The work of empire : war, occupation, and the making of American colonialism in Cuba and the Philippines / Justin F. Jackson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jackson, Justin F., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

United States. Army--Management.

United States.

United States. Army--Officials and employees.

Local officials and employees--Political aspects.

Local officials and employees.

Foreign workers, Chinese--Political aspects.

Foreign workers, Chinese.

United States--Insular possessions--Administration--History--19th century.

United States--Insular possessions--Administration--History--20th century.

Cuba--History--1895-.

Cuba.

Cuba--History--1899-1906.

Philippines--History--1898-1946.

Philippines.

Physical Description:

398 pages : illustrations (black & white) ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2025]

Summary:

"In 1898, on the eve of the Spanish-American War, the US Army seemed minuscule and ill-equipped for global conflict, yet its soldiers defeated Spain and pacified nationalist insurgencies in Cuba and the Philippines over the next fifteen years. Despite its lack of experience in colonial administration, the army also ruled and transformed the daily lives of the 8 million people who inhabited these tropical islands. How did the relatively small and inexperienced army succeed in managing the day-to-day operations in its new territories? The US military depended on tens of thousands of Cubans and Filipinos to fight its wars and do the work of civil government. Whether compelled to labor for free or voluntarily working for wages, Cubans and Filipinos, suspended between civilian and soldier status, enabled US foreign rule by interpreting, guiding, building, selling sex to, and performing numerous other labors for American troops. In The Work of Empire, Justin Jackson reveals how their work disrupted the islands' older political, economic, and cultural hierarchies in ways that endured in postwar and post-occupation 'civilian' regimes. Jackson offers new ways to understand not only the rise of US military might but also how this power influenced a globalizing imperial world"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Questions of labor: making war, colonialism, and sovereignty in the US empire of 1898

Occupied constantly and worked to death: military intermediaries and the political economy of counterinsurgency

Bearing the white man's burdens: scientifically managing sovereignty and subaltern labor

An army of workmen: the "polista" politics of military-colonial public works

Always through the datto: building roads and subcontracted sovereignty in Mindanao and Pinar del Río

The Chinese experiment: race, labor, and migration in the army's empire of exclusion

Military necessities: reproducing sovereignty in the colonial sexual economy of war

The days of the empire: forgetting legacies of war's work in the 1898 era.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781469660318

1469660318

9781469660325

1469660326

OCLC:

1456587799