The Submerged Nation
Disaster Nationalism in the American Colonial Philippines
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3479635 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Theresa Ventura (Concordia University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 115 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 829-837 |
| Publication date | 2024-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Isis (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-1753 • E-ISSN: 1545-6994 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/733146 |
| OpenAlex | W4404672580 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 11 |
The 1911 eruption of Taal Volcano in the Philippine province of Batangas took an estimated 1,700–2,000 lives and rocked the foundations of the American colonial state in the archipelago. Since 1898, Americans colonized the Philippine future by shifting the benchmarks for a promised but perpetually delayed independence. Central to this strategy was the contention that colonial Bureaus of Agriculture, Forestry, Lands, and Science would attract investment in tropical commodities on the promise of great future returns by managing territory and discipling so-called tribal peoples into a modern labor force. Forecasting was built into the logic and projects of colonial capitalism. Anticolonial critics, in turn, argued that the American failure to react to seismographic readings—to forecast for disaster—exposed the weakness of American claims to the future while the immediate sale of photographs of the dead and tours of the “volcano zone” hindered the relief. Ensuing contests over settlement on volcanoes, the purpose of monitoring, and the visual importance of Taal shows the centrality of volcanoes to colonial science and technocratic nationalism, and of volcanology to the development of humanitarian science and governance
Colonialism · Geography · Nationalism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Asian American and Pacific Histories · History · Law · Philippine History and Culture · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |