The cost is sworn to by women: Gender, resistance, and counterinsurgency during the Philippine-American War, 1898-1902

During the Philippine-American War, the U.S. Army innovated gendered tactics to suppress native resistance, making control of female populations essential to military operations. I argue in this dissertation that Progressive Era American ideas of masculinity and femininity influenced counterinsurgency development from 1898 to 1902, shaping resistance and violence in the Philippines while setting the future course of U.S. military doctrine. An analysis of civilian resistance and U.S. counterinsurgency reveals key tactical drivers, including native female mobility, kinship networks, wage work, reproductive labor, portable wealth, and access to legal systems. Despite female support for local Filipino guerrillas, American soldiers' attention to these drivers often stabilized villages, enhanced intelligence collection platforms, targeted high value individuals, and provided access to civilian infrastructure. However, this approach also placed the minds, bodies, and labor of women at the center of a violent struggle, providing additional challenges for security operations. U.S. strategic leaders acknowledged clear indicators of indigenous female participation in the war, but could not reconcile gender issues into an overarching military policy. Ultimately, the ad hoc U.S. counterinsurgency was unsuccessful in establishing long term stability in the Philippines.