American Colonial Period Research Articles

The Separation of Church and State as an Imperial Project in the Philippines during the Early American Colonial Period

This paper examines the separation of church and state in the Philippines during the early American colonial period, contextualizing it within the process of American overseas expansion and considering it as one of the projects of imperial hegemony construction. After the Spanish–American War, the United States substituted Spain as the new colonial ruler of the Philippines, legitimizing its regime as the spread of ‘civilization’ to the Filipinos. On this basis, the Americans enacted laws guaranteeing religious freedom and introduced an American-style institution dealing with church–state relations. Beyond the legal and administrative initiatives, the new regime also constructed an official narrative of the transformation of political–religious relations in the Philippine that emphasized the absolute ‘difference’ between the American human rights principle, which guaranteed freedom of worship, and the Spanish theocracy, which was dedicated to the consolidation of privileges. By legislating the separation of church and state, buying up church properties, recognizing the equality of denominations, and constructing the official imperial narrative of church–state relations, the Americans hoped to ‘teach’ Filipinos that the ‘true’ belief was rooted in the inner convictions of individual Christians, not in the authority and coercion of the hierarchical church. By disciplining the construction of ‘difference’ under tutelary colonialism, the separation of church and state movement initiated by the American colonial government in the Philippines became an important source of imperial self-endowed legitimacy.

Appeal for a Harmonious Relationship between Man and Nature

Nathaniel Hawthorne is an influential novelist in American literature in 19th century. Most of his works are set in New England during the American colonial period, reflecting the social reality at that time. His masterpiece The Scarlet Letter ensures Hawthorne as the leading American native novelist in literature. Hawthorne exposes in his novels the immense destruction and ecological crisis caused by human civilization. Based on a close reading of his works, this thesis aims to study Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novels from the perspective of ecocriticism. In the thesis, the crisis of natural ecology is analyzed. At the same time, the thesis explores the relationship between human beings and nature. Hawthorne suggests that human beings should integrate into nature and maintain a harmonious relationship with nature, which is the primary concern of ecocriticism.

Grave Reverberations: Inherited Colonial Logics during the COVID-19 Pandemic in the Philippines

Using the theory of reverberations, we track the dissonant transformation of sanitation regimes during the American colonial period in the Philippines, particularly during the cholera epidemic of 1902, to the mis/management of the COVID-19 pandemic in the present day. We argue that the formation, interpretation, and implementation of public health policies, especially with regards to the treatment of the dead, echo inherited colonial logics designed to exacerbate stigmas of virality and unruliness. In addition to past epidemics, responses to COVID-19 resonate with recurring episodes of terror formation, militarisation, and misinformation in the country. The enduring legacies of colonialism—rooted in themes of extraction, individualism, and hegemony, and masked under the guise of benevolence—live on in modern policies in ways that are not always readily apparent. Lastly, we see the notion of reverberations as one that allows analytical generosity in understanding the messiness of the postcolonial experience.

Whiteness Catalyzes Character Disorder and Mass Violence

ABSTRACT Whiteness, understood in psychoanalytic terms as a complex emerging in relation to an invidious object, catalyzes character disorder and mass violence. Drawing on historical analyses of the early American colonial period and a 2014 mass shooting in Isla Vista, California, I articulate a theory of the workings of Whiteness, with an eye toward the interrelationship of psychodynamics and sociocultural, structural, and ideological forces. I conclude with a consideration of how and why psychoanalysis has failed to fully contend with Whiteness because of the discipline’s own investment in Whiteness and White aggression.

When the Shoe Doesn't Fit: Reading Cinderella as Colonial Children's Literature in the Philippines

Abstract: This essay explores how non-Anglophone versions of the Cinderella story are used to affirm or challenge certain colonial or imperial ideals that were carried by canonical Eurocentric children's texts circulated during the Golden Age of children's literature. Examining two specific Philippine versions of Cinderella that were initially produced during the American colonial period (1898-1946) in the Philippines demonstrates that children's literature—particularly texts imported by colonial educators as well as texts produced by local writers—was a site of contestation and creation. This analysis focuses on how these adaptations were used as a tool for colonial expansion and education, but at the same time, were adapted to suit the search for a Philippine national identity.

Filipinising colonial gender values: A history of gender formation in Philippine higher education

The complicated colonial history of the Philippines impacts notions of gender in the Islands. Specifically, institutions with strong foreign roots, such as universities, maintain and challenge gender relations. The Philippines sees multiple gender issues in universities despite government-mandated gender mainstreaming policies for education (CMO-1), yet the influence of colonial values remains overlooked. This article contributes to philosophising Philippine education by providing the history of the country’s universities and their role in shaping gender relations. A threefold model of gender structures, relations of power, production and cathexis (emotional attachment), frames historical literature during the Philippines’ Spanish and American colonial periods and contextualises the country’s gender order. The interplay of religion and higher education during the Philippines’ Spanish colonial period reveals why sexuality remains policed by education institutions. The gendering of courses during the American Colonial period details the feminisation of certain disciplines and occupations. Harmful manhood practices adopted during this period continue to affect men in university systems through Philippine fraternities. Lastly, private education perpetuates and maintains power among the elite. The evolution of the Philippine university provides points for analysis for gender issues. These become building blocks to the discourse surrounding the Filipino philosophy of education, by understanding facets of Filipino identity construction, and proposing avenues to explore when decolonising the university.

The road chronotope in rural colonial Philippines

Abstract Through a chronotopic reading of “How My Brother Leon Brought home a Wife” by Manuel E Arguilla, a famous short story in English included in textbooks and anthologies of Philippine literature published during the American colonial era, the role of the contextual “background” features of fiction are brought into the textual foreground in order to focus on their dynamic relations. This attention to the mutual constitution of the text and context which are conventionally understood to be exclusive if not exclusionary of each other is meant to show how, in fact, the spatio-temporal structuring and generic framing of the text highlight the role of the “aesthetic” (the “intrinsic” textual elements of artistic form) while also foregrounding the very “politics” of the story’s context (the “extrinsic” contextual reality of society out there). Indeed, as the paper argues through a broadly narratological close reading of “How My Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife,” the story’s chronotope shows how text and context are mutually constitutive and inextricable spatio-temporal dimensions of the story embodying the story’s textual framing and structuring, marking its narratological significance, both aesthetically and politically against the larger backdrop of resistance movements during the American colonial period.

‘An Extremely Mild Form of Slavery … of the Worst Sort’: American Perceptions of Slavery in the Sulu Sultanate, 1899–1904

ABSTRACT This chapter discusses the so-called Good Treatment Thesis in relation to slavery in the Sulu Sultanate, southern Philippines, during the first years of the American colonial period from 1899. Up until 1902, virtually all official assessments of Sulu slavery emphasized its mild and benign character, but the perception changed abruptly in the middle of 1902. This was because of greater American understanding of Sulu society, including non-elite perspectives; the increased push for economic and social reform in the southern Philippines after the end of the Philippine–American War; and the formal abolition of slavery in the Philippines by the United States Congress in July 1902.

The Land Law Reform in the Philippines State

This research aim to know the land reform in the Philippines has long been a contentious issue rooted in the Philippines's Spanish Colonial Period. Some efforts began during the American Colonial Period with renewed efforts during the Commonwealth, following independence, during Martial Law and especially following the People Power Revolution in 1986. This research used the qualitative with normative approach especially the regulation of Land in Philippines. The current law, the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program, was passed following the revolution and recently extended until 2014. Much like Mexico and other Spanish colonies in the Americas, the Spanish settlement in the Philippines revolved around the encomienda system of plantations, known as haciendas. As the conclusion explained that in the 19th Century progressed, industrialization and liberalization of trade allowed these encomiendas to expand their cash crops, establishing a strong sugar industry in the Philippines, especially in the Visayan island of Negros.

Tourism mobilities in the Philippines: a historiographical analysis of travel and tourism activities from pre-1950s

ABSTRACT Tourism played a significant role in Philippine socio-economic development. However, scholarly interest on the history of tourism in the country is not pervasive, considering the scant literature focusing only on the evolution and development of Philippine tourism in the 1950s. The limited knowledge on tourism history in the country failed to recognise the existence of travel and tourism activities through prevalent movements during precolonial and colonial Philippines as documented by historiographic literature. Given this academic gap, this paper explores and discusses the history of Philippine tourism using historiographical analysis under the theoretical guidance of tourism mobilities. Findings reveal compelling evidence on the earliest forms of travel and tourism activities through movements related to trade and business during the precolonial period (800–1565); migration, leisure, recreation, and education during the Spanish colonial period (1565–1898); and tourism-oriented infrastructures during the American colonial period (1898–1946). Significantly, this study provides novelty by pioneering the discussion on Philippine tourism history pre-1950s and thus arguing that even though no tourism organisation existed during the precolonial and colonial eras, the movement of individuals along with tangible and intangible materials around them enabled travel and tourism to exist through the concept of mobility.

Iginiit na Himig sa Himpapawid: Musikang Filipino sa Radyo sa Panahon ng Kolonyalismong Amerikano

Radio broadcasting, which the Americans introduced to the Philippines in 1922, was quite successful in its project of promoting the English language and western music during the American colonial period. Apart from playing imported music on the air, radio featured Filipino musical artists deftly performing western pieces. However, the new medium also became an opportunity to re-express Filipino music and Philippine languages, especially Tagalog, to a nationwide audience. A flowering of the kundiman and Philippine folk songs was attributed to radio, while local composers who scored movies created new kundiman pieces, even if some adopted the American idiom of jazz. In notable cases, songs that posed a radical resistance to the colonial condition were heard on the air.

Patriarchy and Gender Law in Ancient Rome and Colonial America

Roman Antiquity and Colonial America shared much in common regarding limits on women’s legal rights and the role of gender in law. Gendered stereotypes regarding women’s ability and place in society are reflected in the patria potestas and manus of Ancient Roman law, as well as through the patriarchal and pious Puritan laws of New England society during the American Colonial period. Both male-dominated social and legal systems were based on the notion of women’s innate inferiority and female submission to male authority. Gender expectations and biases are also present, not only in family law, but also in law governing sexual behavior and partnerships. While Roman law punishes sodomy and male same-sex relationships on the grounds of contradicting the concept of the pater familias, Puritan New England relied on Christian morals and religious teachings to govern their sodomy laws. However, such gender disparities in the law are also subject to social status and race, leading men who did not reflect the respective society’s preferable identity to face harsher punishments as a result. Regarding the concept of gender and male superiority, family law and the societal expectations that both shaped and were shaped by such laws reflect an ever-present patriarchal structure throughout the Early American and Ancient Roman legal systems. The gendered attitudes toward marriage, rape, sex, and consent in both Roman and Early American society are reflected in the laws that governed the lives of women and gender non-conforming minorities in both societies.

The Dichotomous Legacy of the Catholic Church’s Opposition to the Philippine Revolution of 1896

ABSTRACT This article examines the repositioning of the Catholic Church in the aftermath of the Philippine Revolution of 1896–98, during the transfer of Spanish to American colonial rule. It reviews the consultations between the outgoing Spanish bishops and the Vatican’s Apostolic Delegate, Placido Chapelle, in January 1900, and the subsequent religious settlement promulgated in the Vatican’s Apostolic Constitution for the Philippine Church, Quae mari Sinico, in 1902. The Delegate’s identification with the Spanish bishops and their opposition to Filipino nationalist aspirations and the Filipino secular clergy confirmed the anti-Filipino position of the Church in the American colonial period. Both the Filipino bishops and the American bishops opposed independence and distrusted the nationalist leaders as anti-clerical Masons. This is followed by a discussion of the claimed reconciliation of Church and Filipino political aspirations in the post-Vatican II period in the 1960s, which culminated in the Church’s role in bringing down President Ferdinand Marcos in 1986. Committed to a theology of social justice, the bishops now aligned the Church with progressive democratic nationalists. In its successful opposition to the Marcos dictatorship in the name of “People’s Power,” the hierarchy claimed that through the “Miracle of EDSA” the Church had identified with and indeed represented the political will of the Filipino people.

On the Racist Nature of the Psyche

The title of this article, “On the Racist Nature of the Psyche,” is a play on the title of Jung’s seminal paper, “On the Nature of the Psyche,” in which he sets out his most complete theoretical description of how he viewed the workings of the psyche. The author describes Jung’s view of the psyche and discusses some astrological imagery related to the psychology of the Age of Pisces, which Jung addressed extensively in Aion. The lenses provided by both of those perspectives are then used to examine some history related to England and the very early American colonial period. This is the time when the institution of slavery began to take hold on the North American mainland; exploring that is useful relative to looking at our racial complex. Finally, the author comments on the imagery and psychology of the current, or sometime soon coming, Age of Aquarius.

Only in the Philippines? Postcolonial exceptionalisms and Filipina feminisms

ABSTRACTExceptionalism as a framing discourse reveals socio-historical insights on postcolonialism and postnationalism, providing fertile ground for articulating and investigating the multiplicities and historical vicissitudes constituting Filipina feminist articulations of social identities and engagements with multi-scalar politics. Historical and contemporary Philippine/Filipino exceptionalism claims have inspired and galvanized transnational feminist spaces, processes, and practices, creating ideoloscapes (ideologies and discourses) and practiscapes (actions). Using framing theory to compare exceptionalisms’ discursive practices and their entanglements with feminisms, this paper analyzes episodic historical accounts, documents, and interviews with feminist leaders to demonstrate how Filipina feminists mobilize exceptionalisms as reference frames in different logics, spaces, and political opportunities. It examines three framing episodes of Filipina feminist politics – suffragist frames during the American colonial period, nationalist feminists’ frames from the Marcos to the Duterte presidencies, and transnationalist (state) feminists’ frames within multi-scalar spaces and the context of imperial and other exceptionalism variants. These episodic framing practices demonstrate the formation and reproduction of dominant feminist politics and publics that have yet to acknowledge their shared traumatic histories and fully decolonize their narratives and engagements.

The Penalty of Mobility in Manila during Periods of Public Health Crises

Mobility seems to impose a paradoxical penalty on individuals based in Metro Manila. Looking at the experiences of public health crises during the American colonial period and the present-day Covid-19 pandemic, this essay focuses on the inordinate restrictions on and blame assigned to the least mobile segments of the population despite the fact that such crises are aided by heightened mobility. Past and present disease outbreaks force us to acknowledge that our cities contain groups of people with varying levels of mobility, another form of social inequality that badly needs to be addressed. KEYWORDS: TRANSPORTATION • URBANIZATION • CITIES • PANDEMIC •INFORMAL SETTLERS

Trends in health research ethics in the Philippines during the American Colonial Period (1898-1946).

Research involving human participants has been conducted in the Philippines since the beginning of the Spanish colonial period. Such studies are expected to adhere to internationally accepted ethical guidelines. This paper discusses trends in clinical research ethics in the Philippines during the American colonial period (1898-1946). Specifically, studies were assessed on: 1) their observance of ethical protocols, including review; 2) identification of inclusion and exclusion criteria in the selection of participants; 3) use of vulnerable subjects; and 4) practice of the informed consent process. Only the informed consent process had a significant logistic correlation with progression of years. Recruitment of vulnerable groups was common during this period; children and prisoners were the most common participants. Trends in medical ethics in the Philippines reflected those in the United States prior to the publication of the Nuremberg Code, which served as a milestone in the protection of human welfare in clinical research.

Book Review: American Colonial Women and Their Art: An Encyclopedia

American Colonial Women and their Art: An Encyclopedia has a unique focus, which makes it an interesting addition for most libraries. Though there are reference works that explore women and art and reference works that cover the American colonial period, there is not a work that focuses specifically on the art of colonial women. In addition to the distinctive topic, this one volume edition not only includes recognizable names such as Abigail Adams and Phillis Wheatley, but also less well-known women, such as Mary Roberts (miniaturist), Sarah Bushnell Perkins Grosvenor (painter), and Elizabeth Foote Huntington (needle worker). This reference work should make for a great tool for any researcher wanting to discover the artistic contributions of specific women.

The Amerindians and International Law:

The paper strives to bring a historic perspective about the International Law treatment on Amerindians, from the «discovery», going through the renowned authors of the American colonial period, such as Francisco de Vitoria and Bartolomé de las Casas, to the present condition of the Amerindians in Brazil, within the Constitution (1988) and with the multilateral international efforts to regulate the subject, via the UN´s General Assembly or via the European Parliament.

De niño expósito a pintor de Quito y Popayán

Los testamentos y codicilo transcritos y analizados en esta sección pertenecen al pintor Pedro Tello, natural de Quito y vecino de Popayán. Estos documentos fueron escritos a mediados del siglo XVIII y principios del siglo XIX. La particular vida de Pedro Tello permitió rastrearlo entre estas dos ciudades y confirmar que ha sido uno de los tantos artistas de la época colonial que han permanecido en el olvido, tanto de la historiografía ecuatoriana como de la colombiana. A pesar de haber sido “expuesto [abandonado] a las puertas” de Juan Antonio Tello, Pedro tuvo una buena vida gracias a su oficio como pintor, contando con talleres y aprendices en ambas localidades. De esta forma, el artífice adquirió bienes para mantenerse con su esposa María Ventura de los Cobos, comprar una casa en Popayán y dejar legado a su madre Tomasa Rosales. Así, nuestro interés es mostrar la variedad de datos que se consigue al cruzar la información de estos testamentos payaneses con los expediente quiteños. La vida del artista ya no está dividida por los límites nacionales actuales; su trayectoria se va completando a medida que encontramos más documentos que afianzan nuestro conocimiento sobre su itinerario, sus negocios, su caridad y sus conocimientos. Esta información hace parte del rastreo documental realizado por nosotros sobre artistas y artesanos durante los siglos XVII y XVIII en el suroccidente del Nuevo Reino de Granada y la Real Audiencia de Quito.