| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

American Empire and the Politics of Meaning: Elite Political Cultures in the Philippines and Puerto Rico during U.S. Colonialism. By Julian Go. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008. xii, 377 pp. Cloth, $84.95, ISBN 978-0-8223-4211-3. Paper, $23.95, ISBN 978-0-8223-4229-8.)

It is an old story, yet one whose principal lesson still eludes the United States: vanquished nations rarely respond predictably to their conquerors' notions of positive national transformation. Self-proclaimed liberators have proven no more immune to this phenomenon than conquerors transparently motivated by potential gain. So it was in both the Philippines and Puerto Rico in 1898 when the United States proclaimed their liberation from "the Spanish yoke" and set about transforming both into American-style democratic states. In placing the first decade or so of this endeavor into comparative historical perspective, Julian Go has made a significant contribution to the study of the too rarely examined American empire, and imperial encounters generally, as well as to comparative cultural theory.

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