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Empire’s Proxy: American Literature and U.S. Imperialism in the Philippines
Part of the American Literatures Initiative Series
In the late nineteenth century, American teachers descended on the Philippines, which had been newly purchased by the U.S. at the end of the Spanish-American War. Motivated by President McKinley’s project of “benevolent assimilation,” they established a school system that centered on English language and American literature to advance the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon tradition, which was held up as justification for the U.S.’s civilizing mission and offered as a promise of moral uplift and political advancement. Meanwhile, on American soil, the field of American literature was just being developed and fundamentally, though invisibly, defined by this new, extraterritorial expansion.
Drawing on a wealth of material, including historical records, governmental documents from the War Department and the Bureau of Insular Affairs, curriculum guides, memoirs of American teachers in the Philippines, and 19th century literature, Meg Wesling not only links empire with education, but also demonstrates that the rearticulation of American literary studies through the imperial occupation in the Philippines served to actually define and strengthen the field. Empire’s Proxy boldly argues that the practical and ideological work of colonial dominance figured into the emergence of the field of American literature, and that the consolidation of a canon of American literature was intertwined with the administrative and intellectual tasks of colonial management.
In the late nineteenth century, American teachers descended on the Philippines, which had been newly purchased by the U.S. at the end of the Spanish-American War. Motivated by President McKinley’s project of “benevolent assimilation,” they established a school system that centered on English language and American literature to advance the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon tradition, which was held up as justification for the U.S.’s civilizing mission and offered as a promise of moral uplift and political advancement. Meanwhile, on American soil, the field of American literature was just being developed and fundamentally, though invisibly, defined by this new, extraterritorial expansion.
Drawing on a wealth of material, including historical records, governmental documents from the War Department and the Bureau of Insular Affairs, curriculum guides, memoirs of American teachers in the Philippines, and 19th century literature, Meg Wesling not only links empire with education, but also demonstrates that the rearticulation of American literary studies through the imperial occupation in the Philippines served to actually define and strengthen the field. Empire’s Proxy boldly argues that the practical and ideological work of colonial dominance figured into the emergence of the field of American literature, and that the consolidation of a canon of American literature was intertwined with the administrative and intellectual tasks of colonial management.
248 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 4, 2024
Read this as part of my comps list for my PhD. The book illuminated the complexities of studying English as a person of Filipina descent, the project of "benevolent assimilation" and Americanization that have shaped my experiences in the U.S. and (the few times I've been in) the Philippines, and have given me more ideas to think about with regards to literary study and what it can/can't do.
Of note, the idea of the "literary imperative" or the "complex of values and assumptions about literature, and its role in more general understanding of national culture, that factor into decisions about when and how the literary isintroduced and what kinds of political work it is expected to do" (pp. 59-60) is going to be central to my exams. In a way, the book feels like it's helping me understand a lot of literary imperatives I take as given: that literature has transformative power, that its capacity for multiplicity can bend collective consciousness, and so on.
On another note, I really want to assign portions of this to my students in composition, since my classes are often centered on critically examining education and the university, and the assumptions made about learning. I'm still thinking through how it could work into my first-year comp syllabus.
Of note, the idea of the "literary imperative" or the "complex of values and assumptions about literature, and its role in more general understanding of national culture, that factor into decisions about when and how the literary isintroduced and what kinds of political work it is expected to do" (pp. 59-60) is going to be central to my exams. In a way, the book feels like it's helping me understand a lot of literary imperatives I take as given: that literature has transformative power, that its capacity for multiplicity can bend collective consciousness, and so on.
On another note, I really want to assign portions of this to my students in composition, since my classes are often centered on critically examining education and the university, and the assumptions made about learning. I'm still thinking through how it could work into my first-year comp syllabus.
August 3, 2011
This book makes a significant intervention as to how we understand U.S. educational systems and the institutionalization of the study of U.S. literature.
The focus of this book is the relationship between American literature and U.S. imperialism in the Philippines. According to Meg Wesling, U.S. Literature is empire’s proxy. Wesling discusses the focus on “benevolent assimilation” (teachers and schools) in the Philippines in the context of the rising 19th C sense of U.S. literature as moral uplift. As she explains in the introduction, “Almost immediately, American teachers were thrust into the foreground as agents of the project , mobilizing a discourse of education for self government meant to justify a prolonged colonial occupation and to mask the violent resistance to U.S. intervention” (4). She further explains, “the architects of the U.S. occupation envisioned the colonial project as a pedagogical mission, in which Filipinos were not a subject population but pupils who would benefit from the care of American teachers as representative of the moral, cultural, and political superiority of the United States.” (5). The use of literature in the occupation promoted a sense that American literature was sufficiently sophisticated, it was offered as evidence of Anglo-Saxon superiority justifying colonizalizism, it operated pedagogically as a form of moral uplift to colonized subjects, and of course it furthered a narrative of American exceptionalism whereby Spanish and British colonialism was contrasted to the “benevolence” of American school teachers (ignoring the violent repression of civilians and guerilla fighters alike).
Wesling argues than that “the initial formations of the field of American literature as it became institutionalized in schools across the United States in the last years of the nineteenth century were shaped in part in response to the ideological, political, and material practices of the United States’ extraterritorial expansion after the Spanish-American War” (6). The literary education offered in the Philippines was supposed to assimilate colonized subjects to the values of an emergent-middle class America. This lead the way to what Wesling calls the “pedagogical public sphere” in which the literary was envisioned across the U.S. as “working to extend the values of the white middle class as it differentiated those values from the cultural traditions of other populations that were selectively included or excluded from recognition within the national body” (25). Thus literature is an important part of the story of U.S. education as social containment. Her book contains a fascinating comparison of the operations and pedagogical aims of schools opened for freedmen in the South, schools opened for Native American children, and the schools the U.S. opened in Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and the Philippines.
Her first chapter follows arguments about “linguistic chaos” -- the lack of a single unifying language -- that was used as an argument against Philippine sovereignty and to promote English as a language that would “civilize” the colonial subjects (envisioned as child/pupils). She points out the contradiction that “the United States, at its origin, was a polyglot nation, and that this quality in no way preempted its capacity to declare independence from Britain” (53).
Chapter Two looks at an image published at the start of U.S. occupation that drew on its readers’ familiarity with Uncle Tom’s Cabin . The image portrayed Uncle Sam as Miss Feely and the Philippines as slave child Topsy. Wesling’s argument is that literature in this time period was envisioned as a Little Eva who could transform Topsy when Miss Feely cannot. It is also worth noting that this chapter contains a lengthy discussion of Longfellow’s Evangeline which was a mandated high school text in the Philippines under U.S. occupation.
Chapter Three examines the narratives created by the American teachers who went to the Philippines and images in the popular press of the teachers. It is here that teaching, which was mostly a male profession in the U.S., is envisioned as female moral uplift and contrasted as a carrot to the stick of U.S. male soldiers. As she explains, “White feminity, in other words, stood as a signifier of benevolent rule, bringing with it a paradigm of imperial domesticity meant to eclipse the military conflict as a family drama of errant children and benevolent mothers” (111).
Chapter Four turns to Carlos Bulosan’s America Is in the Heart. She explains, “Bulosan establishes an epistemological break in which his readers find the traces of an imperial education, that knowledge project whose effect can only be such contradictions and logical inccomensurabilities” (33).
The major downfall of this book is the cover. I’m sure goodreads will let you see the cover. It is the image of Topsy discussed in Chapter 2. I read this book on an airplane and spent the whole time trying to keep the cover folded down and away from public view. Having the image in the book is important to understanding the argument in Chapter 2 and I can see why the analysis of the image captures Wesling’s central argument. However, I was not at all comfortable reading a book in public with such a magnified racist image on it and I wasn’t sure that leisurely reading this book in public would have done more than promote the acceptance of racist images circulating in public spaces. (Can’t you just imagine some sort of horrific hipster fad where 19th Century racist images suddenly start adorning handbags?) Having this image as the cover simply sensationalizes the image rather than offers the analysis and critique contained within the covers.
The focus of this book is the relationship between American literature and U.S. imperialism in the Philippines. According to Meg Wesling, U.S. Literature is empire’s proxy. Wesling discusses the focus on “benevolent assimilation” (teachers and schools) in the Philippines in the context of the rising 19th C sense of U.S. literature as moral uplift. As she explains in the introduction, “Almost immediately, American teachers were thrust into the foreground as agents of the project , mobilizing a discourse of education for self government meant to justify a prolonged colonial occupation and to mask the violent resistance to U.S. intervention” (4). She further explains, “the architects of the U.S. occupation envisioned the colonial project as a pedagogical mission, in which Filipinos were not a subject population but pupils who would benefit from the care of American teachers as representative of the moral, cultural, and political superiority of the United States.” (5). The use of literature in the occupation promoted a sense that American literature was sufficiently sophisticated, it was offered as evidence of Anglo-Saxon superiority justifying colonizalizism, it operated pedagogically as a form of moral uplift to colonized subjects, and of course it furthered a narrative of American exceptionalism whereby Spanish and British colonialism was contrasted to the “benevolence” of American school teachers (ignoring the violent repression of civilians and guerilla fighters alike).
Wesling argues than that “the initial formations of the field of American literature as it became institutionalized in schools across the United States in the last years of the nineteenth century were shaped in part in response to the ideological, political, and material practices of the United States’ extraterritorial expansion after the Spanish-American War” (6). The literary education offered in the Philippines was supposed to assimilate colonized subjects to the values of an emergent-middle class America. This lead the way to what Wesling calls the “pedagogical public sphere” in which the literary was envisioned across the U.S. as “working to extend the values of the white middle class as it differentiated those values from the cultural traditions of other populations that were selectively included or excluded from recognition within the national body” (25). Thus literature is an important part of the story of U.S. education as social containment. Her book contains a fascinating comparison of the operations and pedagogical aims of schools opened for freedmen in the South, schools opened for Native American children, and the schools the U.S. opened in Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and the Philippines.
Her first chapter follows arguments about “linguistic chaos” -- the lack of a single unifying language -- that was used as an argument against Philippine sovereignty and to promote English as a language that would “civilize” the colonial subjects (envisioned as child/pupils). She points out the contradiction that “the United States, at its origin, was a polyglot nation, and that this quality in no way preempted its capacity to declare independence from Britain” (53).
Chapter Two looks at an image published at the start of U.S. occupation that drew on its readers’ familiarity with Uncle Tom’s Cabin . The image portrayed Uncle Sam as Miss Feely and the Philippines as slave child Topsy. Wesling’s argument is that literature in this time period was envisioned as a Little Eva who could transform Topsy when Miss Feely cannot. It is also worth noting that this chapter contains a lengthy discussion of Longfellow’s Evangeline which was a mandated high school text in the Philippines under U.S. occupation.
Chapter Three examines the narratives created by the American teachers who went to the Philippines and images in the popular press of the teachers. It is here that teaching, which was mostly a male profession in the U.S., is envisioned as female moral uplift and contrasted as a carrot to the stick of U.S. male soldiers. As she explains, “White feminity, in other words, stood as a signifier of benevolent rule, bringing with it a paradigm of imperial domesticity meant to eclipse the military conflict as a family drama of errant children and benevolent mothers” (111).
Chapter Four turns to Carlos Bulosan’s America Is in the Heart. She explains, “Bulosan establishes an epistemological break in which his readers find the traces of an imperial education, that knowledge project whose effect can only be such contradictions and logical inccomensurabilities” (33).
The major downfall of this book is the cover. I’m sure goodreads will let you see the cover. It is the image of Topsy discussed in Chapter 2. I read this book on an airplane and spent the whole time trying to keep the cover folded down and away from public view. Having the image in the book is important to understanding the argument in Chapter 2 and I can see why the analysis of the image captures Wesling’s central argument. However, I was not at all comfortable reading a book in public with such a magnified racist image on it and I wasn’t sure that leisurely reading this book in public would have done more than promote the acceptance of racist images circulating in public spaces. (Can’t you just imagine some sort of horrific hipster fad where 19th Century racist images suddenly start adorning handbags?) Having this image as the cover simply sensationalizes the image rather than offers the analysis and critique contained within the covers.
April 21, 2011
I'm new to Goodreads, but I have to say that I like this book (not surprising!).
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews