Colleen Woods
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781501749131
- eISBN:
- 9781501749155
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501749131.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
This book demonstrates how anticommunist political projects were critical to the United States' expanding imperial power in the age of decolonization, and how anticommunism was essential to the ...
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This book demonstrates how anticommunist political projects were critical to the United States' expanding imperial power in the age of decolonization, and how anticommunism was essential to the growing global economy of imperial violence in the Cold War era. The book shows how, in the mid-twentieth-century Philippines, U.S. policymakers and Filipino elites promoted the islands as a model colony. In the wake of World War II, as the decolonization movement strengthened, those same political actors pivoted and, after Philippine independence in 1946, lauded the archipelago as a successful postcolonial democracy. Despite elite propaganda, from the early 1930s to late 1950s, radical movements in the Philippines highlighted U.S. hegemony over the new Republic of the Philippines and, in so doing, threatened American efforts to separate the US from sordid histories of empire, imperialism, and the colonial racial order. The book finds that in order to justify U.S. intervention in an ostensibly independent Philippine nation, anticommunist Filipinos and their American allies transformed local political struggles in the Philippines into sites of resistance against global communist revolution. By linking political struggles over local resources to a war against communism, American and Filipino anticommunists legitimized the use of violence as a means to capture and contain alternative forms of political, economic, and social organization. Placing the post-World War II history of anticommunism in the Philippines within a larger imperial framework, the book illustrates how American and Filipino intelligence agents, military officials, paramilitaries, state bureaucrats, academics, and entrepreneurs mobilized anticommunist politics to contain challenges to elite rule in the Philippines.Less
This book demonstrates how anticommunist political projects were critical to the United States' expanding imperial power in the age of decolonization, and how anticommunism was essential to the growing global economy of imperial violence in the Cold War era. The book shows how, in the mid-twentieth-century Philippines, U.S. policymakers and Filipino elites promoted the islands as a model colony. In the wake of World War II, as the decolonization movement strengthened, those same political actors pivoted and, after Philippine independence in 1946, lauded the archipelago as a successful postcolonial democracy. Despite elite propaganda, from the early 1930s to late 1950s, radical movements in the Philippines highlighted U.S. hegemony over the new Republic of the Philippines and, in so doing, threatened American efforts to separate the US from sordid histories of empire, imperialism, and the colonial racial order. The book finds that in order to justify U.S. intervention in an ostensibly independent Philippine nation, anticommunist Filipinos and their American allies transformed local political struggles in the Philippines into sites of resistance against global communist revolution. By linking political struggles over local resources to a war against communism, American and Filipino anticommunists legitimized the use of violence as a means to capture and contain alternative forms of political, economic, and social organization. Placing the post-World War II history of anticommunism in the Philippines within a larger imperial framework, the book illustrates how American and Filipino intelligence agents, military officials, paramilitaries, state bureaucrats, academics, and entrepreneurs mobilized anticommunist politics to contain challenges to elite rule in the Philippines.
Virginia R. Domínguez and Jane C. Desmond (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040832
- eISBN:
- 9780252099335
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040832.003.0022
- Subject:
- Sociology, Politics, Social Movements and Social Change
This essay is a response to Richard Ellis’ contribution in Global Perspectives on the United States. Ban argues that Ellis is absolutely correct that “a new kind of approach to USAmerican Studies” is ...
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This essay is a response to Richard Ellis’ contribution in Global Perspectives on the United States. Ban argues that Ellis is absolutely correct that “a new kind of approach to USAmerican Studies” is necessary, but she offers a different interpretation of the film Lost in Translation. Hers is anchored in post-imperial and postcolonial exchanges that radically undermine traditional views of the imperial and colonial power of the U.S., its cultural exchanges and knowledge, and any form of cultural translation. Ban argues that the film exemplifies a different and much needed subspecies of “New American Studies.” That the film’s locale is Japan, and not a place along the Atlantic Ocean, Ban argues, is significant and does have much to say about the postmodern contingent global reality that the U.S. and Japanese characters live in. Ban is inclined to see the film as a postmodern discussion of the Jamesian topics of innocence and experience. It undermines Occidentalist (Western) idealist-modernist nostalgia, the expectation of exchange, and knowledge of a foreign land andLess
This essay is a response to Richard Ellis’ contribution in Global Perspectives on the United States. Ban argues that Ellis is absolutely correct that “a new kind of approach to USAmerican Studies” is necessary, but she offers a different interpretation of the film Lost in Translation. Hers is anchored in post-imperial and postcolonial exchanges that radically undermine traditional views of the imperial and colonial power of the U.S., its cultural exchanges and knowledge, and any form of cultural translation. Ban argues that the film exemplifies a different and much needed subspecies of “New American Studies.” That the film’s locale is Japan, and not a place along the Atlantic Ocean, Ban argues, is significant and does have much to say about the postmodern contingent global reality that the U.S. and Japanese characters live in. Ban is inclined to see the film as a postmodern discussion of the Jamesian topics of innocence and experience. It undermines Occidentalist (Western) idealist-modernist nostalgia, the expectation of exchange, and knowledge of a foreign land and
