Awards

• Winner of <DIV>Best Book Award in History, Filipino Section of the Association for Asian American Studies, 2018.</DIV> 2018

Overview

In the early 1900s, workers from new U.S. colonies in the Philippines and Puerto Rico held unusual legal status. Denied citizenship, they nonetheless had the right to move freely in and out of U.S. jurisdiction. As a result, Filipinos and Puerto Ricans could seek jobs in the United States and its territories despite the anti-immigration policies in place at the time.   JoAnna Poblete's Islanders in the Empire: Filipino and Puerto Rican Laborers in Hawai'i takes an in-depth look at how the two groups fared in a third new colony, Hawai'i. Using plantation documents, missionary records, government documents, and oral histories, Poblete analyzes how the workers interacted with Hawaiian government structures and businesses, how U.S. policies for colonial workers differed from those for citizens or foreigners, and how policies aided corporate and imperial interests.   A rare tandem study of two groups at work on foreign soil, Islanders in the Empire offers a new perspective on American imperialism and labor issues of the era.

Full Product Details

9780252082610

Table of Contents

Reviews

Deeply rooted in archival sources, oral histories, and written with concise prose, Poblete does a remarkable job situation Hawai'i, Puerto Rico and the Philippines in the context of U.S. empire in the Pacific and the Caribbean. She illustrates how U.S. expansion into these regions was vital for it to produce a global imperial machine that circulated not just soldiers and weapons between colonial outposts, but laborers. --<i>The Hawaiian Journal of History</i> Unique in its comparativefocus on labor migration among U.S. colonies, it is essential reading for those interested in the Filipinos and Puerto Ricans in Hawai'i during the first four decades of the twentieth century. --<i>New West Indian Guide</i>

Poblete's skills as a deft historian weave personal everyday stories with historical structural and policy analysis in ways that are exceptionally nuanced and deeply illuminating. --Rick Bonus, author of Locating Filipino Americans: Ethnicity and the Cultural Politics of Space A finely researched book... Through its exploration of the nuanced realities of intracolonial migration and existence, the book is a highly valuable addition to the historiography of US imperialism and of labour relations in the Progressive Era, which will also be of particular interest to students of Hawaiian, Puerto Rican, and Philippine history. --Journal of American Studies An innovative approach that adds nuance to our knowledge of Hawai'i's immigrant workers... Poblete is successful in shifting our attention to empire and away from insular island accounts of Hawaiian history, and in the process offers ideas for new questions about Hawai'i's place in a much wider American colonial project. --American Historical Review Islanders in the Empire connects the imperial experiences of three groups of subjected peoples to each other, thereby exposing the long-term and widespread consequences of U.S. expansionism across time and geographic locations. --Western Historical Quarterly Deeply rooted in archival sources, oral histories, and written with concise prose, Poblete does a remarkable job situation Hawai'i, Puerto Rico and the Philippines in the context of U.S. empire in the Pacific and the Caribbean. She illustrates how U.S. expansion into these regions was vital for it to produce a global imperial machine that circulated not just soldiers and weapons between colonial outposts, but laborers. --The Hawaiian Journal of History Unique in its comparative focus on labor migration among U.S. colonies, it is essential reading for those interested in the Filipinos and Puerto Ricans in Hawai'i during the first four decades of the twentieth century. --New West Indian Guide

Author Information

JoAnna Poblete is an assistant professor of history at the University of Wyoming.

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