American imperial pastoral : the architecture of US colonialism in the Philippines

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-41776-9 (cloth)ISBN-13: 978-0-226-41793-6 (e-book)The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637This is a story about the making of this American retreat, the transformation of Philippine pasture into American pastoral, and what its design, construction, and use can tell us about the literal and figurative architecture of US imperialism, its soaring ambitions, the colonial practices that buttressed them, and the challenges these met on the ground.Some like Theodore Roosevelt envisioned colonialism in the Philippines as an opportunity to pursue the “strenuous life,” a tonic to that peril of modern, bourgeois life, overcivilization.10 He also justified the occupation of the Philippines by referring to the history of the US West: if Americans were “morally bound to abandon the Philippines,” Roosevelt challenged his weak-kneed, anti-imperialist opponents, “we were also morally bound to abandon Arizona to the Apaches.”For those rattled by the effects of the 1893 economic depression and seeking an outlet for the supposed overproduction of American goods, the Philippines held out the hope of better economic futures. It seemed to bring the coveted markets of China within reach of a greater United States....to solve the crisis of overproduction, the problem that many had cited as cause of the 1893 depression, and retention of the Philippines could thus help to diffuse labor radicalism at home.This American-styled “globalism represents a long-term strategic rebuttal... In 1904, renowned architect Daniel Burnham, the Progressive Era urban planner who famously “Made No Little Plans,” set off for the Philippines, the new US colonial acquisition. Charged with designing environments for the occupation government, Burnham set out to convey the ambitions and the dominance of the regime, drawing on neo-classical formalism for the Pacific colony. The spaces he created, most notably in the summer capital of Baguio, gave physical form to American rule and its contradictions. In American Imperial Pastoral , Rebecca Tinio McKenna examines the design, construction, and use of Baguio, making visible the physical shape, labor, and sustaining practices of the US’s new empire—especially the dispossessions that underwrote market expansion. In the process, she demonstrates how colonialists conducted market-making through state-building and vice-versa. Where much has been made of the racial dynamics of US colonialism in the region, McKenna emphasizes capitalist practices and design ideals—giving us a fresh and nuanced understanding of the American occupation of the Philippines. Through an exploration of a Daniel Burnham-designed colonial hill station in the mountains of northern Luzon called Baguio, this book examines the literal and figurative architecture of U.S. imperialism in the Philippines. Tracking the Pacific crossings of famed Progressives like Burnham and tracing the transformation of Philippine pastureland into American pastoral retreat, the book shows how colonial rule and subjects of rule were generated in the face of Philippine resistance, the contradictions of imperial ideology, and in place. Chapters examine subject and capital formation through acts of dispossession that underwrote the making of the colonial retreat in the first decades of the twentieth century. Collectively, they challenge the abstraction and seeming invisibility of the United States’ emergent market empire by excavating the formal aspects of American power and the labor of building it In 1904, renowned architect Daniel Burnham, the Progressive Era urban planner who famously 'Made No Little Plans, ' set off for the Philippines, a new US colonial acquisition. Charged with designing environments for the occupation government, Burnham set out to convey the ambitions and the dominance of the regime, drawing on neo-classical formalism for the Pacific colony. The spaces he created, most notably in the summer capital of Baguio, gave physical form to American rule and its contradictions. In this work, Rebecca Tinio McKenna examines the design, construction, and use of Baguio, making visible the physical shape, labor, and sustaining practices of the US's new empire - especially the dispossessions that underwrote market expansion. In the process, she demonstrates how colonialists conducted market-making through state building and vice-versa