Asia-Pacific in the Making of the Americas: Toward a Global History

Introduction

A few years ago, I published a paper entitled “The ‘Chinaman’ Question: A Conundrum in U.S. Imperial Policy in the Pacific,” where I discussed the issue facing 19th-century American colonizers on how to deal with the Chinese living in their newly acquired Pacific territory.[1] The main question was whether to exclude the Chinese from the Philippine Islands or not. After much debate and discussion, the United States eventually decided to extend the Chinese Exclusion laws operative in the United States to the Philippines in 1902.[2]

Another conundrum that the United States faced in the early years of their colonial rule was that of the “Chinese mestizo.” One issue surrounding the “Chinese mestizo” question pertained to the pacification of the Islands and the establishment of American colonial rule in the Philippines. To the American colonizers, Chinese mestizos or “half-breeds” posed a threat to American colonial rule in the Philippines, and one of their immediate concerns was how to deal with these “troublemakers.”

This paper examines how the American colonial government dealt with the Chinese mestizos of the Philippines. More specifically, what challenges did the U.S. colonial government face in dealing with the heterogeneous population of the Philippines, especially when it came to the issue of the hybridized group of Chinese mestizos? How did U.S. colonial policy help reduce, inhibit, or discourage the “mixing” of “Filipinos” and “Chinese”? What factors led to the disappearance of the “Chinese mestizo” as an identifiable “third” ethnic group, and consequently to the construction of a “Filipino” versus “Chinese” binary?
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[1] Richard T. Chu, “The ‘Chinaman’ Question: A Conundrum in U.S. Imperial Policy in the Pacific,” Kritika Kultura, no. 7 (2006): 3-23.
[2] While much debate went on in the Philippines and the United States, other countries, such as China, also weighed in on the matter, as found in newspaper articles, correspondences, or reports.

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