at first, but they will soon among those catalogued in the database
be populated by faces readers will recognize, Proquest: Dissertations and Theses Global,
who will do away with place names they might which claims “comprehensive historic and
otherwise have to learn. To the limited extent ongoing coverage” for North American works,
that these locales have histories that matter, and limited but “significant and growing
those histories exist—like their land, their international coverage.” This database does not
people, the inhabitants’ labor and the resources yet contain history dissertations written at the
they produce—to serve “our” needs. To University of the Philippines. While extensive,
historians of empire—U.S. and otherwise—this this bibliography is not intended to be
is all too familiar territory. exhaustive; among other things, it does not
include myriad article-length pieces published
Hopefully, the interpretive problems surveyed in peer-reviewed historical journals or edited
here, brought together and exemplified in volumes during these years.
Immerwahr’s article, will not slow, halt, or
redirect the momentum of exciting, ongoing Books dealing with U.S. colonialism and the
research into U.S. colonial and military empire, Philippines include: Alfred W. McCoy, Policing
or broader inquiries into the United States’ America’s Empire: The United States, the
imperial histories in which they play a central Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance
role. Scholars, writers and historians based State (Madison, WI, 2009); David Brody,
inside and outside the contemporary Visualizing American Empire: Orientalism and
boundaries of the United States have discussed Imperialism in the Philippines (Chicago, IL,
and debated how to make sense of the U.S. 2010); Rick Baldoz, The Third Asiatic Invasion:
imperial past and present for over a century. At Migration and Empire in Filipino America,
their best, they have slipped their moments’ 1898–1946 (New York, 2011); Denise Cruz,
mystifications and euphemisms and drawn from Transpacific Femininities: The Making of the
their eras’ critical vocabularies, employing Modern Filipina (Durham, NC, 2012); Cheryl
analyses of economic inequality, state violence, Beredo, Import of the Archive: U.S. Colonial
ecological destruction, and racialized, Rule in the Philippines and the Making of
gendered and sexual difference, for example, in American Archival History (Sacramento, CA,
ways that have not only pointed to the fact of 2013); Michael C. Hawkins, Making Moros:
U.S. empire, but historicized and problematized Imperial Historicism and American Military
10APJ | JF 16 | 24 | 3
Rule in the Philippines’ Muslim South (De Kalb, and Yoshiko Nagano, eds., The Philippines and
IL, 2013); Mark Rice, Dean Worcester’s Japan in America’s Shadow (Singapore, 2011);
Fantasy Islands: Photography, Film, and the Bonnie M. Miller, From Liberation to Conquest:
Colonial Philippines (Ann Arbor, MI, 2014); The Visual and Popular Cultures of the Spanish-
Christopher J. Einolf, America in the American War of 1898 (Amherst, MA, 2011);
Philippines, 1899–1902: The First Torture Michael Patrick Cullinane, Liberty and
Scandal (New York, 2014); Yoshiko Nagano, American Anti-Imperialism (New York, 2012);
State and Finance in the Philippines, Fabian Hilfrich, Debating American
1898–1941: The Mismanagement of an Exceptionalism: Empire and Democracy in the
American Colony (Singapore, 2015); Victor Wake of the Spanish-American War (New York,
Roman Mendoza, Metroimperial Intimacies: 2012); Michael H. Hunt and Steven I. Levine,
Fantasy, Racial-Sexual Governance, and the Arc of Empire: America’s Wars in Asia from the
Philippines in U.S. Imperialism, 1899–1913 Philippines to Vietnam (Chapel Hill, NC, 2012);
(Durham, NC, 2015); Lou Antolihao, Playing Vernadette Vicuna Gonzalez, ~ Securing
with the Big Boys: Basketball, American Paradise: Tourism and Militarism in Hawai‘i
Imperialism, and Subaltern Discourse in the and the Philippines (Durham, NC, 2013);
Philippines (Lincoln, NE, 2015); Leia Castaneda JoAnna Poblete, Islanders in the Empire:
~ Anastacio, The Foundations of the Modern Filipino and Puerto Rican Laborers in Hawai‘i
Philippine State: Imperial Rule and American (Urbana, IL, 2014); Katrin Dauenhauer, The
Constitutional Tradition in the Philippine Shadow of Torture: Debating U.S.
Islands, 1898–1935 (Cambridge, UK, 2016); Transgressions in Military Interventions,
Gerald R. Gems, Sport and the American 1899–2008 (Frankfurt, GER, 2015).
Occupation of the Philippines: Bats, Balls, and
Bayonets (Lanham, MD, 2016); Rebecca Tinio Dissertations on U.S. colonialism in the
McKenna, American Imperial Pastoral: The Philippines include the following, divided into
Architecture of U.S. Colonialism in the thematic sub-categories: For new perspectives
Philippines (Chicago, IL, 2017); Nicholas on the Philippine-American War and the politics
Trajano Molnar, American Mestizos, the of U.S. colonial violence in the early twentieth
Philippines, and the Malleability of Race, century: Erin Leigh Murphy, “Anti-Imperialism
1898–1961 (Columbia, MO, 2017). during the Philippine-American War: Protesting
‘Criminal Aggression’ and ‘Benevolent
Books dealing with the U.S. colonialism in the Assimilation’” (PhD diss., University of Illinois
Philippines comparatively, as part of at Urbana-Champaign, 2009); James Heberton
geographically wider histories, or within works Berkey, “Imperial Correspondence: Soldiers,
also dealing with the Spanish-Cuban-American Writing, and the Imperial Quotidian during the
War, include: Julian Go, American Empire and Spanish-American and Philippine-American
the Politics of Meaning: Elite Political Cultures Wars” (PhD diss., Indiana University, 2010);
in the Philippines and Puerto Rico during U.S. Cynthia L. Marasigan, “‘Between the Devil and
Colonialism (Durham, NC, 2008); Alfred W. the Deep Sea’: Ambivalence, Violence, and
McCoy and Francisco A. Scarano, eds., Colonial African American Soldiers in the Philippine-
Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American War and Its Aftermath” (PhD diss.,
American State (Madison, WI, 2009); Anne L. University of Michigan, 2010); Dawn Anne
Foster, Projections of Power: The United States Ottevaere, “The Cost is Sworn to Women:
and Europe in Colonial Southeast Asia, 1919– Gender, Resistance, and Counterinsurgency
1941 (Durham, NC, 2010); Susan K. Harris, during the Philippine-American War,
God’s Arbiters: Americans and the Philippines, 1898–1902” (PhD diss., Michigan State
1898–1902 (New York, 2011); Kiichi Fujiwara University, 2010); Rowena Quinto Bailon,
11APJ | JF 16 | 24 | 3
“Battling Destiny: Soldiers’ Letters and the Manoa, 2011). On intersections of sex and
Anti-Colonial Discourse in the Philippine- racialized power in the American colonial
American War” (PhD diss., University of Texas Philippines and Philippine-American culture,
at Dallas, 2014). On U.S. colonial rule in the see Victor Roman Reyes Mendoza, “The Erotics
Southern Philippines, see Michael C. Hawkins, of ‘White Love’; or Queering Philippine-U.S.
“Imperial Historicism and American Military Imperial Relations” (PhD diss., University of
Rule in the Philippines’ Muslim South” (PhD California at Berkeley, 2007); Nicholas Trajano
diss., Northern Illinois University, 2009); Omar Molnar, “The Fluidity of Race: Racializations of
H. Dphrepaulezz, “‘The Right Sort of White the American Mestizos in the Philippines and
Men’: General Leonard Wood and the U.S. the United States, 1900–1956” (PhD diss.,
Army in the Southern Philippines, 1898–1906” Rutgers University, New Brunswick, 2012);
(PhD diss., University of Connecticut, 2013); Marie Therese Winkelmann, “Dangerous
Oliver Charbonneau, “Civilizational Intercourse: Race, Gender and Interracial
Imperatives: American Colonial Culture in the Relations in the American Colonial Philippines,
Islamic Philippines, 1899–1942” (PhD diss., 1898–1945” (PhD diss., University of Illinois at
University of Western Ontario, 2016). On U.S. Urbana-Champaign, 2015). On Filipina
colonial education in the Philippines, see Sarah negotiations of gendered and racialized
Steinbock-Pratt, “‘A Great Army of Instruction’: hierarchies, see Genevieve A. Clutario, “The
American Teachers and the Negotiation of Appearance of Filipina Nationalism: Body,
Empire in the Philippines” (PhD diss., Nation, Empire” (PhD diss., University of
University of Texas at Austin, 2013); Funie Hsu, Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2014). On the
“Colonial Articulations: English Instruction and role of civil society organizations in the
the ‘Benevolence’ of U.S. Overseas Expansion American colonial Philippines, see Stefanie S.
in the Philippines, 1898–1916” (PhD diss., Bator, “Toward Filipino Self-Rule: American
University of California at Berkeley, 2013); Reform Organizations and American
Adrianne Marie Francisco, “From Subjects to Colonialism in the Philippines, 1898– 1946”
Citizens: American Colonial Education and (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 2012). On
Philippine NationMaking, 1900–1934” (PhD Philippine-American colonial capitalism, see
diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2015). Allan E. Lumba, “Monetary Authorities: Market
On the legal history of U.S. colonial rule in the Knowledge and Imperial Government in the
Philippines, see Anna Leah Fidelis Tesoro Colonial Philippines, 1892–1942” (PhD diss.,
Castaneda, “Creating ‘Exceptional’ Empire: University of Washington, 2013). On
American Liberal ~ Constitutionalism and the agriculture, forestry, and the natural world, see
Construction of the Constitutional Order of the Theresa Marie Ventura, “American Empire,
Philippine Islands, 1898–1935” (PhD diss., Agrarian Reform, and the Problem of Tropical
Harvard Law School, 2009); Maria Elena Pablo Nature in the Philippines, 1898–1916” (PhD
Rivera-Beckstrom, “Pragmatic Nationalism and diss., Columbia University, 2009); Nathan E.
Legal Culture: The Impact of American Roberts, “U.S. Forestry in the Philippines:
Colonialism on Philippine Constitutional Environment, Nationhood, and Empire,
Politics (1934–1947)” (PhD diss., New School, 1900–1937” (PhD diss., University of
2011); Clara Altman, “Courtroom Colonialism: Washington, 2014). On space, architecture, and
Philippine Law and U.S. Rule, 1898–1935” (PhD urban design, see Rebecca Tinio McKenna,
diss., Brandeis University, 2014). On U.S. “American Imperial Pastoral: The Baguio
colonial archive-keeping, see Bernadette Cheryl Scheme and United States Designs on the
Beredo, “Import of the Archive: American Philippines, 1898–1921” (PhD diss., Yale
Colonial Bureaucracy in the Philippines, University, 2010); Diana Jean Sandoval
1898–1916” (PhD diss., University of Hawai‘i at Martinez, “Concrete Colonialism: Architecture,
12APJ | JF 16 | 24 | 3
Infrastructure, Urbanism and the American States of America” (PhD diss., University of
Colonization of the Philippines” (PhD diss., Florida, 2011); Mark Sanchez, “Resistance
Columbia University, 2017). On questions of from Afar: Opposition to the Marcos Regime
Filipino legal status and the lived experiences from the United States, 1981–1983” (PhD diss.,
of U.S. “nationals,” see Veta R. Schlimgen, California State University, Fullerton, 2012).
“Neither Citizens nor Aliens: Filipino ‘American On the Philippine-American Cold War and
Nationals’ in the U.S. Empire, 1900–1946” military basing, see Daniel A. Borses,
(PhD, University of Oregon, 2010); Proceso “Constructing a Filipino American Cold War
James Paligutan, “American Dream Deferred: Social Imaginary, 1945– 1965” (PhD diss.,
Filipino Nationals in the U.S. Navy and Coast University of California, Irvine, 2011); Colleen
Guard, 1947–1970” (PhD diss., University of P. Woods, “Bombs, Bureaucrats, and Rosary
California, Irvine, 2012). On inter-imperial Beads: The United States, the Philippines, and
exchanges between the U.S.-ruled Philippines the Making of Global Anti-Communism,
and other colonial regimes, see Christopher 1945–1960” (PhD diss., University of Michigan,
Allen Morrison, “A World of Empires: United 2012).
States Rule in the Philippines, 1898–1913”
(PhD diss., Georgetown University, 2009); Dissertations dealing extensively U.S.
Gregg French, “The Foundations of Empire colonialism in the Philippines alongside other
Building: Spain’s Legacy and the American cases, or Filipino-Americans alongside other
Imperial Identity, 1776–1921,” (PhD diss., AsianAmericans, include: Kathryn Alexandra
University of Western Ontario, 2017). On U.S. Rogers, “‘Noble-Hearted Ladies’: Women’s
colonial public health and food politics in the Response to the Spanish-American and
Philippines, see Jose Emmanuel Raymundo, Philippine-American Wars, 1898–1905” (PhD
“The Political Culture of Leprosy in the U.S. diss., University of New Brunswick [Canada],
Occupied Philippines, 1902–1941” (PhD diss., 2008); Denise Khor, “Asian Americans at the
Yale University, 2008); Michael Allen Seager, Movies: Race, Labor, and Immigration in the
“Placing Civilization: Progressive Colonialism Transpacific West, 1900– 1945” (PhD diss.,
in Health and Education from America to the University of California, San Diego, 2008);
Philippines, 1899–1920” (PhD diss., University Katherine D. Moran, “The Devotion of Others:
of California, Riverside, 2009); Rene Alexander Secular American Attractions to Catholicism,
Disini Orquiza, Jr., “Food, Class, and the 1870–1930” (PhD diss., Johns Hopkins
American Imperial Experience in the University, 2009); Karine V. Walther, “‘A Door
Philippines, 1898–1946” (PhD diss., Johns in the Mohammedan World’: Islam and U.S.
Hopkins University, 2012). On colonial rule in Foreign Policy, 1821–1913” (PhD diss.,
the Philippines and U.S. “domestic” politics, Columbia University, 2009); Karen E. Phoenix,
see Norberto Barreto, “Imperial Thoughts: The “‘Not by Might, Nor by Power, but by Spirit’:
U.S. Congress and the Philippine Questions, The Global Reform Efforts of the Young
1898–1934” (PhD diss., State University of New Women’s Christian Association of the United
York at Stony Brook, 2007); Adam David Burns, States, 1895–1939” (PhD diss., University of
“Imperial Vision: William Howard Taft and the Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2010); Carlos
Philippines, 1900–1921” (PhD diss., University Figueroa, “Pragmatic Quakerism in U.S.
of Edinburgh, 2010). On long-distance Filipino- Imperialism: The Lake Mohonk Conference, the
American activism between the U.S. and the Philippines and Puerto Rico in American
Philippines, see Ma. Marissa Lelu P. Gata, “A Political Thought and Policy Development,
Filipino Transnational Advocacy Network: A 1898–1917” (PhD diss., New School, 2010);
Case Study of the U.S. Bases Cleanup John Andrew Byers, “The Sexual Economy of
Campaign in the Philippines and the United War: Regulation of Sexuality and the U.S.
13APJ | JF 16 | 24 | 3
Army, 1898–1940” (PhD diss., Duke University, Trujillo-Pagan, Modern Colonization by Medical
2012); Simeon Man, “Conscripts of Empire: Intervention: U.S. Medicine in Puerto Rico
Race and Soldiering in the Decolonizing (Leiden, 2013); Solsiree del Moral, Negotiating
Pacific” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2012); Empire: The Cultural Politics of Schools in
Maria Paz Gutierrez Esguerra, “Interracial Puerto Rico, 1898–1952 (Madison, WI, 2013);
Romances of American Empire: Migration, Eileen J. Suarez Findlay, We are Left without a
Marriage, and Law in TwentiethCentury Father Here: Masculinity, Domesticity, and
California” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, Migration in Postwar Puerto Rico (Durham, NC,
2013); Stephanie Hinnershitz, “‘One Raw 2014); Jorge Rodrıguez Beruff and Jose L.
Material in the Racial Laboratory’: Chinese, Bolıvar Fresneda, eds., Island at War: Puerto
Filipino, and Japanese Students and West Coast Rico in the Crucible of the Second World War
Civil Rights, 1915–1968” (PhD diss., University (Jackson, MS, 2015); Jose Amador, Medicine
of Maryland, College Park, 2013); Justin F. and Nation Building in the Americas,
Jackson, “The Work of Empire: The U.S. Army 1890–1940 (Nashville, TN, 2015); Isar P.
and the Making of American Colonialisms in Godreau, Scripts of Blackness: Race, Cultural
Cuba and the Philippines, 1898–1913” (PhD Nationalism, and U.S. Colonialism in the Puerto
diss., Columbia University, 2014); Autumn Rico (Urbana, IL, 2015); Teresita A. Levy,
Hope McGrath, “‘An Army of Working-Men’: Puerto Ricans in the Empire: Tobacco Growers
Military Labor and the Construction of of U.S. Colonialism (New Brunswick, NJ, 2015);
American Empire, 1865–1915” (PhD diss., April Merleaux, Sugar and Civilization:
University of Pennsylvania, 2016). American Empire and the Cultural Politics of
Sweetness (Chapel Hill, NC, 2015); Antonio
Books dealing with U.S. colonialism and Puerto Sotomayor, The Sovereign Colony: Olympic
Rico include: Cesar J. Ayala and Rafael Sport, National Identity, and International
Bernabe, Puerto Rico in the American Century: Politics in Puerto Rico (Lincoln, NE, 2016);
A History Since 1898 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2007); Carlos AlamoPastrana, Seams of Empire: Race
Ismael Garcıa-Colon, Land Reform in Puerto and Radicalism in Puerto Rico and the United
Rico: Modernizing the Colonial State, States (Gainesville, FL, 2016).
1941–1969 (Jacksonville, FL, 2009); Lorrin
Thomas, Puerto Rican Citizen: History and Dissertations dealing with U.S. colonialism and
Political Identity in Twentieth-Century New Puerto Rico, and Puerto Rico alongside other
York City (Chicago, IL, 2010); Dionicio Nodın regions, include: On questions of Puerto Rico
Valdes, Organized Agriculture and the Labor political and legal status and the lived
Movement before the UFW: Puerto Rico, experiences of U.S. “nationals,” see Robert C.
Hawai‘i, California (Austin, TX, 2011); Cesar J. McGreevey, “Borderline Citizens: Puerto
Ayala and Jose L. Bolıvar, Battleship Vieques: Ricans and the Politics of Migration, Race, and
Puerto Rico from World War II to the Korean Empire, 1898–1948” (PhD diss., Brandeis
War (Princeton, NJ, 2011); Manuel R. University, 2008); Samuel C. Erman, “Puerto
Rodrıguez, A New Deal for the Tropics: Puerto Rico and the Promise of United States
Rico During the Depression Era, 1932–1935 Citizenship: Struggles around Status in a New
(Princeton, NJ, 2011); Ileana Rodrıguez-Silva, Empire, 1898–1917” (PhD diss., University of
Silencing Race: Disentangling Blackness, Michigan, 2010). On U.S. colonial public health
Colonialism, and National Identities in Puerto in Puerto Rico, see Jose G. Amador,
Rico (New York, 2012); Kirwin R. Shaffer, Black “‘Redeeming the Tropics’: Public Health and
Flag Boricuas: Anarchism, National Identity in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and
Antiauthoritarianism, and the Left in Puerto Brazil, 1890–1940” (PhD diss., University of
Rico, 1897–1921 (Urbana, IL, 2013); Nicole Michigan, 2008); Winifred C. Connerton, “Have
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