Allan E. S. Lumba is a writer, researcher, and teacher of the Philippines and the world. His book, Monetary Authorities: Capitalism and Decolonization in the American Colonial Philippines from Duke University Press, is out now.

You can get a free digital version with this link.

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You can get a free digital version with this link. 〰️

 

Monetary Authorities explores how the United States used monetary policy and banking systems to justify racial and class hierarchies, enforce capitalist exploitation, and counter movements for decolonization in the American colonial Philippines. Lumba shows that colonial economic experts justified American imperial authority by claiming that Filipinos did not possess the racial capacities to properly manage money. Financial independence, then, became a key metric of racial capitalism by which Filipinos had to prove their ability to self-govern. At the same time, the colonial state used its monetary authority to police the economic activities of colonized subjects and to curb movements for decolonization. It later offered a conditional form of decolonization that left the Philippines reliant on U.S. financial institutions. By showing how imperial governance was entwined with the racialization and regulation of monetary systems in the Philippines, Lumba illuminates a key mechanism through which the United States securitized the imperial world order.

“Monetary Authorities is a stringent, riveting account of the important role of currency controls in the expansion of US imperial rule and racial capitalism. Allan E. S. Lumba’s work incisively details how currency stabilization, economic security, financial regulation, and fiscal discipline are key normative instruments of racial subjugation, political pacification, and counter-decolonization. A crucial, powerful intervention reminding us of the politics of everyday transactions at the level of small change.”

— Neferti X. M. Tadiar, author of Remaindered Life

“In this innovative and outstanding book, Allan E. S. Lumba tells a dynamic story of the transformation of ideas and practices concerning the organization of the Philippine monetary system in the long transition between colonialism and independence. His granular historical and economic account provides a powerful rejoinder to those histories of US imperialism wherein the imperial peripheries and imperialism’s subjects are merely the backdrop for an exploration of the metropolitan self. Making a signal contribution to discussions of racial capitalism, economics, business and financial history, and American studies Monetary Authorities stands alone.”

— Peter James Hudson, author of Bankers and Empire: How Wall Street Colonized the Caribbean

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Monetary Authorities reviewed in Diplomatic History
Monetary Authorities reviewed in American Quarterly
Monetary Authorities reviewed in Pacific Affairs