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Bound by War: How the United States and the Philippines Built America's First Pacific Century
A sweeping history of America's long and fateful military relationship with the Philippines amid a century of Pacific warfareEver since US troops occupied the Philippines in 1898, generations of Filipinos have served in and alongside the US armed forces. In Bound by War, historian Christopher Capozzola reveals this forgotten history, showing how war and military service forged an enduring, yet fraught, alliance between Americans and Filipinos.As the US military expanded in Asia, American forces confronted their Pacific rivals from Philippine bases. And from the colonial-era Philippine Scouts to post-9/11 contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, Filipinos were crucial partners in the exercise of US power. Their service reshaped Philippine society and politics and brought thousands of Filipinos to America. Telling the epic story of a century of conflict and migration, Bound by War is a fresh, definitive portrait of this uneven partnership and the two nations it transformed.
381 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 28, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
December 8, 2025
“Collaboration” with Colonialism 101…
Preamble:
--On the topic of US colonialism in the Philippines, my usual approach would be to start from the aggressor’s side (ex. McCoy’s Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State):
i) Geopolitical economy: big picture context
ii) Moral responsibility: I started “foreign policy” with Chomsky, who reminds us to focus on the side we are responsible for/can affect.
…Now, Capozzola’s book on Filipino militarism serving US empire offers clues for the messy next steps (i.e. the colonized side):
iii) “collaboration”: being outnumbered and in foreign territory, colonialism relies on divide-and-rule via exploiting pre-existing class/social contradictions (along with overwhelming violence to suffocate alternatives).
iv) militarism: what material conditions and myths perpetuate this, and what contradictions can counter this?
Highlights:
--History books often have limitations:
i) Missing structural lenses (ex. historical materialism); easy to miss the forest (ex. Thinking In Systems: A Primer) for the trees (names/dates/events).
ii) Missing the dynamism/indeterminacy in history (hindsight bias, etc.); rigid reliance on “evidence” thus unwilling to speculate on important gaps (compare with anthropology).
--In investigating the question of collaboration/militarism, my goal is to build a structured approach (which I’ve summarized in reviewing veteran Glenton’s Soldier Box: Why I Won't Return to the War on Terror) and test it with Capozzola’s historical case study. So, I was delighted to find a quote in Capozzola’s book that summarizes my approach:
1) Material Conditions (“mundane labor system”):
--Using class analysis, we can break down militaries into:
i) Upper-class officers (we can further break down to junior vs. senior officers)
ii) Working-class soldiers (majority).
--Crucial to capitalism/colonialism/imperialism is dispossession of alternative means of subsistence, so dependency can be enforced on not just markets for “real commodities” (goods/services) but esp. capitalism’s peculiar markets (labour/land/money) featuring “fictitious commodities” (humans/nature/purchasing power). See:
-The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View
-Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation
-Debt: The First 5,000 Years
--State planning is a necessity for capitalism (bare minimum: to violently enforce capitalist property rights), but planning is taboo (since the public might realize the successes of social planning for social needs, ex. A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency, rather than relying on capitalist profit-seeking, ex. The Grapes of Wrath).
…So, the military is a convenient means of capitalist planning, as a (working-class) jobs program (as well as planning production/demand/research etc., esp. to counter capitalist busts; i.e. “Military Keynesianism”).
--Finally, colonialism/imperialism relies on divide-and-rule. Ex. some US colonial officers in Philippines had direct experience in US’s “Indian Wars” where they recruited Native American soldiers to act as “informants, interpreters, or as scouts”.
--All the contradictions of divide-and-rule lead to failed “pacification”, with militarism seeping into society. An example of all of the above: the Philippine Revolution (against Spanish colonialism) was triggered by a dispute over soldier pay (when some Filipino colonial soldiers were replaced by Spanish soldiers paid with European wage rates).
--Filipino militarism serving US empire can be categorized into:
i) Philippine Constabulary: national police force
--This was actually militaristic, used for counterinsurgency.
--Note: farmers who opposed the Constabulary’s corruption had direct interactions, whereas the US were distant and abstract. Divide-and-rule 101.
ii) Philippine Scouts: colonial army
--Some members came from the Spanish colonial army; from their perspective, the US now offered greater protection. (From the US perspective: this allowed less spending on US troops, to counter the varied groups of US anti-imperialism… another fascinating topic which I’ll unpack in the future!).
--Some had to pay off debts to local elites. Allegiance to Scouts came not just from soldiers, but included their extended social ties.
--Revolutionaries naturally saw Scouts as traitors (dugong aso: “dog-blooded”; animal’s obedience rather than loyalty/brotherhood/even self-interest). For a deeper look, we would have to dig into the Spanish colonial army and pre-Spanish class/social divisions.
iii) Filipinos in US Navy/Army:
--WWI was the key trigger; the US had Jim Crow and Asian Exclusion laws (esp. against Japanese/Chinese), so Filipinos became the exception; this became the clearest path for US migration and future claim for US citizenship (i.e. the bargaining power of organized Filipino veterans demanding US veterans benefits is key in the book; this also shows the duality of the warfare state and welfare state).
…Still, even educated Filipino elites were blocked from the officers corps.
--WWII: during Japan’s invasion of Southeast Asia, the Philippines joined the US in resisting Japan; this was exceptional, since other Southeast Asian nationalists fought against both their Western colonizers and Japan.
…The book describes the “tactical loyalty” of Filipino militarism. US had superior supply chains, providing cash (it’s a big deal to be paid on time)/weapons/canned salmon (produced with the labour of Filipinos in the US Pacific Northwest canneries, no less). This is the (geo)political economy of militarism, i.e. not just weapons/soldiers, but all the other material needs to provision healthy soldiers.
2) Ideological Projects (“utopian political project”):
a) Working-class:
--Beyond the foundational material needs of working-class survival, Soldier Box: Why I Won't Return to the War on Terror unpacks militarism’s ideological myths: duty/honour/accountability/strength/efficiency, etc.; barriers to challenging these myths include:
i) trained obedience: obvious, but we also considered the class conflicts within the military, a material condition that cannot simply be eradicated with ideology.
ii) obligation (to fulfill signed contract; nationalism, etc.): this also reminds me of chats with John Roosa (scholar of Indonesia), who wonders about the status quo bias of custom, in this case Filipino migration (and thus allegiance) to the US (ex. Manila Men in the New World: Filipino Migration to Mexico and the Americas from the Sixteenth Century).
iii) cynicism: given colonial violence’s suppression of alternatives.
iv) comradeship: with other social relations disrupted, militaries offer social connections.
b) Upper class:
i) anti-communism: this is not just coming from the side of US imperialism (to prevent all alternatives, esp. egalitarian ones); Filipino elites also had class interest to pursue anti-communism…they even weaponized it to receive more US aid.
ii) nationalism: “What is Politics?” stresses that nationalism is a project to obscure class conflict; we can compare this with The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World.
Preamble:
--On the topic of US colonialism in the Philippines, my usual approach would be to start from the aggressor’s side (ex. McCoy’s Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State):
i) Geopolitical economy: big picture context
ii) Moral responsibility: I started “foreign policy” with Chomsky, who reminds us to focus on the side we are responsible for/can affect.
…Now, Capozzola’s book on Filipino militarism serving US empire offers clues for the messy next steps (i.e. the colonized side):
iii) “collaboration”: being outnumbered and in foreign territory, colonialism relies on divide-and-rule via exploiting pre-existing class/social contradictions (along with overwhelming violence to suffocate alternatives).
iv) militarism: what material conditions and myths perpetuate this, and what contradictions can counter this?
Highlights:
--History books often have limitations:
i) Missing structural lenses (ex. historical materialism); easy to miss the forest (ex. Thinking In Systems: A Primer) for the trees (names/dates/events).
ii) Missing the dynamism/indeterminacy in history (hindsight bias, etc.); rigid reliance on “evidence” thus unwilling to speculate on important gaps (compare with anthropology).
--In investigating the question of collaboration/militarism, my goal is to build a structured approach (which I’ve summarized in reviewing veteran Glenton’s Soldier Box: Why I Won't Return to the War on Terror) and test it with Capozzola’s historical case study. So, I was delighted to find a quote in Capozzola’s book that summarizes my approach:
[…] every armed force is simultaneously a utopian political project and a mundane labor system.
1) Material Conditions (“mundane labor system”):
--Using class analysis, we can break down militaries into:
i) Upper-class officers (we can further break down to junior vs. senior officers)
ii) Working-class soldiers (majority).
--Crucial to capitalism/colonialism/imperialism is dispossession of alternative means of subsistence, so dependency can be enforced on not just markets for “real commodities” (goods/services) but esp. capitalism’s peculiar markets (labour/land/money) featuring “fictitious commodities” (humans/nature/purchasing power). See:
-The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View
-Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation
-Debt: The First 5,000 Years
--State planning is a necessity for capitalism (bare minimum: to violently enforce capitalist property rights), but planning is taboo (since the public might realize the successes of social planning for social needs, ex. A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency, rather than relying on capitalist profit-seeking, ex. The Grapes of Wrath).
…So, the military is a convenient means of capitalist planning, as a (working-class) jobs program (as well as planning production/demand/research etc., esp. to counter capitalist busts; i.e. “Military Keynesianism”).
--Finally, colonialism/imperialism relies on divide-and-rule. Ex. some US colonial officers in Philippines had direct experience in US’s “Indian Wars” where they recruited Native American soldiers to act as “informants, interpreters, or as scouts”.
--All the contradictions of divide-and-rule lead to failed “pacification”, with militarism seeping into society. An example of all of the above: the Philippine Revolution (against Spanish colonialism) was triggered by a dispute over soldier pay (when some Filipino colonial soldiers were replaced by Spanish soldiers paid with European wage rates).
--Filipino militarism serving US empire can be categorized into:
i) Philippine Constabulary: national police force
--This was actually militaristic, used for counterinsurgency.
--Note: farmers who opposed the Constabulary’s corruption had direct interactions, whereas the US were distant and abstract. Divide-and-rule 101.
ii) Philippine Scouts: colonial army
--Some members came from the Spanish colonial army; from their perspective, the US now offered greater protection. (From the US perspective: this allowed less spending on US troops, to counter the varied groups of US anti-imperialism… another fascinating topic which I’ll unpack in the future!).
--Some had to pay off debts to local elites. Allegiance to Scouts came not just from soldiers, but included their extended social ties.
--Revolutionaries naturally saw Scouts as traitors (dugong aso: “dog-blooded”; animal’s obedience rather than loyalty/brotherhood/even self-interest). For a deeper look, we would have to dig into the Spanish colonial army and pre-Spanish class/social divisions.
iii) Filipinos in US Navy/Army:
--WWI was the key trigger; the US had Jim Crow and Asian Exclusion laws (esp. against Japanese/Chinese), so Filipinos became the exception; this became the clearest path for US migration and future claim for US citizenship (i.e. the bargaining power of organized Filipino veterans demanding US veterans benefits is key in the book; this also shows the duality of the warfare state and welfare state).
…Still, even educated Filipino elites were blocked from the officers corps.
--WWII: during Japan’s invasion of Southeast Asia, the Philippines joined the US in resisting Japan; this was exceptional, since other Southeast Asian nationalists fought against both their Western colonizers and Japan.
…The book describes the “tactical loyalty” of Filipino militarism. US had superior supply chains, providing cash (it’s a big deal to be paid on time)/weapons/canned salmon (produced with the labour of Filipinos in the US Pacific Northwest canneries, no less). This is the (geo)political economy of militarism, i.e. not just weapons/soldiers, but all the other material needs to provision healthy soldiers.
2) Ideological Projects (“utopian political project”):
a) Working-class:
--Beyond the foundational material needs of working-class survival, Soldier Box: Why I Won't Return to the War on Terror unpacks militarism’s ideological myths: duty/honour/accountability/strength/efficiency, etc.; barriers to challenging these myths include:
i) trained obedience: obvious, but we also considered the class conflicts within the military, a material condition that cannot simply be eradicated with ideology.
ii) obligation (to fulfill signed contract; nationalism, etc.): this also reminds me of chats with John Roosa (scholar of Indonesia), who wonders about the status quo bias of custom, in this case Filipino migration (and thus allegiance) to the US (ex. Manila Men in the New World: Filipino Migration to Mexico and the Americas from the Sixteenth Century).
iii) cynicism: given colonial violence’s suppression of alternatives.
iv) comradeship: with other social relations disrupted, militaries offer social connections.
b) Upper class:
i) anti-communism: this is not just coming from the side of US imperialism (to prevent all alternatives, esp. egalitarian ones); Filipino elites also had class interest to pursue anti-communism…they even weaponized it to receive more US aid.
ii) nationalism: “What is Politics?” stresses that nationalism is a project to obscure class conflict; we can compare this with The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World.
March 1, 2023
Read this book for my WWII class. This was a very dry read overall. The author had some great research, but his views on imperialism often went back and forth, leaving an impression that the author didn’t really have a solid argument.
April 14, 2020
I Enjoyed everything about this book there was nothing I didn't like about the book. I Like the setting,the writing style,the plot,the plot twists and the characters in the book were amazing.I would gladly reread it again.I also like the concept of the book.I Would recommend this book to anyone.
October 17, 2024
Under Obama, the United States pursued its “pivot to Asia” as a cornerstone of America’s foreign policy priorities in the Indo-Pacific and has occupied headlines up to the present. Behind this grand strategy is a century-old ties between the United States and the Philippines largely shaped by the former’s conflicts and the latter’s vital role in cementing America’s position as a Pacific nation. Capozzola blend history and personal stories of Filipinos and Filipino-Americans who unwittingly embodied achievements, struggles, and ambitions of both nation’s shared, if oftentimes, complicated military legacy. It’s a fascinating and nuanced read albeit for the last two chapters which seems to be hastily written.
August 11, 2025
Good book missing just that one last thing to push it over to five stars.
This is going to be, as the title suggests, very focused on the military relationship between the Philippines and USA from the macabebe scouts to the war on terror and China policy. It also touches on a lot of good points about race relations and civil rights.
To compare it to Stanley karnows “in our image” this book feels a little more impersonal and detached (not in a bad way), lighter on details on Filipino culture and pre 1898 history, and heavier on military focus. You also get a little less of the personality of the major characters.
All in all a solid read if you’re interested in the topic.
This is going to be, as the title suggests, very focused on the military relationship between the Philippines and USA from the macabebe scouts to the war on terror and China policy. It also touches on a lot of good points about race relations and civil rights.
To compare it to Stanley karnows “in our image” this book feels a little more impersonal and detached (not in a bad way), lighter on details on Filipino culture and pre 1898 history, and heavier on military focus. You also get a little less of the personality of the major characters.
All in all a solid read if you’re interested in the topic.
September 30, 2020
Bound by War really opened my eyes to aspects of our history that I just didn't know! This should be a recommended read for more Americans.
July 27, 2022
The author provides a good overall perspective on the Philippine-US relationship between 1899-2019. Well researched and written.
October 3, 2022
Yet another state bureaucrat that needs to get enough books published so he can climb the academic ladder to the biggest pension plan the tax-payer will have to pay.
November 17, 2020
Bound by War examines the US-Philippine relations through the lens of their shared military history. This work examines how the relations between the United States and the Philippines was established, strengthened, and has been stranded by shared wars and military service. This work, as a popular history, provides a good overview of US-Philippine relations from their beginnings in the Philippine War, to the modern era. For those interested in examining either the diplomatic relations between the Philippines and the US, the military history of the Philippines, and the impact of the US Empire, this is a good work to read.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews