The United States in the World. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2020. xvi, 282 pp. (Maps, B&W photos.) US$45.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-5017-5072-4.
In his deeply researched book on the US colonization of the Moro people of the southern Philippines, Oliver Charbonneau tells many stories that illustrate the recurring attempts and resounding failures to translate American colonial fantasies into colonial realities. For me, two stand out in particular. One is the account of Moro and Igorot peoples, exhibited as colonial specimens at the St. Louis World Fair of 1904, visiting the White House. Meeting President Roosevelt, they wore not their native attire but Western clothing and, most conspicuously, shoes. Newspaper accounts were deeply disappointed. They did not expect natives to appear out of character like “hobos” in suits with shod feet, preferring to see them instead in all their savage splendour. Showing their capacity to appear modern, Moros simultaneously fulfilled and frustrated American expectations. Transcending stereotypes, they projected an autonomy that left American colonial rule superfluous. The second story involves the complex life of a Sulu princess, Tarhata Kiram. Educated in colonial public schools, she travelled to the US and enrolled at the University of Illinois. There, she became a different kind of exhibit: that of the beneficiary of “benevolent assimilation,” a “modern girl” in furs and flapper outfits, smoking and partying like other college girls. Returning to Sulu, however, Kiram became the fourth wife of Datu Tahil. She dressed in Tausug garb and, in 1927, joined the Datu’s revolt against colonial impositions by retreating to a fortification in Patikul. As PC (Philippine Constabulary) troops massacred the rebels, Kiram was arrested and jailed. In a piece for the Los Angeles Times, Kiram wrote that the revolt was a response to the injustice of colonial rule, and that her Western education made it impossible for her to stand aside while Americans and Christian Filipinos sought to oppress her people.
As with the Moros visiting the White House in Western attire, Kiram’s revolt was a function of civilizational efforts unleashing unintended effects which Americans could neither predict nor fully control. In both accounts, we see important themes unfolding: of colonial attempts to control “savages” whose long history of self-government allowed them to interrupt and reverse power relations; the use of “corrective” violence and massacres as ways to teach Moros lessons in obedience, resulting not in their submission but in further cycles of violent resistance; colonial projects to reform education, justice, and commerce that ended up alienating Muslim parents, datus, and traders. Indeed, as much as Americans touted their success in civilizing Moro peoples, they found themselves unable to consolidate their gains and claim unchallenged dominance. Instead, as Charbonneau makes abundantly clear, American imperialism in the Muslim south, as with imperialist rule everywhere else in the world, was traversed by irresolvable contradictions. Seeking to make Sulu and Mindanao safe for white settlement, Americans sought to domesticate native spaces into well-bordered areas—the social club, for instance—that would safeguard white privilege. Yet they also sought jungle adventures that exposed them to danger for the sake of proving their racial superiority. They simultaneously feared and desired the wildness of native peoples, seeing it as a screen to project as well as reflect their drive to transform the world into their image. Subduing Moros, they became dependent on their aid.
Violence—from incarceration to massacres—was a crucial part of the civilizing imperative. Yet, rather than resolve colonial contradictions, violence insured repeated clashes that would characterize US-Moro history and would carry over into Filipino national rule from 1914 to the present. Both American and Filipino rulers believed that violence was the most effective language for governing Moros and that periodic mass killings of rebellious natives, such as those at Bud Dajo in 1906 and Bud Bagsak in 1913, were pedagogically sound means for containing their innate viciousness. Those who resisted colonial impositions were mercilessly gunned down to serve as examples to those who might decide to take up arms. Extra-judicial killings were thus an integral part of American rule, something that their Christian Filipino successors would continue to apply in the coming decades. From the American perspective, Moros were comparable to Native Americans. And it was this assumed continuity between the putative backwardness of Native Americans and Moros that made exterminatory violence part of the civilizing process.
US imperialism was, of course, unexceptional even as it was historically specific. Much of its governing tactics were borrowed from the British, French, and Dutch. Officials toured other colonial possessions and took inspiration from the political and economic policies in those areas. Even more important, American rulers drew heavily from Spain, which they had criticized as “feudal,” closely studying Spanish accounts of Moros, building on their insights as well as on the military installations they left behind. Charbonneau demonstrates the cosmopolitanism of American imperialism and indicates how it was shaped by an international order predicated on capitalism and white supremacy. Similarly, he also points out how Moro elites were oriented towards a larger understanding of the Muslim world. They looked towards the Ottoman Empire as an alternative source of support while pilgrimages to Mecca constituted a source of counter-colonial authority for those wealthy enough to make the trip. Far from being isolated, the US colony in Mindanao and Sulu was immersed in international currents that traversed the modern world.
Civilizational Imperatives is one of the most compelling accounts of the US colonization of Moro peoples. It is a vital contribution to our understanding of the authoritarian pretentions and practical limits of the US empire and is especially prescient in its study of the first Muslim polity that Americans sought to control. In exploring the ragged linkages between American fantasies and projects in the southern Philippines situated alongside the calculated responses of Moros on the one hand and the policies of other European imperial regimes on the other, Charbonneau encourages us to think anew about the history of colonial power relations and its limits. And by unearthing the colonial roots of violence between Moros and Christian Filipinos, the book points to possible ways for conceiving the decolonization of the southern Philippines.
Vicente L. Rafael
University of Washington, Seattle