had the idea for his latest book nearly 20 years ago.

Jung, professor of history at the 91探花, originally intended to write about why United States immigration laws targeted Asians and radicals. But as he researched, the book transformed into a project about why Asian radicals, specifically, were targeted by the U.S. government.

In 鈥�,鈥� released in February by the University of California Press, Jung works to 鈥渢race both the colonial violence and the anti-colonial rage that the United States spread across the Pacific between the Philippine-American War and World War II.鈥�

Asian radicals, Jung said, organized and confronted the U.S. empire and were labeled criminally seditious as a result.

鈥淲hat the argument of the book ultimately became,鈥� Jung said, 鈥渋s that all these transpacific movements against the U.S. empire gave birth to what we now know as the U.S. national security state, a state that is driven to monitor and suppress those movements across the Pacific.鈥�

91探花News sat down with Jung to discuss his book.

Q: 聽People will often assert that racism is un-American, but you鈥檝e said that assertion contradicts U.S. history. How is that illustrated in your book?

MJ: Many of the justifications for empire have revolved around race.

Just to give you an example, the U.S. claimed sovereignty over the Philippines through the Spanish-American War, but Filipino revolutionaries had been waging war against the Spanish empire. Spanish forces decided to surrender to the U.S. instead of to the Filipino revolutionaries. When the U.S. purchased the Philippines from Spain for $20 million in 1898, Filipinos were not happy. They were not grateful. They didn鈥檛 want another colonial master.

The Philippine-American War, which is separate from the Spanish-American War, began in 1899. It was a bloody war, and it became deeply racialized. Filipinos 鈥� particularly any person who objected to U.S. invasion and occupation 鈥� were racialized as the enemy and called racial slurs.

Filipinos came to be racialized through the process of U.S. colonization as being fit for only two things: You can confront the U.S. empire and face death and mass annihilation, or you can have colonial tutelage, where the U.S. would come in and teach you about 鈥渃ivilization鈥� and 鈥渄emocracy.鈥� The war set up this racial dynamic where Filipinos were deemed backward and inferior.

Q: Your book seems particularly relevant due to the recent increase in anti-Asian violence. How is it related?

MJ: The greater attention to anti-Asian violence is warranted. I think we need to reckon with the individual acts of horrific violence that have gained a lot of attention over the last year and a half. I鈥檓 not dismissing or discounting that attention at all. At the same time, we need to be thinking critically about where that sentiment comes from. Why do people feel so justified in spewing anti-Asian hatred and committing acts of anti-Asian violence?

How does that relate to my book? On April 4, 1967 鈥� one year before he was assassinated 鈥� Martin Luther King Jr. gave his remarkable speech against the Vietnam War. He called the U.S. government 鈥渢he greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.鈥� For that speech, he would be vilified.

I think that speech serves as a good reminder that there really has been no greater force behind anti-Asian violence than the U.S. government. I believe King was right on the mark, and I believe that the U.S. government remains the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.

Go back to the Philippine-American War that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Filipinos. Since then, the U.S. government has been responsible for the killing of millions of people in Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. I think that is such a crucial context in which we should be thinking about and talking about anti-Asian violence.

Q: What do you hope readers take away from this book?

MJ: We need to recognize the U.S. for what it is. It has always been an empire claiming sovereignty over lands and peoples unilaterally and willing to commit violence to secure those claims. Hopefully another takeaway is that people have always resisted against that empire. The book is largely about how different peoples from Asia or in Asia have confronted, exposed and challenged the U.S. empire.

How are we teaching American history? How are we thinking about it? I would say you cannot teach or really engage with U.S. history if you ignore empire. If we are truly interested in justice, if we are truly interested in pursuing democracy, then I don’t think we can get there without reckoning with empire.

For more information, contact Jung at mhjung@uw.edu.

is an associate professor of history and editor of the book “,” published by 91探花 Press. He answered a few questions about the book.

Q: What is the concept behind this book and how did it come to be written?

A: In May 2011, when I was directing the , we hosted a major conference that sought to center the Pacific Coast in the study of race and politics, in part because the American West tends to be ignored in conversations about race.

But we know that the “left coast” has had a profound impact on movements for racial justice 鈥� from the Industrial Workers of the World and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union to the Black Panther Party and the Third World Liberation Front strikes. These movements also generated violent responses, including state repression, that reverberated across the United States and around the world. The collection, which grew out of that conference, represents a preliminary attempt to make sense of that wider history of race, state violence, and radical movements on the Pacific Coast and across the Pacific.

Q: You note Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s 1963 “, which expresses hope that America will “rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed,” calling it a “highly seductive” but “fatally flawed” image of the United States and of King. How is the image flawed, and what is the reality?

A: Don鈥檛 get me wrong, I think “I Have a Dream” was a remarkably effective and moving speech. But we have to be careful not to limit King and his political vision to that single speech. As I tell my students every January, spend a little time reading, watching, or listening to King’s later speeches.

If you listen to his incredible speech voicing his opposition to the Vietnam War, you can’t but recognize that King’s critique ran much deeper than what we’re accustomed to hearing every year on MLK Day.

Calling the U.S. government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” and speaking as a “citizen of the world,” he identified with the poor in Vietnam and in the U.S. For King and many others, working toward racial justice meant embracing a sense of belonging beyond the U.S. nation-state and confronting the violent machinations of that state.

In contrast, I think the history of race in the U.S. has been domesticated and sanitized to the degree that King’s radical, global vision has become largely illegible. Beginning with Reconstruction in the 1860s and culminating in civil rights legislation in the 1960s, the U.S. state has seemingly stepped forward to advance and sanctify America’s supposed commitment to racial equality and racial justice. The federal government finally mustered a national resolve to defeat racism once and for all, to enforce desegregation on a reluctant South, so the story goes.

That historical depiction, in turn, has been essential to making the U.S. state appear nonracial and even anti-racist across time. Many of the essays in the collection challenge that romanticized and simplifying narrative. The U.S. government, they remind us, has been a central embodiment and agent of white supremacy. And movements across the Pacific make that history of race and state violence pointedly clear.

Q: Your review of race, freedom and state violence in the 19^th and early 20th centuries touches on some dark but familiar themes 鈥� intervention abroad, surveillance of populations, an admitted torture called “the water cure.” How, so far, does the 21^st century compare?聽

A: Rather than comparing the past and the present, let me point out the intimate connections between the past and the present (or the recent past). We are living with the legacies of the past.

One quick example: In October 2003, in an official visit to the Philippines and in a global campaign to justify his invasion of Iraq, President George W. Bush announced to the people of the Philippines, with no sense of irony, that the U.S. had “liberated the Philippines from colonial rule.” He conveniently forgot to recall the bloody (1899-1902), in which U.S. troops practiced the “water cure,” and the U.S. colonial rule over the Philippines until 1946. That’s truly messed up. Bush turned to a colonial war from a century ago 鈥� although he did not remember it as such 鈥� to justify his so-called “war on terror.”

It’s depressing and tragic, but many of the historical issues we address in the collection 鈥� racist immigration laws and policies, antiradical repression, police brutality, mass incarceration, and imperial wars 鈥� resonate all too clearly with our current moment.

Q: You write, “I hope our collection serves as a resounding call for new histories, geographies and identities toward building new radical possibilities in the 21^st century.” Briefly, what do you envision those possibilities being like?聽

A: The collection is not only about how depressing the past and the present are. It鈥檚 also very much about the very creative and ingenious ways that human beings have imagined and pursued a radically different world.

I鈥檓 not sure what the future holds, but I’m sure that we鈥檙e living through a critical moment that demands better understandings of the past to guide us forward. As George Lipsitz puts it in his essay, “Times of crisis, ferment, and upheaval produce new perceptions, personalities and politics.”

The movement against state violence in the wake of , I think, is an example of what Lipsitz is talking about. As we move forward, I hope we can be critical and creative in how we frame and interpret the past and the present.

• assistant professor in 91探花Bothell’s School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, was among the contributors to this book, with a chapter titled “Black Power and Slavery in 1970s California Prison Radicalism.”

“” is the title of the History Lecture Series featuring four 91探花faculty, each discussing slavery from a different angle. The lectures will be from 7 to 9 p.m. on Oct. 23 and 30 and Nov. 6 and 13. The first three will be in 130 Kane Hall, the fourth next door in 120 Kane.

Lynn Thomas, professor and chair of the department, said the series notes the 150^th anniversary of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

“The core message of the series is that slavery and freedom have been foundational to the making of the United States,” Thomas said. “Not just in the years surrounding the Civil War but over our entire history. A set of four amazing 91探花faculty will tell this story.”

Oct. 23: , “Ancient Roman Slavery and American Slavery.” Slaveholders from colonial times through the 19^th century in the United States often aspired to emulate Ancient Rome as a civilization. But how did the Romans themselves conceive and institutionalize slavery? And how did their understanding of freedom hinge on the development of a slave system?

Oct. 30: , “Slavery, Race and the Origins of American Freedom.” Slavery was key to European colonization of America, but how could it flourish in the revolutionary world of the late 18th century? Haiti and the United States provide contrasting examples.

Nov. 6: , “Slavery: Antebellum America鈥檚 National Institution.” Slavery was not just a southern institution but a national one, and wealth produced by the enslaved helped to deepen the U.S. commitment to slavery in the 19^th century.

Nov. 13: , “Race, Empire, and Post-Emancipation Struggles for Freedom.” Race continued to define access to citizenship even after the U.S. abolished slavery. What have been the limitations and contradictions of emancipation in the decades following the Thirteenth Amendment, and how have different peoples and movements struggled for freedom after emancipation?

for lectures are $5-$10, full series $15-$35. For more information, call 206-543-5790.