Title: Twentieth Century American Imperialism in the Philipines: The Synergistic Interaction between Empire, Labor, and Race on the Archipelago
Department: History
Description: This project will examine the distinctive methods of empire-building exhibited by the United States during its occupation of the Philippines. More specifically, this research aims to highlight the symbiotic relationship between the construction of racialized labor on the Philippine archipelago and the formation of the American empire. This production of racialized labor in the Philippines led to the establishment of American economic bases in the Pacific, benefitting the empire at the expense of the laborers on the archipelago. Thus, this research aims to conjoin the production of race and labor on the islands to its consequential stake in the geopolitics of the Pacific Ocean during the twentieth century. As American systems of labor were codified into the economy of the archipelago, the Philippines were fashioned into a zone over which American ambitions for influence in the region were exerted. Regardless of its binding networks of power, the Americanized economic system of labor established within the Philippines inherently solidified the Philippines as an American stronghold in the Pacific for the remainder of the twentieth century.
Hometown: Sterling, Virginia
Advisor: Hiroshi Kitamura
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