The Goldbugs Go Global: The Philippines, China, and the Foundations of Development

Abstract

While historians have recently called attention to the racial assumptions that shaped the debates over monetary reform in either the colonial Philippines or China during the first years of the twentieth century, this essay analyzes the crosscurrents between efforts to “civilize” and “develop” Filipino and Chinese monetary systems. It first examines the history of the Philippine money question (1899–1903), revealing anxieties about the apparent attachment Native Filipinos and Chinese had to silver currency. U.S. colonial officials were ambivalent toward the Native Filipinos, seeing them as possibly teachable, but so-called silver savagism was seen as too deeply engrained in the Chinese community, making the Chinese appear as a threat to monetary stability. In the last section, the article turns to China, revealing how the outcome of the Philippine money question shaped how U.S. monetary experts approached their efforts to reform China’s monetary system. Throughout this process, U.S. colonial officials and monetary experts defined the Philippines and China (“silver countries”) and Filipinos and Chinese (“silver-handling types”) as overlapping objects of development. This analysis reveals how development was simultaneously an economic, racial, and imperial language.