Capturing Conquest: 20th Century Colonial Photography in the Philippine Islands and its 21st Century Musical Legacy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kalila Dahm
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
21St Century ◽  
English Literature ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Colonial Discourse ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
Musical Representations ◽  
American Society ◽  
Contemporary American Society

It is a common tool of empire to use racial othering to justify conquest of both land and body. Yet in spite of achieving independence twice, once from Spain in 1898 and again in 1946 from the United States, suggesting the end of colonial discourse, the question remains: why do Filipinas remain hyper-sexualized and fetishized today? The purpose of this project is to examine the tools of empire as a means of justifying an American colonial agenda in the Philippine islands. Particular attention is paid to musical representations and colonial photography to situate the hyper-sexualization, and eventual fetishization, of Filipinas in contemporary American society and 20th century American empire. To date, somewhat limited English literature exists on the topic of 20th century American colonial photography. And yet, sexualized representations of Filipinas are not limited to photography, nor did this view of Filipina bodies, and by extension Filipinas, suddenly stop after independence; problematically suggesting that consequences of empire, including race-based and/or sexual hierarchies, no longer exist. This paper hypothesizes why this imagery remains relevant in the 21st century through an examination of contemporary musical lyrics, suggesting that the hyper-sexualization of Filipinas is rampant in contemporary American society as a product of residual colonial discourse. Then, this paper attempts to retrace the start of American presence in the Philippines at the end of the Spanish-American War of 1898 by examining representations of Filipina bodies as a tool of empire, justifying American imperialism until the mid-20th century, marking the beginning of colonial rhetoric.

Messianic Visions of the United States

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paolo Amorosa
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
American People ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Democratic Tradition ◽  
American Society

After winning with unexpected ease the Spanish–American War of 1898, justified at home as a case of humanitarian intervention, the United States started understanding itself as a world power. This led to a renewed attention to international law, in order to reconcile the new leading role of the country with its democratic tradition. Even the formal colonialism in the Philippines and the tutelage of the newly independent Cuba were recast by the founders of the American Society of International Law as an expression of egalitarian values, American and universal at the same time. This ambiguous nationalist/cosmopolitan identity was based on a narrative of progress: the peak of civilization reached by the United States would expand world-wide through example and benevolent assimilation. This chapter argues that it was a narrative of primarily religious origin that justified the war in the eyes of the American people and underpinned future foreign policy.

scholarly journals ’Det er easy at tale engelsk også’. Amerikadansk i 1960’erne og 1970’erne

2015 ◽  
Vol 47 (47) ◽  
pp. 39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karoline Kühl
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War I ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Rapid Decline ◽  
Language Loss ◽  
World War ◽  
Melting Pot ◽  
Post War ◽  
American Society

The conditions for the Danish language among Danish emigrants and their descendants in the United States in the first half of the 20th century were tough: The group of Danish speakers was relatively small, the Danes did not settle together as other immigrant groups did, and demographic circumstances led many young, unmarried Danish men to marry non-Danish speaking partners. These were all factors that prevented the formation of tight-knit Danish-speaking communities. Furthermore, US nationalistic propaganda in the wake of World War I and the melting-pot effect of post-war American society in the 1950s contributed to a rapid decline in the use of Danish among the emigrants. Analyses of recordings of 58 Danish-American speakers from the 1970s show, however, that the language did not decline in an unsystematic process of language loss, only to be replaced quickly and effectively by English. On the contrary, the recordings show contactinduced linguistic innovations in the Danish of the interviewees, which involve the creation of specific lexical and syntactical American Danish features that systematically differ from Continental Danish. The article describes and discusses these features, and gives a thorough account of the socioeconomic and linguistic conditions for this speaker group.

Indian Fighters in the Philippines

2021 ◽  
Vol 90 (4) ◽  
pp. 419-447
Author(s):  
Stefan Aune
Keyword(s):  
Geographic Distance ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Native People ◽  
American Empire ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
Indian Wars ◽  
Imperial Culture ◽  
Military Violence ◽  
Indian War

This article explores the connections between the violence that accompanied U.S. continental expansion in the nineteenth century and the Philippine-American War, which began in 1899 after Spain ceded the Philippines to the United States following the Spanish-American War. Perhaps geographic distance has served to mask the temporal proximity of these linked periods of U.S. expansion, because this is a connection that has remained largely unexplored in the historiography. Rather than viewing 1898 as a caesura marking the separation between the continental and global phases of American empire, this article explores continuities through an examination of the interaction between imperial culture and military violence. Some U.S. soldiers in the Philippines drew directly on their experiences in wars with Native people, while others narrated their time in the Philippines as an “Indian war” and validated their actions by discursively positioning themselves and their troops as “Indian fighters.” The Indian Wars were translated, through the actions, imaginations, and writing of U.S. soldiers, politicians, and journalists, into a flexible discourse able to travel across space and time. These frontier resonances became one of several structuring narratives that sought to racialize Filipinos in order to justify the war and occupation.

U.S. Security Strategy and Southeast Asia

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marvin C. Ott
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Security Strategy ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
Spanish Colonial ◽  
Manila Bay ◽  
The U.S

With the exception of the Philippines, America’s strategic interest in and engagement with Southeast Asia begins with World War II. Prior to that “Monsoon Asia” was remote and exotic—a place of fabled kingdoms, jungle headhunters, and tropical seas. By the end of the nineteenth century European powers had established colonial rule over the entire region except Thailand. Then, as the twentieth century dawned, the Spanish colonial holdings in the Philippines suddenly and unexpectedly became available to the United States as an outcome of the Spanish-American War and Admiral Dewey’s destruction of the decrepit Spanish fleet in Manila Bay. This chapter examines the strategic pivot in Southeast Asia and the role China plays in affecting the U.S. position in this region.

American Naval Preparations for War with Spain, 1896–1898

1968 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
John A. S. Grenville
Keyword(s):  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
National Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
American People ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
Pressure Groups ◽  
General Acceptance ◽  
Rigorous Research ◽  
Mass Hysteria

The historical debate over the Spanish-American War of 1898 is being reopened on both sides of the Atlantic. Until comparatively recently historians gave confident answers to the questions of the causes and consequences of the war. Moral assumptions about America's true mission were never very far from the surface of the interpretations which had won general acceptance in the United States. America's involvement in world affairs and more especially the acquisition of an empire was viewed as a perversion of her mission. There existed a consensus of opinion among historians that President McKinley and his administration were not in control of policy; that they were swept forward by a tide of public feeling, by political considerations, and by Congressional pressures they found impossible to resist. It was believed that war had been foisted on the American people by those who manipulated public opinion, by mass hysteria cleverly fomented by sectional interests, by the newspapers, by business pressure groups, and by jingo senators. Responsibility for the acquisition of the Philippines was uncritically ascribed to a junior member of the administration, Theodore Roosevelt, who when Assistant Secretary of the Navy, it was alleged, had plotted the whole thing with his friend, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. Rigorous research is challenging every one of these assumptions. The strategic aspects of American foreign policy, and more particularly the influence of naval officers on national policy, have been seriously studied by only a few historians, whose work has as yet little affected the ‘classical’ textbook versions of American policy before the war with Spain.

Race and Religion in the United States

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan P. Jordan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
American History ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Racial Prejudice ◽  
Western History

For centuries before the European colonization of North America, sectarian, ethnic, and racial discrimination were interrelated. The proscription of certain groups based on their biological or other apparently ingrained characteristics, which is one definition of racism, in fact describes much religious prejudice in Western history—even as the modern term “racism” was not used until the 20th century. An early example of the similarities between religious and racial prejudice can be seen in the case of anti-Semitism, where merely possessing “Jewish blood” made one inherently unassimilable in many parts of Europe for nearly a thousand years before the initial European conquest of the New World. Throughout Western history, religious values have been mobilized to dehumanize other non-Christian groups such as Muslims, and starting in the 16th century, religious justifications of conquest played an indispensable role in the European takeover of the Americas. In the culture of the 17th- and 18th-century British colonies, still another example of religious and racial hatred existed in the anti-Catholicism of the original Protestant settlers, and this prejudice was particularly evident with the arrival of Irish immigrants in the 19th century. In contemporary language, the Irish belonged to the Celtic “race” and one of the many markers of this race’s inherent inferiority was Catholicism—a religious system that was alternatively defined as non-Western, pagan, or irrational by many Anglo-Saxon Protestants, who similarly saw themselves as a different, superior race. In addition to the Irish, many other racial groups—most notably Native Americans—were defined as inferior based on their religious beliefs. Throughout much of early American history, the normative religious culture of Anglo-Protestantism treated groups ranging from African slaves to Asian or Middle Eastern immigrants as alternatively unequal, corrupt, subversive, or civically immature by virtue of their religious identity. Historians can see many examples of the supposedly dangerous religious attributes of foreigners—such as those of the Chinese in the late 19th century—as a basis for restricting immigration. Evangelical Protestant ideas of divine chosen-ness also influenced imperial projects launched on behalf of the United States. The ideology of Manifest Destiny demonstrates how religious differences could be mobilized to excuse the conquest and monitoring of foreign subjects in places such as Mexico or the Philippines. Anglo-Protestant cultural chauvinism held sway for much of American history, though since the mid-1900s, it can be said to have lost some of its power. Throughout its history, many racial or ethnic groups—such as Hispanic Americans, African-Americans, or Asian Americans in the United States have struggled to counter the dominant ethnic or racial prejudice of the Anglo-Protestant majority by recovering alternative religious visions of nationhood or cultural solidarity. For groups such as the 20th-century Native American Church, or the African American Nation of Islam, religious expression formed an important vehicle to contest white supremacy.

Progressivism and US Power

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
John A. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Theodore Roosevelt ◽  
Policy Objective ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
Progressive Movement

Between the Spanish-American war of 1898 and World War I, a progressive movement, in which Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were rival leaders, greatly extended the authority of the federal government in the nation’s domestic life, and also to some extent equipped it better to conduct foreign relations. Conscious that its economic growth had made the United States a great power, policymakers sought to expand the scope of its influence, but their ability to do so was limited by the difficulty of obtaining domestic support for actions involving significant costs. In practice, the extent to which the United States was able to affect the course of events beyond its borders varied in different regions. It established its hegemony over the Caribbean and Central America, and strengthened its political as well as economic links with the other countries in the western hemisphere. In East Asia, where it fought a brutal three-year war in the Philippines to suppress native resistance to its rule, the principal policy objective was to establish equal access for all foreign interests in China. But Washington found it difficult to uphold this Open Door principle in the face of challenges from Russia and Japan. With regard to Europe, the traditional posture of non-involvement in its great power politics was maintained, although Theodore Roosevelt and other leaders did come to see the relations of the European powers as affecting US interests, which they defined in a way that brought their perspective close to Britain’s. The establishment of peaceful methods of resolving international disputes was a goal of successive administrations, but the arbitration treaties that were negotiated won Senate approval only with reservations that severely limited their scope and authority.

Preservation and public housing in the United States

2021 ◽  
pp. 84-91
Author(s):  
Theodore Prudon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Housing ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Affordable Housing ◽  
Financial Incentives ◽  
The United States ◽  
Property Management ◽  
Design Construction

Public housing is an important part of the heritage of the 20th century that deserves preservation, but is in danger of being demolished or unrecognizably altered. The United States, which saw the construction of such government sponsored projects, largely between 1930 and 1975, is no exception. In the last four decades government efforts have continued to shift towards financial incentives for private initiatives for design, construction and property management. This housing legacy, if being preserved, still needs to be improved so it can continue to serve as affordable housing in the 21st century.

Hebrew learning ideologies and the reconceptualization of American Judaism: Language debates in American Jewish schooling in the early 20th century

2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 (237) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon Avni
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
American Judaism ◽  
Educational Philosophies ◽  
American Jewish ◽  
American Society

AbstractThis article examines the ways in which Hebrew education was construed in the United States by tracing the Hebrew ideology debate of the early and mid-1900s, when dramatic changes were made to modernize Jewish schooling and its place within American society. Focusing on the Hebrew learning ideologies and educational philosophies of Samson Benderly and his followers, it examines how the

scholarly journals Factors Influencing Training and Development in the Auto-Ancillary Industries

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2S4) ◽  
pp. 621-624
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Resources ◽  
21St Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Training And Development ◽  
Competitive Market ◽  
Ample Evidence ◽  
Factors Influencing ◽  
American Society ◽  
Made In

The 21st century presents ample evidence that hint towards extraordinary changes that have occurred in the environment which has added a novel impetus to businesses and warrants the need to integrate training and development within the overall strategy of the organization with a view to make sure that the business thrives in the competitive market and at the same time facilitates growth. This facet implies that there is a need for employees to be regularly trained with a view to enhance their skills considering the fact that changes are occurring throughout the workforce each and every day (Pearce, 2000). Akin to any other organization, organizations from the auto-ancillary sector too has a vision and a decree of where they ultimately intend to be. Simply said, auto-ancillary industries need to continuously evaluated their existing position and understand the kind of changes that are required to help them reach where they expect to eventually reach. The American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) indicated that organizations within the United States have been known to spend around $156 billion per year on an average to facilitate the training and development of their employees (Miller, 2017). While the significance of training and development is well known, there are certain factors that influence training and development within an organization. Thus, factors that influence training and development within the auto-ancillary industries would be the focus of this paper. An attempt is made in this paper to discuss about the factors influencing the training and development especially related with Human Resources.

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