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By tracing the history of the Philippine-American colonialism in the early twentieth century, Warwick Anderson’s Colonial Pathologies: American Tropical Medicine, Race, and Hygiene in the Philippines sought to examine ideas of colonial medicine in the Philippines while also charting the development of “biomedical citizenship” and how the integral body not only played a significant role in the colonial situation between Americans and Filipinos but also in its ability to frame ideas of whiteness and masculinity as well. What I found most intriguing was that Anderson never truly defines the concept of “biomedical citizenship” throughout his book but rather instead, her merely infer that compliance with medicalized colonial regimes would be interpreted as evidence for citizenship. In addition to dealing with the tropical environment, medicine, and race, Anderson also argued that for many Americans, preventing disease had become a process that fundamentally racialized and even disciplined native bodies. As Jonathan stated in his post, the degree in which guaranteeing the health of white people and their whiteness versus the “threatening microbial pathology that lurked within native bodies” became a matter of racial tensions between white Americans and Filipinos. For example, Anderson claimed that “as they investigated, treated, and attempted to discipline allegedly errant Filipinos, America medicos were revealing previously hidden aspects of their own characters and disclosing their fears and anxieties in alien circumstances” (6).
Despite the book’s many strengths from its well-written and comprehensive study on the cultural history of U.S. colonialism in the Philippines, colonial medicine, as well as ideas on whiteness and masculinity, I found Anderson’s lack of a Filipino voice beyond their roles as doctors, medical personnel, or patients to be a particular weakness. He focused much too entirely on the anxieties and obsessions of his white, male colonialists; not to mention, Anderson’s “protagonists” were all exclusively confined to white, male medical officers. Similar to Jonathan once again, I did see many similarities with Scott Zesch’s The Chinatown War: Chinese Los Angeles and the Massacre of 1871 as well as Ari Kelman’s A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling over the Memory of Sand Creek for all of their depictions on white American racism, prejudice, and lack of sympathy towards a group of minorities. In an effort to mitigate the fears of a “white degeneration” in the tropics, white Americans decided to civilize the Philippines and its people by training Filipinos in the hygienic disposal of feces while simultaneously labeling them as irresponsible and lacking self-restraint over their bodily fluids and defecation.
As for what I liked most about this book, Anderson’s ability to highlight the complex situation and racialized tensions between white Americans and Filipinos during the U.S. colonial rule of the Philippines in the twentieth century to be a powerful one. Race turned out to be an important factor as ideas of whiteness and masculinity occupied the mindset of many white Americans toward the natives. Using a wide range of sources from medical records, photographs, and personal accounts from white male officers as well as Filipino doctors and medical personnel, Anderson successfully incorporated the many themes of empire building, colonial medicine, race, and gender within his book.