‘Guamanian’ in Many Senses: Re-Examining the History of Guam Through Hierarchies

Abstract

The U.S. Naval-era on Guam, characterized as a period in the island's history where the U.S. Navy appointed all-powerful naval governors to rule Guam with little oversight or checks to their power, stretches from 1898 to 1950. The history of the Naval-era on Guam is often presented through a simplified 'binary' history, split between an American presence and the consequences it had on the indigenous CHamoru people. In this senior thesis, I try to take a more multi-faceted approach to the Naval-era on Guam, uncovering splits between Washington, DC and the Naval Governor, alongside the ways power was also negotiated through nuanced lines as class, race, and labor. This thesis then shows that Guam, during the U.S. Naval-era, developed a very complex power structure where surface-level designations were often divorced from the ways identity played out in practice.