ABSTRACT
Over the course of just half a year, a catastrophic volcanic eruption and an unexpected political victory would come to act upon and dramatically alter the location of Subic Bay in the Philippines. As a consequence, the annus mirabilis of 1991 brought a (temporary) end to more than a century of US tutelage for the Philippines. Subic Bay, an area that had been economically, politically and socially dependent on the patronage of the US Navy, was now undergoing major transformations. The land and infrastructure left behind by the Americans were turned into the Philippines' largest special economic zone, becoming the vanguard platform that allowed for the introduction of an “overheated” form of economic globalization into the Philippines. Amongst the foreign direct investors now active in Subic, a South Korean shipbuilder has become a new hegemon, building a giant shipyard inside the bay that today employs 34,000 Filipino workers. Paying particular attention to how contested gendered relations between foreign sailors and the local population have come “to build this city” during the cold war, the rapidly urbanizing Subic Bay area is analysed through what I call “navy nostalgia”: the widespread, yet rather equivocal longing for the return of the US Navy that needs to be read in light of the recent arrival of the South Korean shipbuilder.
