In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines

Mr. Karnow is probably more famous for his book on Vietnam but this one is a forceful reminder of earlier times, earlier unpopular wars and how the US became a colonial power sometimes willingly sometimes not. This is just one more area of the world where we have left our footprint without fully realizing what we have done, not nearly comprehending the reactions of the locals to us because of our mixed histories. President McKinley is shown as a weak leader who was hopeless before the machinations of Theodore Roosevelt, Dewey, and Senator Lodge. Later on General Douglas MacArthur is shown as major player whose support of the reactionary landowners/businessmen still leaves its imprint on the Philippines today. This is a solid read that show more might surprise one on how much influence the US has had on Filipino history.

Quote: ( page 310) “Adventurers and bandits of every stripe posed as partisans, and local factionalism riddled the various movements as well. As rival families and clans settled old feuds, duplicitously fighting or helping the enemy to suit their aims. Late n 1944 when the U.S. landings in Leyte presaged the liberation of the archipelago, self styled guerrillas surfaced everywhere in a final frenzy of plunder.
The strongest force was the Peoples Anti Japanese Army, in Tagalog the Hukbong Bayan Laban sa Hapon===Hukbalahap for short , run by a coalition of communists and socialists. Its leaders though mainly urban intellectuals, astutely realized that central Luzon long a caldron of rural unrest was ripe for their efforts.” show less

2356 In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines, by Stanley Karnow (read 6 Feb 1991) (Pulitzer History prize in 1990) This is a journalistic history of the Philippines and I found it absorbing reading. I guess I somehow had not realized how gruesome our "conquest" of the country was, and I found the account of the time since then, while more or less familiar, well worth reading. It is a problem country and Corey Aquino is probably not going to accomplish much. The Marcos years were an awful waste. The Filipinos have not been converted to American political probity, that's for sure.

nonfiction (history of the Phillipines). this guy uses a lot of esoteric vocabulary! I think my brain stretched, just a little; I wasn't able to absorb as much of it as other people might, but you have to start somewhere.

Unlike Wm. Manchester; Karnow really dislikes Douglas MacArthur. Very good book of the History of the Philippines from the spanish to the 1980s
Once again(should I say as always) the U.S. goes plowing in insulting the local culture and the native population. Us Americans must be very slow learners

Revisionist history that makes widely reactionary conclusions without much backing, such as the assertion that Filipinos "submitted voluntarily to their own exploitation" and the imperialist beliefs that the Philippines would not have formed its own infrastructure had it not been for American intervention.

For more specifics, see Peter Tarr's review in The Nation and various scholarship by E. San Juan Jr.