Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State

At the end of the nineteenth century the United States swiftly occupied a string of small islands dotting the Caribbean and Western Pacific, from Puerto Rico and Cuba to Hawaii and the Philippines. Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State reveals how this experiment in direct territorial rule subtly but profoundly shaped U.S. policy and practice - both abroad and, crucially, at home. Edited by Alfred W. McCoy and Francisco A. Scarano, the essays in this volume show how the challenge of ruling such far-flung territories strained the U.S. state to its limits, creating both the need and the opportunity for bold social experiments not yet possible within the United States itself. Plunging Washington's rudimentary bureaucracy into the white heat of nationalist revolution and imperial rivalry, colonialism was a crucible of change in American statecraft. From an expansion of the federal government to the creation of agile public-private networks for more effective global governance, U.S. empire produced far-reaching innovations.     Moving well beyond theory, this volume takes the next step, adding a fine-grained, empirical texture to the study of U.S. imperialism by analyzing its specific consequences. Across a broad range of institutions - policing and prisons, education, race relations, public health, law, the military, and environmental management - this formative experience left a lasting institutional imprint. With each essay distilling years, sometimes decades, of scholarship into a concise argument, Colonial Crucible reveals the roots of a legacy evident, most recently, in Washington's misadventures in the Middle East.

Table of Contents:
Illustrations    Preface    Part 1. Exploring Imperial Transitions On the Tropic of Cancer: Transitions and Transformations in the U.S. Imperial State        Alfred W. McCoy, Francisco A. Scarano, and Courtney Johnson Reading Imperial Transitions: Spanish Contraction, British Expansion, and American Irruption            Josep M. Fradera From Old Empire to New: The Changing Dynamics and Tactics of American Empire        Thomas McCormick Part 2. Police, Prisons, and Law Enforcement Introduction        Alfred W. McCoy American Penal Forms and Colonial Spanish Custodial-Regulatory Practices in Fin de Si\u00e8cle Puerto Rico        Kelvin Santiago-Valles Prohibiting Opium in the Philippines and the United States: The Creation of an Interventionist State        Anne L. Foster Policing the Imperial Periphery: Philippine Pacification and the Rise of the U.S. National Security State        Alfred W. McCoy \u0022The Prison That Makes Men Free\u0022: The Iwahig Penal Colony and the Simulacra of the American State in the Philippines        Michael Salman Part 3. Education Introduction        Adam Nelson Negotiating Colonialism: \u0022Race,\u0022 Class, and Education in Early-Twentieth-Century Puerto Rico     Solsir\u00e9e del Moral Enlightened Tolerance or Cultural Capitulation? Contesting Notions of American Identity        Am\u00edlcar Antonio Barreto The Business of Education in the Colonial Philippines, 1909–30        Glenn Anthony May The Imperial Enterprise and Educational Policies in Colonial Puerto Rico        Pablo Navarro-Rivera Understanding the American Empire: Colonialism, Latin Americanism, and Professional Social Science, 1898–1920        Courtney Johnson Part 4. Race and Imperial Identities Introduction        Clare Corbould Race, Empire, and Transnational History        Paul A. Kramer Censuses in the Transition to Modern Colonialism: Spain and the United States in Puerto Rico        Francisco A. Scarano Race and the Suffrage Controversy in Cuba, 1898–1901        Alejandro de la Fuente and Matthew Casey From Columbus to Ponce de Le\u00f3n: Puerto Rican Commemorations between Empires, 1893–1908        Christopher Schmidt-Nowara A Critical-Historical Genealogy of Koko (Blood), 'Aina (Land), Hawaiian Identity, and Western Law and Governance        Rona Tamiko Halualani Buying into Empire: American Consumption at the Turn of the Twentieth Century        Kristin Hoganson Confabulating American Colonial Knowledge of the Philippines: What the Social Life of Jose E. Marco's Forgeries and Ahmed Chalabi Can Tell Us about the Epistemology of Empire        Michael Salman Part 5. Imperial Medicine and Public Health: Bodies as Subjects Introduction        Nancy Tomes Pacific Crossings: Imperial Logics in United States' Public Health Programs        Warwick Anderson A Fever for Empire: U.S. Disease Eradication in Cuba as Colonial Public Health        Mariola Espinosa Mapping Regional and Imperial Geographies: Tropical Disease in the U.S. South        Natalie J. Ring The Conquest of Molecules: Wild Yams and American Scientists in Mexican Jungles        Gabriela Soto Laveaga Tropical Conquest and the Rise of the Environmental Management State: The Case of U.S. Sanitary Efforts in Panama        Paul S. Sutter Part 6. Polity, Law, and Constitution Introduction        John Ohnesorge Empire and the Transformation of Citizenship        Christina Duffy Burnett The Afterlife of Empire: Sovereignty and Revolution in the Philippines        Vicente L. Rafael The U.S. Constitution and Philippine Colonialism: An Enduring and Unfortunate Legacy        Owen J. Lynch Spanish Structure, American Theory: The Legal Foundations of a Tropical New Deal in the Philippine Islands, 1898–1935        Anna Leah Fidelis T. Casta\u00f1eda The Hazards of Jeffersonianism: Challenges of State Building in the United States and Its Empire        Paul D. Hutchcroft Part 7. U.S. Military Introduction: The Military and the U.S. Imperial State        Christopher Capozzola \u0022Mohammedan Religion Made It Necessary to Fire\u0022: Massacres on the American Imperial Frontier from South Dakota to the Southern Philippines        Joshua Gedacht The U.S. Army as an Occupying Force in Muslim Mindanao, 1899–1913        Patricio N. Abinales Minutemen for the World: Empire, Citizenship, and the National Guard, 1903–24        Christopher Capozzola From Winship to Leahy: Crisis, War, and Transition in Puerto Rico     Jorge Rodr\u00edguez Beruff French and American Imperial Accommodation in the Caribbean during World War II: The Experience of Guyane and the Subaltern Roles of Puerto Ricans        Humberto Garc\u00eda-Mu\u00f1iz and Rebeca Campo Guant\u00e1namo and the Case of Kid Chicle: Private Contract Labor and the Development of the U.S. Military        Jana K. Lipman The Impact of the Philippine Wars (1898–1913) on the U.S. Army    0     Brian McAllister Linn Part 8. Environmental Management Introduction: Environmental and Economic Management        J. R. McNeill Conservation and Colonialism: Gifford Pinchot and the Birth of Tropical Forestry in the Philippines        Greg Bankoff Manila's Imperial Makeover: Security, Health, and Symbolism        Daniel F. Doeppers \u0022'The World Was My Garden\u0022: Tropical Botany and Cosmopolitanism in American Science, 1898–1935        Stuart McCook Scientific Superman: Father Jos\u00e9 Algu\u00e9, Jesuit Meteorology, and the Philippines under American Rule, 1897–1924        James Francis Warren Part 9. The Elusive Character of American Global Power The Limits of American Empire: Democracy and Militarism in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries        Jeremi Suri Crucibles, Capillaries, and Pentimenti: Reflections on Imperial Transformations        Nancy Tomes Empire in American History        Ian Robert Tyrrell Notes    Contributors    Index