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:

1 online resource

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 over the next fifteen years, its soldiers defeated Spain and pacified nationalist insurgencies in both Cuba and the Philippines. Despite their lack of experience in colonial administration, American troops also ruled and transformed the daily lives of the 8 million people who inhabited these tropical islands. How was this relatively small and inexperienced army able to wage wars in Cuba and the Philippines and occupy them? American soldiers depended on tens of thousands of Cubans and Filipinos, both for military operations and civil government. Whether compelled to labor for free or voluntarily working for wages, Cubans and Filipinos, suspended between civilian and soldier status, enabled the making of a new US overseas empire by interpreting, guiding, building, selling sex, and many other kinds of work for American troops. In The Work of Empire, Justin Jackson reveals how their labor forged the politics, economics, and culture of American colonialism in Cuba and the Philippines and left an enduring imprint on these islands and the US Army itself. Jackson offers new ways to understand the rise of American military might and how it influenced a globalizing imperial world.

Contents:

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

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

Bearing soldiers’ burdens : the scientific management of 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

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

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Online resource; title from PDF title page (JSTOR, viewed February 27, 2026).

Other Format:

Print version: Jackson, Justin F. Work of empire

ISBN:

9781469660332

1469660334

9781469680279

1469680270

9781469680286

1469680289

OCLC:

1523540354

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license