Becoming a problem : imperial fix and Filipinos under United States rule in the early 1900s

Abstract

This article will examine the United States’ first colony in Asia and the historical relationship between empire and education. Using the Philippines in the early 1900s as a case study, it will explore the following questions: How were Filipinos as colonized subjects depicted? And how did their portrayal impact the education provided to them? When the US gained possession of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War in 1898, the newly-acquired colonial subjects posed a significant problem to the rising global power. Debates between pro-annexationists and anti-imperialists, underpinned by concerns regarding protection from other foreign powers, economic self-interest, and sovereign governance, set the stage for the emergence of Filipinos in the US transnational imaginary and control through empire. The article will mobilize the concept of “imperial fix” in the confluence of empire and education in three ways: to formulate the problem, to fortify understanding of the problem; and to reform the colonized population. The Filipino problem – or, the question of what the United States ought to do with its colonized subjects in Asia – became a focal source of discussions in the metropole and the colony. Archival analysis of both conventional (e.g., government speeches and reports) and unconventional (e.g., popular culture artifacts) materials will reveal an intensive and systematic depiction of Filipinos as uncivilized but not altogether incorrigible children. Ultimately, the article will argue that racist and often infantilizing representations served as justifying rationality for US benevolent tutelage of Filipinos for modernity and civilization.