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Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State (New Perspectives in SE Asian Studies) Paperback – Illustrated, October 15, 2009

by Alfred W. McCoy (Author)

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At the dawn of the twentieth century, the U.S. Army swiftly occupied Manila and then plunged into a decade-long pacification campaign with striking parallels to today’s war in Iraq. Armed with cutting-edge technology from America’s first information revolution, the U.S. colonial regime created the most modern police and intelligence units anywhere under the American flag. In Policing America’s Empire Alfred W. McCoy shows how this imperial panopticon slowly crushed the Filipino revolutionary movement with a lethal mix of firepower, surveillance, and incriminating information. Even after Washington freed its colony and won global power in 1945, it would intervene in the Philippines periodically for the next half-century—using the country as a laboratory for counterinsurgency and rearming local security forces for repression. In trying to create a democracy in the Philippines, the United States unleashed profoundly undemocratic forces that persist to the present day.
But security techniques bred in the tropical hothouse of colonial rule were not contained, McCoy shows, at this remote periphery of American power. Migrating homeward through both personnel and policies, these innovations helped shape a new federal security apparatus during World War I. Once established under the pressures of wartime mobilization, this distinctively American system of public-private surveillance persisted in various forms for the next fifty years, as an omnipresent, sub rosa matrix that honeycombed U.S. society with active informers, secretive civilian organizations, and government counterintelligence agencies. In each succeeding global crisis, this covert nexus expanded its domestic operations, producing new contraventions of civil liberties—from the harassment of labor activists and ethnic communities during World War I, to the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, all the way to the secret blacklisting of suspected communists during the Cold War.

“With a breathtaking sweep of archival research, McCoy shows how repressive techniques developed in the colonial Philippines migrated back to the United States for use against people of color, aliens, and really any heterodox challenge to American power. This book proves Mark Twain’s adage that you cannot have an empire abroad and a republic at home.”—Bruce Cumings, University of Chicago

“This book lays the Philippine body politic on the examination table to reveal the disease that lies within—crime, clandestine policing, and political scandal. But McCoy also draws the line from Manila to Baghdad, arguing that the seeds of controversial counterinsurgency tactics used in Iraq were sown in the anti-guerrilla operations in the Philippines. His arguments are forceful.”—Sheila S. Coronel, Columbia University

“Conclusively, McCoy’s Policing America’s Empire is an impressive historical piece of research that appeals not only to Southeast Asianists but also to those interested in examining the historical embedding and institutional ontogenesis of post-colonial states’ police power apparatuses and their apparently inherent propensity to implement illiberal practices of surveillance and repression.”—Salvador Santino F. Regilme, Jr., Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs

“McCoy’s remarkable book . . . does justice both to its author’s deep knowledge of Philippine history as well as to his rare expertise in unmasking the seamy undersides of state power.”—POLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review

Winner, George McT. Kahin Prize, Southeast Asian Council of the Association for Asian Studies

Print length

672 pages
Language

English
Publisher

University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date

October 15, 2009
Dimensions

6 x 1.7 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

0299234142
ISBN-13

978-0299234140
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Editorial Reviews

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“This remarkable study provides a meticulous analysis of the novel colonial system developed by the U.S. in the Philippines after the murderous conquest, with startling implications for the shape of the modern world. As McCoy demonstrates, the U.S. occupation developed a major innovation in imperial practice, relying on the ‘information revolution’ of the day to establish intense surveillance and control of the occupied population, along with violence when needed and privileges to obedient elites. This ‘protracted social experiment in the use of police as an instrument of state power’ left a devastating legacy for the Philippines, while also contributing substantially to the modes of suppression of independence and social change elsewhere, and returning home to lay the foundations for a national security and surveillance state.”—Noam Chomsky, MIT

“A stunning, exemplary, and hair-raising fusion of colonial and metropolitan histories. McCoy shows how the Philippines served as a laboratory subject for experiments in policing, intelligence, surveillance, and ‘black-operations’ that were then repatriated to shape the American domestic surveillance state from World War I forward. This is history at its most powerful and most subversive of imperial self-hypnosis. The term magnum opus applies both to its ambition and its comprehensiveness.”—James C. Scott, Yale University

“In this stunning book, McCoy reveals how empire shapes the intertwined destinies of all involved in its creation. Written with deft strokes, this is an instant classic of historical writing.”—Lloyd Gardner, Rutgers University

“Alfred McCoy has written the most thorough account of America relations with the Philippines that the reader is likely to come across. It’s a history with meticulous detail, the product of an academic career that’s concentrated on the torturous story of the connections between the US and Southeast Asia.”—Peace Researcher

“[S]hows how the dark underworld of crime, subversion, vice and drugs in the Philippines has been linked to the bright, public world of politics. The link? The police and security forces, particularly their shadowy side: spies, undercover agents, specialists in covert operations, assassins. The currency passed up and down the system? Information, particularly incriminating information, scandal, graft, murder.”—John J. Carroll, Philippine Daily Inquirer

“McCoy’s monograph will be the starting point for any future historical study of control and dissent in the Philippines. Summing Up: Highly recommended.”—Choice

“An eye-opener of a book, this should be must reading for concerned Filipinos, not only to be able to understand their own police forces—and criminal world, as well as their politicians—better, but also to see deeper into the United States design and policies.”— Ricardo Trota Jose, Philippine Studies

“Provocative. . . . raise(s) important issues regarding the impact of empire, as home as well as abroad, a dialectic of ill effects wrought by an imperial system bottom lined by domination and coercion, force and violence.”—Allen Ruff, Against the Current

From the Publisher

New Perspectives in Southeast Asian Studies
Alfred W. McCoy, R. Anderson Sutton, and Thongchai Winichakul, Series Editors

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of Wisconsin Press; 1st edition (October 15, 2009)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 672 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0299234142
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0299234140
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.06 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.7 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #950,103 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #496 in Colonialism & Post-Colonialism
- #676 in Southeast Asia History
- #3,419 in Literary Criticism & Theory

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4.4 21 ratings

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Alfred W. McCoy

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Alfred W. McCoy holds the Harrington chair of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he teaches classes on the Vietnam War, modern empires, and U.S. foreign policy. Most recently, he is the author of "In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power" (Chicago, 2017). He is also the author of "Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State" (Madison, 2009) which won the Kahin Prize from the Association for Asian Studies.

His best known book, "The Politics of Heroin," stirred controversy when the C.I.A. tried to block its publication back in 1972, but it has remained in print for nearly 50 years, been translated into nine languages, and is generally regarded as the "classic" work on global drug trafficking.

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Randall Stott

Glad I bought this book

Reviewed in the United States on August 25, 2023

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took me 7 months to finish. Well written and for me I couldn’t read this book fast. I had to take the book slow because of the amount of info and how technical and complex the writing is. But i never wanted to put the book down and I learned a lot. I would read it again.

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Matthew

High-quality research, brilliant insight, intriguing analysis, great storytelling.

Reviewed in the United States on May 31, 2011

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What a terrific book. McCoy manages to merge rigorous historical research, insightful analysis, comprehensive summaries and overviews, and good story-telling in this master study of the modern Philippines.

The book is focused on the critical position of policing in Philippines society, as conveyed in the title. In the first chapter, McCoy discusses and justifies a focus on policing: he discusses the often overlooked but still important matters of policing and scandal in any general society, why policing (and scandal) maintains an uncharacteristically central role in Filipino society, and how the Filipino history is also crucial for an understanding of US history - in summary: empire affects both the colony and the imperial country.

When recounting a historical event, McCoy tells the story in an entertaining yet neutral manner. Perhaps, since truth is stranger than friction, he is aided by the sheer absurdity often inherent in scandals and instances of blackmailing, bribery, and general corruption; but nevertheless I found many parts of the book to be quite amusing. Another great aspect of this book if the "Conclusion" section at the end of each chapter: as this subsection title suggests, McCoy concludes each chapter by giving a rough summary of the history covered in that chapter, and he describes how and why these events connect to the larger themes mentioned above - policing, government legitimacy, and the consequences of imperial conquest.

Again, McCoy does a particularly excellent job of making connections between specific historical events (often police scandals), and larger historical and political questions. In particular, in Chapter 9, McCoy breaks from the Philippines temporarily to discuss policing in the US in the period of approximately 1905 - 1975. He illustrates how policing innovations in the US in fact have roots in the US policing of the Philippines - a historical aspect of US society that is by no means common knowledge. He also describes (in 9 and in other chapters), how the Philippines continues to be a testing ground for new US police and military strategies, and how US innovations in the Philippines are still filtering back into the US. Several aspects of recent history and current events (Iraq, Afghanistan, and the so-called War on Terror) are also analyzed from the viewpoint of surveillance advancements on the fringes of empire finding their way back to the US mainland.

Highly recommended.

18 people found this helpful

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Phoebe Zoe Maria U. Sanchez

Crucibles of counterinsurgency

Reviewed in the United States on March 6, 2022

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That the Philippines as a colonial outpost is still sustained today as a neocolonial satellite by the US.

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C. H. Lutz

Politicizing America's Empire

Reviewed in the United States on June 1, 2010

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"Policing America's Empire" is a distortion of U.S. history during occupation of the Philippines. The author promotes his radical political agenda, and then twists historical facts to serve them. He asks the reader to take enormous leaps of faith that our colonial period was antecedent to the political corruption and crime in the Philippines today, and to the internal "surveillance state" and imperialist that he says America has become. McCoy focuses on the Police Constabulary and its rudimentary information collection, collation and analysis system, fundamental to any intelligence program; and criticizes the PC as brutal and invasive, but makes no comparison to the dreaded Spanish Guardia Civil that had trampled the rights of Filipinos for 350 years. The U.S. began "filipinizing" the PC in 1913--that Hong Kong's China Mail newspaper called its "fatal flaw"--but by 1917, Filipino Rafael Crame had risen from its ranks to become Director General. McCoy paints Crame as a tyrannical American lackey while ignoring the fact that the Philippines National Police headquarters still bears the name of this revered General. And the author gives short shrift to the successes of PC intelligence in thwarting Japanese imperialism up until WWII. America set the Philippines on a course for independence from almost the day she purchased her from Spain, winning approval by a single vote in Congress--not exactly overwhelming support by the American public for America to become a colonial power. Many educated Filipinos today say the problem with the American colonial period, and the ensuing political turmoil, is that it ended too soon.

14 people found this helpful

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Norman J. Harris

Look what followed our boys home...

Reviewed in the United States on October 25, 2016

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This is a fascinating account laying out the importance of unintended consequences of imperial behaviour. All who advocate regime change interventions should be made to read this book.

3 people found this helpful

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Mark Straka

A Significant Work

Reviewed in the United States on June 14, 2010

[Disclaimer: I haven't finished reading it yet; thus a streamlined review] A well-reasoned, well-researched, and well-written work that is destined to become a foundation stone in the study of the development (or metamorphosis) of the American nation since the invasion of the Philippines in 1898. The work is formidable and highly enlightening for both academics and for all those who have struggled to understand the stark discrepancy between the mythical America as imagined by citizens indoctrinated with the ideologies of Jefferson, Lincoln, and the contemporary ideologues on the one hand, and the America as manifest in its heavily armed and brutal police forces, its global military, its advanced and ever-advancing weaponry, its global surveillance network, and its CIA.

Strongly recommended.

28 people found this helpful

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Constitutional Lawyer

Fact-based, which will anger some people

Reviewed in the United States on February 5, 2014

McCoy's book is history based on fact, not "history based on patriotism". For the latter, one will find many, many political tracts masquerading as "books" (John Phillip Souza marches to be played in the background as one reads the latter must be purchased separately, however). For the latter purpose, perhaps some high school "history" books from the 1950s are still available ?

McCoy's analogies to the current use of surveillance techniques are eye-opening, as well; but his history (here) is solid as a stand-alone. As usual, those who prefer patriotism to facts will not like this book or any fact-based history book at all.

9 people found this helpful

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JD

Brilliant - a timeless masterpiece!

Reviewed in the United States on August 12, 2010

Well researched and written with a bold perspective. Historical and captivating. I've bought a couple copies to distribute to people who are well versed in the region and all said the same. This one will remain on my bookshelf for years to come and Mccoy earns 5 stars on this one. Bravo!!

4 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Matthew Pollock

Outstanding: lots of new information and good analysis.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 29, 2012

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This great book is huge fun, and is really informative about Philippine politics. It goes beyond the author's famous earlier work `An Anarchy of Families', which put flesh on the now- prevailing view that the fundamental structure of Philippine politics is `bossism', with political strongmen's empires and family fortunes being built regionally on the basis of `guns, goons and gold'.

McCoy here suggests that Philippine politics is now permeated at national level by `narco-politics' and protection money, linking national politicians and a crooked police and criminals in a Chicago-like demi-world of violence and criminality, which all too often erupts in very open scandals to amaze and disgust the public.

Scandals interest McCoy. He notes that scandals are of surprisingly little interest to most historians, perhaps because the impact of a scandal depends on the emergence of a previously unknown fact, ignorance of which the historian can hardly pretend to. Thus the historian may miss the fact that the sheer surprise impact of scandals is often a key driver of politics. The Philippines' US-style court system, rambunctious press, extensive NGO community, all amplify the importance of scandal.

McCoy shows how the Philippine Constabulary's apparatus of investigation, illegal arrest, and torture, began to be built almost as soon as the U.S. conquered the Philippines. The Constabulary `went bad' almost from the beginning, with its powers used in partisan battles between American players, but were expanded during the long struggle against the communist insurgency. McCoy shows how information extracted through police work, torture, and wiretapping have become key commodities in Philippine politics, and how the heart of government became strongly influenced by an alliance between politicians and senior policemen feeding off an underworld of gambling and drugs, to fund political empires, pay voters, and build personal fortunes. The scandals that surface in police investigations are often less than half the story, and what is really going on behind the scenes is much more worrying than the story that the public sees. What is released into the public arena is less a 'coming clean' than another form of power-play.

As the police themselves became criminalized, policemen have bent the political system to their will, to the extent of almost taking it over. There are many stories well-told by McCoy that illustrate this, but none is more hair-raising than the story of an ex-policeman turned politician, who now sits in the Senate, called Panfilio Lacson.

McCoy does justice to what journalist Conrado de Quiros (quoted by McCoy) calls `this magical realist country'. Yet his methods are simple. Do the research. Lay on fact after fact. And let the story tell itself (in Philippine terms the "Sheila Coronel method" of political story-telling).

I can't imagine that anyone, Filipino or foreign, won't come away better informed about the leading personalities in Philippine politics after reading this. McCoy connects the dots. You will never think about president Corazon Aquino, or president Fidel V Ramos, or presidential candidate Panfilio Lacson in the same way ever again.

4 people found this helpful

James 'error' Campbell

A Spectacular and Voluminous Contribution to Modern History

Reviewed in Canada on May 29, 2014

Verified Purchase

Policing Americas Empire is a colossal contribution to historical literature as McCoy provides a heavily researched (a decade spent on this project), wide-ranging analysis of security and police force presence inside the Philippines (1898 to present day). Policing Americas Empire is a scholarly historical document concerning the United States pacification of the Philippines and its experimentation thereof. This pacification birthed the rise of a colossal police state which was the mechanics and infrastructure which, in 1946, the United States handed to back to the political powers of the archipelago.

Since Filipino independence, "Policing Americas Empire" shows the commence of a deeply troubled, failed democratic process, submerged in state terror and criminal syndicate. Each chapter of 'Policing Americas Empire' illuminates an advancement of the incremental onslaught of a police state and its accompanying levels of profound corruption. This literature illustrates broad implication for the repercussion of Americas colonial choices; using these in outlining how and why the health of civil liberties across the world has begun a battle with a spreading distopia and repressive totalitarian trend. McCoy properly reveals the struggles of the modern day world, from a narrative of the water washed borders of the Filipino islands. This is an authoritative account of US development of its colonial properties and how American dominion functioned to deeply affect international realpolitik for the coming centuries.

One person found this helpful

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