Product Description

1999 began the centennial of the Philippine War, one of the most controversial and poorly understood events in American history. The war thrust the U.S. into the center of Pacific and Asian politics, with important and sometimes tragic consequences. It kept the Filipinos under colonial overlordship for another five decades and subjected them to American political, cultural, and economic domination.

In the first comprehensive study in over six decades, Linn provides a definitive treatment of military operations in the Philippines. From the pitched battles of the early war to the final campaigns against guerrillas, Linn traces the entire course of the conflict. More than an overview of Filipino resistance and American pacification, this is a detailed study of the fighting in the "boondocks."

In addition to presenting a detailed military history of the war, Linn challenges previous interpretations. Rather than being a clash of armies or societies, the war was a series of regional struggles that differed greatly from island to island. By shifting away from the narrow focus on one or two provinces to encompass the entire archipelago, Linn offers a more thorough understanding of the entire war.

Linn also dispels many of the misunderstandings and historical inaccuracies surrounding the Philippine War. He repudiates the commonly held view of American soldiers "civilizing with a Krag" and clarifies such controversial incidents as the Balangiga Massacre and the Waller Affair.

Exhaustively researched and engagingly written, The Philippine War will become the standard reference on America's forgotten conflict and a major contribution to the study of guerrilla warfare.

This book is part of the Modern War Studies series.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #88754 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 442 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Linn, a professor of military history at the U.S. Army War College, enhances his position as the leading authority on America's military presence in the Pacific before Pearl Harbor in this well-written, comprehensively researched monograph. Without justifying the annexation itself, Linn demonstrates that the Filipino nationalists enjoyed at best limited popular support and did as much as the U.S. commanders in the islands to provoke a shooting war as an alternative to negotiation. Operationally, U.S. forces were well led, fought hard, and took advantage of repeated Filipino mistakes in both conventional and unconventional warfare. None of insurgent leader Emilio Aguinaldo's lieutenants were able to combine regular and partisan warfare effectively or to build on local successes. Linn's demonstration of the fighting power of regular troops and the short-service national volunteers who succeeded them does much to correct the bias in favor of the regulars that dominates the literature. As Linn shows, however, military success was only half of the war. Civic action was the other element of victory. The Americans built hospitals, opened schools and restored order. When necessary, they sustained that order with punitive measures, including torture. Without whitewashing individual incidents, Linn shows that both the general customs of warfare and U.S. civil and military law allowed for exponentially higher levels of physical coercion than their present-day counterparts. If the U.S. annexation of the Philippines was an exercise in imperialism, Linn makes a convincing case that by 1902 the U.S. government of the island was nevertheless legitimate both de jure and de facto. For an increasing majority of Filipinos, the Americans had become preferable to the insurgents. Illus. not seen by PW. (Feb.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Parameters
"The definitive study of this often misunderstood war."

Foreign Affairs
"A thoughtful and well-written work about a war that teaches much about the nature of revolutionary warfare—-even today."