Tropical Idylls

Abstract

This chapter examines the pleasures and anxieties of American colonials as they negotiated landscapes significant with hazard. It reviews the writings of Charles Ivins and others that contain vivid depictions of how schismatic notions of the tropics and their inhabitants shaped colonial rule. It also describes the social environment of Mindanao-Sulu that laid bare the tension between the integrationist claims of the tutelary colonial state and the continued operation of racially exclusionist structures. The chapter mentions Outlook magazine journalist and playwright Atherton Brownell, who fawned over Zamboanga as a model of cleanliness and tropical picturesqueness. It notes empire builders in Mindanao-Sulu that looked to preestablished discourses on tropical architecture, sanitation, and urban planning for inspiration.