Nation-building efforts by the United States and the international community have led to both success and failure, overwhelming support and debilitating controversy. Some are motivated by national security interests; others by humanitarian concerns. They seem to have exploded since the end of the Cold War but in fact have long been used as a foreign policy tool. What they all have in common is a substantial investment of troops, treasure and time. There is no formula--each operation is unique, with lessons to be learned and trends noted. Examining the history of America's experience, this book describes the mechanisms behind what often appears to be a haphazard enterprise.

In 1904, renowned architect Daniel Burnham, the Progressive Era urban planner who famously “Made No Little Plans,” set off for the Philippines, the new US colonial acquisition. Charged with designing environments for the occupation government, Burnham set out to convey the ambitions and the dominance of the regime, drawing on neo-classical formalism for the Pacific colony. The spaces he created, most notably in the summer capital of Baguio, gave physical form to American rule and its contradictions. In American Imperial Pastoral, Rebecca Tinio McKenna examines the design, construction, and use of Baguio, making visible the physical shape, labor, and sustaining practices of the US’s new empire—especially the dispossessions that underwrote market expansion. In the process, she demonstrates how colonialists conducted market-making through state-building and vice-versa. Where much has been made of the racial dynamics of US colonialism in the region, McKenna emphasizes capitalist practices and design ideals—giving us a fresh and nuanced understanding of the American occupation of the Philippines.