Rethinking American Colonial Rule in the Philippine Cordillera: A Review of Governor of the Cordillera: John C. Early Among the Philippine Highlanders

This review situates Shelton Woods' Governor of the Cordillera: John C. Early among the Philippine highlanders within broader historiographical debates on U.S. colonialism in the Philippines. Focusing on American governance in the Cordillera between 1906 and 1932, Woods argues that Early represented a form of "humanitarian imperialism" grounded in a professed commitment to racial equality, one that placed him at odds with the scientific racism of figures such as Dean Worcester. Drawing on the John C. Early Papers and colonial archival sources, Woods reconstructs Early's trajectory from teacher to governor of Mountain Province and contends that his administrative success derived less from formal bureaucratic structures than from personal authority, cultural immersion, and local legitimacy. Early is presented as a mediator of blood feuds, a promoter of infrastructure, and a defender of indigenous land against both American and Filipino interests. In recovering this career, Woods complicates accounts of U.S. empire as a unified ideological formation and instead foregrounds the internal tensions, uneven practices, and local relationships that shaped colonial administration. At its strongest, the study illuminates the gap between the rhetoric of the civilizing mission and the realities of highland governance. More broadly, it suggests the analytical value, and the limits, of using the "man on the spot" to rethink imperial power and its enduring political consequences in relations between the Philippine highlands and the lowland elite.