Diana Martinez examines the development of a post-imperial Internationalism through the August 1916 declaration by the United States government to grant independence to the Philippines, its first and only formal colony. Her essay analyzes the monumentalization of this withdrawal “by a series of provincial capitol buildings intended to represent freedom and independence as a gift from the U.S. to its not yet former colonial subjects,” and “questions how Woodrow Wilson was eager to provide an example of how the United States in the assumption of its role as world leader would shape and support an ethnologically defined 'self-determination' as the legal and spiritual basis of national sovereignty.” Diana’s dissertation is the foundation of this work: Concrete Colonialism: Architecture, Urbanism, Infrastructure, and the American Colonial Project in the Philippines. Her forthcoming manuscript is Concrete Colonialism: Architecture, Infrastructure, Urbanism and the American Colonial Project in the Philippines.”