Rethinking the Colonial State (Political Power and Social Theory Book 33)

Studies of colonialism and empire have increasingly drawn attention to the problem of conceptualizing the political logic of colonial projects and the circumstances of state formation in colonial contexts. However, the nature and workings of the colonial state remains under-theorized and under-analysed. This volume addresses the analytical challenges of the colonial state from a variety of theoretical and thematic angles, and across a range of empirical cases that stretch over a vast span historically and geographically, to provide a new approach to analyzing the colonial state and its governmental practices. In 1898 the United States declared sovereignty over the Philippines, an archipelago of seven thousand islands inhabited by seven million people of various ethnicities. While it became a colonial power at the zenith of global imperialism, the United States nevertheless conceived of its rule as exceptional—an exercise in benevolence rather than in tyranny and exploitation. In this volume, Julian Go and Anne L. Foster untangle this peculiar self-fashioning and insist on the importance of studying U.S. colonial rule in the context of other imperialist ventures. A necessary expansion of critical focus, The American Colonial State in the Philippines is the first systematic attempt to examine the creation and administration of the American colonial state from comparative, global perspectives. Written by social scientists and historians, these essays investigate various aspects of American colonial government through comparison with and contextualization within colonial regimes elsewhere in the world—from British Malaysia and Dutch Indonesia to Japanese Taiwan and America's other major overseas colony, Puerto Rico. Contributors explore the program of political education in the Philippines; constructions of nationalism, race, and religion; the regulation of opium; connections to politics on the U.S. mainland; and anticolonial resistance. Tracking the complex connections, circuits, and contests across, within, and between empires that shaped America's colonial regime, The American Colonial State in the Philippines sheds new light on the complexities of American imperialism and turn-of-the-century colonialism. Contributors. Patricio N. Abinales, Donna J. Amoroso, Paul Barclay, Vince Boudreau, Anne L. Foster, Julian Go, Paul A. Kramer Prelims -- Rethinking the colonial state: configurations of power, violence, and agency -- Colonial governmentality in Puerto Rico and the Philippines: Sovereign force, governmental rationality, and disciplinary institutions under US rule -- Comparing the colonial state - governing "the social" and policing the population in late 18th century India and Denmark -- Governing the risks of slavery: state-practice, slave law, and the problem of public order in 18th century Danish West Indies -- Ordering resistance: the late colonial state in the Portuguese Empire (1940 - 1975) -- Violence as usual: everyday police work and the colonial state in German Southwest Africa -- Colonial war and the production of territorialized state space in North Africa -- Resistance and reforms: the role of subaltern agency in colonial state development -- Colonialism by deferral: Samoa under the tridominium, 1889 - 1899 -- About the editors -- Index "Studies of colonialism and empire have increasingly drawn attention to the problem of conceptualizing the political logic of colonial projects and the circumstances of state formation in colonial contexts. However, the nature and workings of the colonial state remain undertheorized and underanalyzed. This volume addresses the analytical challenges of the colonial state from a variety of theoretical and thematic angles, and across a range of empirical cases that stretch over a vast span historically and geographically, to provide a new approach to analyzing the colonial state and its governmental practices."--Page 4 of cover Empires, exceptions, and Anglo-Saxons / Paul A. Kramer -- Models for governing / Anne L. Foster -- Inheriting the "Moro problem" / Donna J. Amoroso -- Progressive machine conflict in early-twentieth-century U.S. politics and colonial state building in the Philippines / Patricio N. Abinales -- The chains of empire / Julian Go -- They have for the coast dwellers a traditional hatred / Paul Barclay -- Methods of domination and modes of resistance / Vince Boudreau. In 1898 the United States declared sovereignty over the Philippines. While it became a colonial power at the zenith of global imperialism, the United States nevertheless conceived of its rule as exceptional - as an exercise in benevolence rather than in tyranny and exploitation. This book aims to untangle this peculiar self-fashioning. Interdisciplinary collection placing the U.S. imperial project in the Philippines within a global, comparative framework.