Asian World Podcast: Exploring History and Culture with Dr. Michael Hawkins · Professor Michael Hawkins, Ph.D

A Reading: “David Barrows and Perceptions of Historical Consciousness in the Colonial Philippines”

·24 min·2 clips

Americans believed modernity required Filipinos to perceive time like a mountain peak, gazing down on humanity's upward path.

This episode features Dr. Michael Hawkins reading his 2012 academic article about David Barrows and historical consciousness in the colonial Philippines. The reading examines the philosophical underpinnings of American nation-building in the archipelago. Dr. Hawkins argues the U.S. project was fundamentally an effort to instill a modern, historical consciousness in Filipinos. The analysis centers on David Prescott Barrows, the General Superintendent of Education and Chief of the Bureau of Non-Christian Tribes, and his 1905 book *A History of the Philippines*. Americans viewed modernity not just as technological or political advancement but as a specific temporal consciousness—an understanding of one's place in a universal, progressive timeline. Colonial policies aimed to shift Filipino spatial and temporal perspectives from the local to the national and finally to the universal. Barrows believed Filipinos existed in a "debilitating ahistorical stasis," a condition linked to their localized political structures under Spanish rule. A core American objective was to cultivate a "modern temporal consciousness" so Filipinos would willingly accept colonial tutelage. Barrows’s history textbook was designed not for factual accuracy but to teach Filipinos their relative position in world history. The concept posited that "historical" life for so-called "backward races" began only with contact with "advanced" races like Europeans or Chinese. Resistance to colonialism, per this view, stemmed from the humiliation of confronting one's temporal inadequacies. Barrows urged Filipino students to accept these "humiliating" truths to advance. The episode references scholar Dipesh Chakrabarty's point that history is a compulsory form of consciousness in modernity. American colonizers used a temporal hierarchy, more than crude racism, to explain human difference and validate their own modern identity. Colonized peoples served as embodiments of "anachronism," necessary for the colonizer to affirm their own superior temporal standing. The analysis notes that even Filipino scholars like Samuel Tan, seeking to decolonize history, sometimes reinforce the need for a synthesized national narrative. The tone is academic and lecture-style, presenting a dense, theoretical historical argument. The delivery is clear and measured, directly from the author's published journal article. Listeners interested in the intellectual history of colonialism, postcolonial theory, and U.S.-Philippine relations will find this episode compelling. Those seeking narrative storytelling or casual conversation might find its scholarly density challenging.

As heard by us

Colonial rule is recast as a fight over time, consciousness, and power.

Asian World Podcast treats Michael C. Hawkins' reading of David Barrows as more than a lesson in colonial administration. It frames empire as a contest over time as much as control, opening on the United States nation-building project in the Colonial Philippines and returning to…

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Why you'd press play

When you want empire explained as a fight over time, not just territory.

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