Making Moros: Imperial Historicism and American Military Rule in the Philippines' Muslim South

Conclusion

Conclusion Two years prior to the end of military rule in Mindanao and sulu, a grand council of “leading sultans, Dattos, Headmen and other Prominent Moros of the District of lanao” met with the last military governor general of Moro Province, John Pershing. The meeting was filled with lavish outpourings of rhetorical affection and native pledges to adhere more closely to american desires and principles. of all the testimonies, however, Datu asam’s remarks represented profound evidence of lasting american influence in the Philippines’ Muslim south. recalling “an oath of friendship upon the koran” made to the american regime, the Datu admitted that had he “carried out the advice of the general more closely” he “would have been more prosperous.” The problem, he deduced, was that he had “been more or less following the old customs of his ancestors.” However, now that he understood the requisites of progress he pledged “to cut away from those old ties and follow the american ways.” while this statement may appear to be an admission of ethnic or cultural inferiority on the part of Datu asam (and would likely be interpreted this way by many historians), it was not. The Datu ’s remarks indicated a profound and nuanced understanding of historicism as the fundamental logic of american rule. The reason for the apparent gap between their respective populations, he continued, was that “the americans have only one custom, while the Moros have two, one good and the other evil [i.e., one modern and the other archaic], and as soon as they can break away from the evil one they will be just as prosperous as the americans.” after all, he argued, “the thoughts of the americans are the same as those of the Moros , but the only defect the Moros have is the two customs. The reason that the americans prosper as they do is because they have only one way of doing things. The Moros have two, one good and the other bad. as soon as the Mo- 131 Conclusion ros can weed out this bad spirit, there will be no more robbing, murdering, etc.”1 american officials could not have asked for a better or more succinct summation of their theoretical colonial project in Moro Province. Prominent elements of fundamental humanistic equality in asam’s statement were contexualized , not along crude racial or national boundaries but according to historicist notions of varying temporality as evidenced by the more concrete aspects of their respective societies. From an american perspective, the internalization of historicist paradigms among Filipino Muslims represented a critical success in their colonial tutelage. while much of the islands’ northern inhabitants muddled through the shallow institutional semblances of modernity , military officials in Moro Province felt that Filipino Muslims had learned the fundamental intangibles of a modern consciousness—namely, the ability to recognize and interpret one’s own temporal location. The preceding chapters have attempted to argue two overarching principles . First, imperial historicism, as a coherent and continuous discourse, originated in and emanated from the metropole with remarkable consistency, while providing a foundational rationale for virtually every policy and project in Moro Province between 1899 to 1913. as a case study, american military rule in the Philippines’ Muslim south represents an important amendment to recent trends in “new imperial history.” in this case colonial discourse was not an utterly discursive phenomenon characterized “by new and renewed discourses and . . . subtle shifts in ideological ground.”2 neither was it an episode of competing “colonialisms” in chronic disagreement regarding the logic of their imperial project.3 rather, the american military regime in Moro Province represents an instance of consistent imperial philosophy just as colonial officials imagined it. granted, its limited time period and narrowly circumscribed group of administrators places it slightly outside the broader colonial critique of new imperial historians such as stoler, cooper, and Thomas. For this reason, “amendment” is perhaps the best word to describe its contribution . nevertheless, one must not discount the valuable singularity of particular episodes as components of a larger colonial phenomenon. indicative or not, american colonialism in Mindanao and sulu embodied a trans-global discourse at the very foundation of modern concepts of space, time, and power . in this way its singularity is highly representative. second, this work elucidates and analyzes the most critical period in the Moros’ modern history. scholars have typically concentrated much of their work on analyzing integration policies after 1913. These efforts are commonly an attempt to work backward from the outbreak of violence between...