Massacre in the Clouds: An American Atrocity and the Erasure of History

(Hardback)

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In March 1906, American soldiers on the island of Jolo in the southern Philippines surrounded and killed 1000 local men, women, and children, known as Moros, on top of an extinct volcano. The so-called 'Battle of Bud Dajo' was hailed as a triumph over an implacable band of dangerous savages, a "brilliant feat of arms" according to President Theodore Roosevelt. Some contemporaries, including W.E.B. Du Bois and Mark Twain, saw the massacre for what it was, but they were the exception and the U.S. military authorities successfully managed to bury the story. Despite the fact that the slaughter of Moros had been captured on camera, the memory of the massacre soon disappeared from the historical record.

In Massacre in the Clouds, Kim A. Wagner meticulously recovers the history of a forgotten atrocity and the remarkable photograph that exposed its grim logic. His vivid, unsparing account of the massacre-which claimed hundreds more lives than Wounded Knee and My Lai combined-reveals the extent to which practices of colonial warfare and violence, derived from European imperialism, were fully embraced by Americans with catastrophic results.

Reviews

"Massacre in the Clouds is a historical tour de force. Wagner literally picked up photographic fragments documenting one of the worst massacres in American military history and meticulously reconstructed them into a landmark work on colonial violence. This unsettling yet highly readable book illuminates a blind spot in US memory that still resonates to this very day. In a clear and insightful way, Wagner gives new meaning to reading a photograph and, in doing so, disperses the clouds of amnesia that have long enveloped what happened in Bud Dajo."
--Daniel Foliard, Professor of Modern History, Universit Paris Cit
"In this painful recollection of the massacre at Bud Dajo, Kim Wagner refuses to perpetuate this omission, this lie. And for this, those of us who grew up in Mindanao island, especially our Moro brothers and sisters, are grateful to have him on our side of the barricade."
--Patricio N. Abinales, University of Hawaii-Manoa
"In this searing and haunting work, Kim A. Wagner restores the massacre at Bud Dajo to its rightful place alongside such horrors as Sand Creek, Wounded Knee, or My Lai in the long, grim history of American empire. Massacre in the Clouds is a necessary and important work that explains the past while illuminating the present."
--Karl Jacoby, author of Shadows at Dawn: A Borderlands Massacre and the Violence of History.
"Kim Wagner's Massacre in the Clouds is a rare and admirable work. Few academic historians can write such engaging prose and craft such page turning books. Equally few popular writers can conduct such meticulous and detailed research. Wagner is particularly talented at combining these two skill sets. The result is nothing short of an intellectual punch to the stomach. This is visceral storytelling and thought-provoking analysis."
--Micheal G. Vann, Professor, University of California, Sacramento

Author Bio

Kim A. Wagner is Professor of Global and Imperial History at Queen Mary, University of London. He is the author of several books, including The Skull of Alum Bheg and Amritsar 1919.