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A settling rhetoric: Jeff Branson, Examining the Role of Rhetoric in Settler Colonialism and Imperialism Through the Occupations of the Shoshone Peoples of Western North America and of the Philippines, MA dissertation, Harvard University, 2024

13May24

Abstract: This thesis seeks to determine the role of rhetoric in the American process of occupation that includes Settler Colonialism and Imperialism. I explore the connection between these two ideas using an example of each: the United States’ occupation of the tribal territory of the Shoshone peoples of North America as an example of Settler Colonialism and the United States’ occupation of the Philippines as an example of Imperialism. I examine the contributions of rhetoric to these processes of occupation and describe each process. This thesis expands upon the basic research of Walter L. Williams, who posited that the occupation of the Philippines was an expansion of the earlier “Indian Policy.” While the terminologies of “Settler Colonialism” and “Imperialism” were not used by Williams (in fact were not formed to the degree they are today at the time he published his work), modern scholars such as Paul A. Kramer and Julian Go have explored the use of these terms. I argue that all three authors describe a similar occupational process and that rhetoric from both the American government and from the press was a key part of executing each occupation. Most of my research on the connection to rhetoric comes from primary sources: newspaper articles, presidential speeches, Congressional arguments, and military briefs that describe both types of occupation. I demonstrate how using rhetoric to frame the story was one key to justifying the occupation while also describing the belief system that produced it. I depict how the rhetoric of a unified American process of occupation used internal, external, and press sources to lay out the steps to justify an occupation. First, the occupied nation is characterized as weak and incapable of managing its land, resources, and population; it is deemed in need of either reestablishment or civilization by the Americans. Next, as the occupation takes shape and the occupied peoples resist, the depiction of them changes; the centers of information paint them as bloodthirsty, almost inhuman sources of danger that need to be quelled. Finally, once resistors inside the occupied nation are incapacitated (either through death, capture, or threat of both), the initial characterization of hapless native peoples returns, and the rhetorical channels depict the benevolence of the United States to help them. As a result of my research, I outline a unified rhetorical process called American Occupation, with branching outcomes: American Settler Colonialism and American Imperialism. These differing outcomes are essentially based on (1) whether the goal of occupation was to expand the physical border of the United States by relocating the occupied peoples and settling their lands, as in Settler Colonialism, or (2) expanding the ideological border of the United States by controlling the occupied peoples and altering their lives to be more aligned with an American image, as in Imperialism. While these end goals differ, the occupational process that approaches them is unified, and the rhetoric that surrounds it is consistent.


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