Ethnographic empire: Imperial culture and colonial state formation in Malaya and the Philippines, 1880--1940.

Abstract

Developments in colonial cultural studies, imperial historiography and historical sociology converge on the need to study the colonial state. This dissertation argues that ethnographic discourses were developed to comprehend native responses to imperial rule, and subsequently influenced the structuring of the participation of native groups in government and in the economy. Focusing on two puzzles of contrastive trajectories---(1) the transformation of British indirect rule protection in Malaya to centralized bureaucratic rule and of American territorial assimilation in the Philippines to the Commonwealth protection of client Filipino elites, (2) the successful agricultural development of the Malaya while the Philippines became mired in economic dependency---I argue that the ethnographic representations intervene in the transposition of metropolitan ideology, imperial policy and economic interests to colonial policy. Using the categories of the Savage, Medieval and Oriental in precolonial travel literature and framed by manifest destiny beliefs, pioneer colonial officials developed ethnographic representations to transcribe native resistance into comparable representations of racial difference. Pioneer ethnography then influenced the representations of official ethnographic units of the colonial state, creating ambivalent representations that became contested by colonialist political factions. The political beliefs of colonial officials shaped their preference for different ethnographic views, which mediated colonialist political struggle over native policy. The category of the Medieval, alternating between model and degenerate valences, was especially important. The contrastive trajectories are explained by the ability of the native elite to politically mobilize against unfavorable native policy in the context of colonialist struggle over it, with the Filipino elites able to exploit the ambivalent representations to gain political concessions, while the Malay aristocrats were unable to do the same to stem technocratic centralization. Colonial officials adapted imperial economic interests to local situations by adopting developmental programs based on their ethnographic views, but the institutional structures resulting from native policy modified success. The Americans failed to develop the Philippines because succeeding administrations were either too estranged from Filipino planters to influence them or too identified with them to prevent corruption. The British succeeded when they distanced themselves from the interests of Malay elites and Western planters to resolve labor shortages.