ABSTRACT
In exceptionalist thought, the United States is considered a republic, not an empire, a dichotomy that complicates discussion of any colonial nature-state project. Within political economy, their chief function was seen as enabling capitalism to grow boundlessly. Abundant natural resources have played a key role in underpinning this political economy. With the establishment of the National Park Service, the project of identifying and protecting a unique American nature became thoroughly institutionalized in the nation-state apparatus. The educated elite, heavily Catholic and Filipino, saw national park and monument creation as important to the colonial state due to its promotion of nascent national feeling. They drew upon American national park ideas but modified them to incorporate traditional Filipino peasant mythology concerning humans and the wider natural world, and to suit a story of heroic resistance to both European and American imperialism.
