I am exploring the intersection of land policy and the cultural, social and political history of Guam, focusing on the US imperial project from the late-19th to mid-20th century. The overriding value of the territory to the US has been its strategic location in the Western Pacific. The martial logic of possessing the island has exerted a gravitational pull on the island's economic geography, as land owned by the indigenous Chamorro has gradually been transferred to the US govt/ military, through "conquer," tax default, eminent domain and outright purchase.

This process of acquisition is significant given traditional Chamorro conceptualizations of land. It has been imputed mythic/ religious importance as part of the spiritual fabric of the community. In addition, the Chamorro typically assigned collective ownership to village property. Thus, capitalization of land -- and with it, fragmentation -- has been a catalyst in Guam's transformation from an interdependent to an increasingly nuclear/ individualistic society. I also intend to look at some of the symptoms of this transition, e.g. an exponential increase in rates of youth "delinquency" (a word/ notion previously not part of the Chamorro lexicon in "pre-contact" Guam). I also intend to examine how land dislocation traces Guam's transition from a primarily agricultural economy to one based on tourism and serving the needs of the US military. I am looking for parallels between Guam's coloring as a geopolitical nexus and that of the Caribbean islands in the 17th century Atlantic world, e.g. conceptualizing military capability as a unit of economic/ political utility a la sugar.

In the earlier part of the 20th century, land fragmentation/ dislocation mostly reflected a tax on land aimed to divide inefficiently large land tracts and tend to economies of scale in local agriculture. This tax has largely been characterized as unsuccessful. In part because the tax didn't accurately respond to market values, making default common. However, I'm also interested in the application of the "release of energy" principle to the Pacific context. For example, one question I'm thinking about is if the "release" principle is historically contingent or requires a certain economic/ political culture, e.g. in the way that some political theorists contend democracy requires a given level of civic association. Maybe Guam's traditional flavor as a status-oriented, communal society is less receptive to market forces in real estate.

Another legal policy of interest, connecting land dislocation to the capitalization of Guam's economy, is the devaluation/ under-valuation of locally-held land and the "triple wage system" effected until the second half of the 20th century (Chamorro were mandated to receive lower wages than locally-hired "Americans" or Americans brought from the continental US). It's interesting that the Guamanian standard of living and purchasing power were purposely limited by the US govt. I hope to tend closer to Edmund Morgan's brand of historical materialism than a Leninist-imperialist modality, but these sorts of policies do reflect a kind of imperialist attitude to their own territory from the United States.

By mid-century, less than half of Guam's land was privately owned by Chamorro. The island was also devastated by fighting in the Pacific Theatre during World War 2. As a result, many locals were without land. Again, their situation was exacerbated by the fact that written deeds etc were not historically part of the legal culture of property. I also intend to write on how debate over land claims was important to the passing of the Organic Act of 1950, a culmination of protests for Guamanian political autonomy.

Still, the Chamorro adapted well to structural changes in land use. Modifications in Chamarro architecture/ building constuction are indicative of their attempt to maintain a communitarian social ethos despite fragmentation, e.g. use of open space or courtyards to invite public intercourse.

My intuition thus far is that Guam's legal-social development doesn't so much reflect a concerted US policy, but perhaps the opposite. Generally Washington DC was simply indifferent to Guam, e.g. as suggested by its status as an uncorporated territory. In a way, this sort of silent re-structuring of Guamanian society was more upsetting to the Chamarro. I may look briefly at this motif, with respect to Guamanian poetry centered on land and un-status, as well as some nomenclature issues, e.g. relate to Iriquois, "boondocks" from Tagalog.

So far I've looked mainly at secondary sources, anthologies of primary sources (Chamarro perspectives; legislative debate and history) and some primary docs of the US govt describing land and legal contexts of the island. Some of the primary sources border on memoir - I wonder if I should include some discussion of the relationship of memory to history.

Some sources: An Island in Agony, Tony Palomo (Self-published, 1984) Guam: A Nomenclatural Chronology, Marjorie G. Driver (Micronesian Area Research Center, University of Guam, 1985) Destiny's Landfall: A History of Guam, Robert F. Rogers (Univ of Hawai'i Press, 1995) Justice on Guam: A Historical Review, Anthony P. Sanchez Insights: The Chamorro Identity, anthology (published by Political Status Education Coordinating Commission as Mandated by Public Law 20-99, 1993) We Fought the Navy and Won, A Personal Memoir, Doloris Coulter Cogan (Univ of Hawai'i Press, 2008) A Complete History of Guam, Paul Carano and Pedro C. Sanchez (Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1964) Issues in Guam's Political Development: The Chamorro Perspective, anthology (published by Political Status Education Coordinating Commission as Mandated by Public Law 20-99, 1996) Archaeology and History of Guam (National Park Service, Dept of the Interior 1952) A Study of 8 post-WW2 Resettlement Villages on Guam, Rosalind L. Hunter-Anderson and Darlene R. Moore (prepared for Dept of Parks and Recreation, Division of Historic Resources, Guam, 2006) Land Tenure in the Pacific, anthology (University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji, 1987) Guam's Trial of the Century: News, Hegemony and Rumor in the American Colony, Peter DeBeneditis? (Praeger, 1993) A Campaign for Political Rights on the Island of Guam, 1899-1950, Penelope Bordallo Hofschieder (CNMI Division of Historic Preservation, 2001) Colonizing Hawai'i: The Cultural Power of Law, Sally Engle Merry (Princeton University Press, 2000)

• I think the problem here, Andrew, is that you haven't focused your inquiry enough to ask an actual question, one with a question mark at the end, that primary sources can help you to answer. You're essentially collecting material for an anthropology monograph on the cultural change associated with US colonization of Guam. That's too large a task for you in this place, and doesn't give enough structure to your inquiry. This is one of the differences between historical inquiry and other forms of social understanding: historical writing takes as its primary object the ascertainment of what has happened. It can be, indeed must be, understood as an interpretive activity: one of our most distinguished historians spent an entire career urging graduate students to "explain a change." But the task of explanation begins from the detailed characterization of the "change," which is a chartable social process unrolling in time.

• Moreover, we're trying to do legal history, so understanding the legal aspect of the process that concerns us, whatever it is, is salient. The most useful thing you can do, I think, is to ask yourself what question your sources are going to be used to answer. That in hand, you will make rapid progress.

Structural Change?

From 1898 to the mid-1950s, when the US first assumed "absolute dominion" of Guam per the Treaty of Paris, the Chamorro population evolved from being almost exclusively agricultural - marked by a decentralized peopling of the island in the form of a network of "village" or communal living arrangements, centered in a corpatist-collectivist ethos of governance - to a more urban, tertiary economy concomitant with nuclear-family living arrangements. At first blush, these brush strokes tend to the notion of a "structural transformation," a heuristic in development economics meant to capture the process whereby the engine or motive force of a developing country is re-positioned from a traditional elite/ peasant binary model of food production to an educated middle-class capable of sustaining a post-agricultural dynamic. However, Guam in the 1940s or 1950s could not be described as industrial. In fact, it was government policy to purposely inhibit the economic development of the island. The US viewed Guamanian economic self-sufficiency (which effectively requires trade for a small island nation) as incompatible with the martial logic of possessing Guam, as a fortress or "Galapogos" (Cite) in the security nexus of the Western Pacific. Rather this demographic change from rural, collecivist to semi-rural, nuclear is better understood as tracking the land law of Guam during the firt half of the century. My inquiry takes shape along the following questions:

*Why or to what benefit did the US government enact its land policies in Guam?

*And how did land agitation intersect with Guamanian movements for emancipation from martial rule?

Legal-Political Compass

Guam was surrendered to the US following the Spanish-American War, in accord with the Treaty of Paris. Article IX of that treaty stated:

Article IX. The civil rights and political status of the native inhabitants of the territories hereby ceded to the United States shall be determined by Congress.

Executive Order 108-A later placed Guam under the control of the Navy. On 12 January 1899 Navy Secretary Long selected Captain Richard P. Leary as naval governor. Leary received the following instructions:

"Within the absolute domain of naval authority, which necessarily is and must remain supreme in the ceded territory untill the legislation of the U.S. shall otherwise provide, the municipal [i.e. Spanish, better characterized as punitive Spanish laws] laws of the territory ... are to be considered as continuing in force ... the mission of the United States is one of benevolent assimilation, substituting the mild sway of justice and right for arbitrary rule. In fulfillment of this high mission ... there must be sedulously maintained the strong arm of authority ..."

from Destiny's Landfall, 114.

The language here is ominous. Phrases like benevolent assimilation evoke images of the same benevolent despotism of early modern Europe. And "assimilation" reminds one of e.g. the forced adoption policies of indigenous Aboriginal populations in Australia. With the only condition on American military governance being the poetic, though nebulous compass of the "sway of justice" it is not surprising that e.g. later Captain Leary would pontificate to his marine servicemen with brutal sincerity such things as "I have the law. I am supreme." (in the tenor of the benevolent despotism of Louis XIV)

However, what should be emphasized is that Congress per the Treaty of Paris did have power, that they could have imposed a corrective to the problems of military rule. eg due process, equal treatment, land

Equally important in shaping the legal-political framework of the island was the aggregate holding of the Insular Cases at the turn-of-the-century.

cite

(note Harlan dissent)

Not only were there distinctions made between territories identified as "organized" or "unorganized" but also between those that were "incorporated" or "unincorporated" (unincorporated territories are not meant to become states, Guam remains such a territory). Guam's identification as an unorganized, unincorporated territory meant that it was substantially outside the scope of the Constitution. Some historians have considered race to be the main factor in this denial of constitutional protections. Although I agree that there were certainly elements of racism in American rule of Guam (evidenced by eg the tenor of the Insular Cases, Guamanian segregation in jobs, housing, miscegenation laws -- that were still not taken very seriously by young servicemen -- and dual wage systems), race could not have been the dispositive factor in determining why the Chamorro were not permitted to be citizens, given the comparative fact that Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands were both granted US citizenship by the 1920s. It would seem that this same racist thinking or legal ontology would affect all of these similarly situated parties. Instead, my intuition is that the main reason Congress did not try to moderate or overrule the Insular Cases vis-a-vis Guam was simply that they were indifferent to or unaware of Guam's plight, an example of "out of sight, out of mind" thinking given their remote distance across the Pacific.

Although I've come across different petitions from Guamanians to Congress, I haven't really identified any sources of Congress discussing whether to give Guam citizenship. The situation is sort of the reciprocal of the 1763 Emancipation Proclamation, where a lack of historical evidence could be attributed to Appalachin setters simply ignoring the law. Here, the rulemakers themselves ignored the Insular Cases and their connection to Guam, to the frustration of those ruled.

Often Guamanians' frustration with martial rule centered on land issues, and were tied to cultural aspects of property law on the island.

*Land Tax not scaled to Guamanian economy - default, acquisition by Navy/ government; Board of Appraisement determined land prices in early 1900s, but prices outpaced market value or income (Souder 213)

*Prevalence of unsurveyed land or inadequately surveyed land - provided scope for government to take advantage of ambiguities in Guamanian land holdings

*Lack of a money economy; more generally collectivist notions of property - not yet a Keynesian value imputed to money as money, but in Guam only the land itself had meaning, e.g. compensation for eminent domain/ war damage not particularly helpful

This matrix contributed to disparate examples of Guamanians being uprooted.

An early example of the type of Catch-22 situations that enveloped the Chamarro; in 1899, military governor/ Captain Leary issued "General Order No. 15," which required all landowners to register any land they wanted to have recognized by the new government. One historian describes the effective Hobson's choice:

"General Order No. 15 forced the Chamorros to make a choice: either register their properties accurately and lose them because they could not pay the taxes, or not register their lands and lose them because they were not properly registered ... when the naval government began finding 'mistakes' in the declaration of lot sizes, it began registering the lands as government property. Some of these declarations of 'Crown' land took place over 35 years after the U.S. took possession of Guam from Spain." (see Issues in Guam's Political Development: The Chamorro Perspective, 5).

More to come:

• parkservice1952.pdf: parkservice1952.pdf

• island_in_agony.pdf: island_in_agony.pdf

• land_tenure_in_pacific.pdf: land_tenure_in_pacific.pdf

• navy1926.pdf: navy1926.pdf

• navy1947.pdf: navy1947.pdf

• navy1948.pdf: navy1948.pdf

• nomenclature.pdf: nomenclature.pdf

• KIC000014.pdf: post-WW2 resettlement and history of housing

• walkout.pdf: article on Guam congressional walkout in 1949/ Organic Act

• land.pdf: article on land use and political history of land

• organic_act.pdf: transcription of 1950 Organic Act

• 1937_Bordallo_report.pdf: 1937_Bordallo_report.pdf