Little is known of the early human settlement of the Philippines. Scientific evidence remains inconclusive. It is generally accepted that the first significant human settlement occurred sometime during the most recent ice age, the Pleistocene Epoch. At that time sea levels were lower, creating land bridges that connected the Southeast Asian mainland to some of the present-day islands of the Malay Archipelago, south of the Philippine Islands. Historians theorize that Paleolithic hunters from the mainland may have followed herds of wild animals across these land bridges, later finding their way to the Philippine Islands. Some of these early migrations to the Philippine Islands were made by the ancestors of the present-day people of the Aeta and Agta tribes. These people continue to be primarily hunters and food gatherers, much as their ancestors were thousands of years ago. They are one of the world's few remaining populations of Pygmies, who are characterized by shorter-than-average height. The Spanish colonizers of the 16th century called them Negritos, a term that is still widely used today.
People of Malay descent, who now make up the majority of the population, are believed to have settled in the Philippines in several waves of migration after the 3rd century BC. Their languages developed independently because they settled in widely scattered villages, or barangay. Each barangay included from 30 to 100 families and was ruled by a datu, or chieftain. The economy was one of subsistence, with each village producing most of what it needed, and land was held in common. The villagers engaged in both shifting (slash-and-burn) and settled agriculture. Religion was animistic, or based on the worship of ancestors and other spirits, such as nature deities.
Communities in the islands eventually established trade contacts with states in East and Southeast Asia, particularly China. By the 12th century AD the powerful Sumatra-based Malay kingdom of Sri Vijaya had extended its considerable influence to the Philippines. In the 14th century traders and settlers from the Malay Peninsula and Borneo introduced Islam to the southern islands of the Sulu Archipelago. In the 15th century Islam was established on the island of Mindanao. By the 16th century the islands had several Muslim principalities, including one in the Manila area of Luzon. However, no major political entity—kingdom, sultanate, or empire—was established in the islands until the imposition of Spanish rule in the 16th century.
A. Arrival of Europeans
In 1521 a Spanish expedition led by explorer and navigator Ferdinand Magellan made the first recorded European contact with the Philippine Islands. Magellan was on a mission for Spanish king Charles I (also Holy Roman emperor as Charles V) to establish a westward route to the Moluccas, also known as the Spice Islands. Located south of the Philippines in present-day Indonesia, these islands were prized for their spices in the trade rivalry between Spain and Portugal, the foremost maritime powers of the time. Magellan's ships reached the Philippine Islands on an intermediate leg of the voyage, which ultimately accomplished the first circumnavigation of the world. On the Philippine island of Zugbo (now Cebu), Magellan secured the baptism of the local chieftain, Humabon, and then supported Humabon in waging a battle against a rival chieftain, Lapulapu of Mactan. Lapulapu's warriors, in defending their island, killed Magellan. Lapulapu is remembered as a national hero for successfully resisting the first European invasion of the Philippines.Other expeditions followed as Spain sought to establish trade routes across the Pacific from its new colonies in the Americas. Ruy López de Villalobos, the commander of an expedition that sailed from New Spain (now Mexico) in 1542, claimed the islands for Spain and named them Islas Filipinas, in honor of Charles I's son and heir Philip, who reigned as Philip II of Spain from 1556 to 1598.
B. Spanish Settlement and Rule
The first permanent Spanish settlement in the Philippines was established on Cebu in 1565 by Miguel López de Legazpi, a Spanish expedition commander. This settlement, at present-day Cebu City, became the capital of the new Spanish colony, with Legazpi as its first governor. In 1571 Spanish forces defeated the Muslim ruler Rajah Soliman, who controlled an area of Luzon that contained an ideal harbor for Spanish trade. There Legazpi named Manila as the new capital of the Spanish colony. Within a few years Spanish authority extended over much of Luzon and the central Visayan Islands. As a by-product of this conquest, Spain discovered the best route back to New Spain was via the Japan Current (see Kuroshio Current), which took sailing ships north past Japan and then south along the American coasts. This new route compelled the newly emergent power in Japan, the Tokugawa dynasty, to close Japan to outside contact for 250 years.
The Philippines was Spain's only colony in Asia. It was ruled as a gobernación, a territory administered by a governor, and was officially subordinate to the Spanish viceroy of New Spain. Spain initially had three principal objectives in colonizing the islands: to secure a share of the spice trade in the Moluccas, to provide a base from which to convert Asians to Christianity, and to convert the people of the Philippine Islands. Spain never realized the first two objectives and only partially succeeded in the third. Most of the lowland population was rapidly converted to Christianity, while the upland tribes were only nominally converted. The Muslims of southern Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago were never baptized and actively resisted Spanish rule for more than 300 years.
As in Spanish America, the various Roman Catholic religious orders—Augustinians, Franciscans, Dominicans, and Jesuits—were in charge of the conversion of the population to Christianity. In accordance with the terms of the patronato real, or royal patronage of the Catholic Church, the government assumed the financial burden of evangelization, paying a stipend to each missionary and subsidizing missionary work. It acquired in return the privilege of nominating the occupants of all important ecclesiastical posts and regularly assigned to friars, or parish priests, civil as well as religious functions. Over time, the religious orders also gained large areas of land through donations from the Spanish colonial elite (the principalía, or “principal ones”), and many indigenous parishioners worked for the friars as tenant farmers.
B.1. Manila Galleons and Spanish Trade
Although Spain did not capture a share of the profitable Moluccas spice trade, it did use the Philippines as a base for trade between Asia and the Americas and as a way to challenge the Portuguese maritime monopoly. Manila played an important role as a port for the Manila galleons, huge Spanish trading ships that voyaged between Manila and Acapulco, on the west coast of New Spain. The galleons sailed from Manila with Chinese goods, mainly silk textiles and porcelain, and returned from Acapulco with silver bullion and minted coins, which purchased more Chinese goods. The galleon trade was a government monopoly that had exclusive trading rights with the Philippines, and no direct trade with Spain was allowed. The colonial treasury of the Philippines received a subsidy, consisting mainly of customs duties paid at Acapulco, that was the colony's main source of income. The galleon trade presented new opportunities for Chinese merchants, who formed an economically important community in Manila by the 1590s. They outnumbered the Spanish and were subject to residence restrictions and periodic deportations.
In 1762, when Spain became involved in the Seven Years' War on the side of France against Great Britain, the British East India Company captured Manila. The treaty that ended the war restored Manila to Spain in 1764. The British occupation, although brief, exposed the resentment of Spanish authority and discrimination felt by local peoples, especially the Chinese, some of whom openly supported the British. After Spanish rule was restored, the colonial government implemented a series of reforms to promote the economic development of the islands through commercial agriculture and household industries. The establishment of a state monopoly of the cultivation, manufacture, and sale of tobacco in 1782 enabled the colonial government to balance its budget and send substantial subsidies to Spain. The galleon trade, already much diminished, ended in 1815. Trade was opened to the world, and the links to Latin America weakened rapidly after Spain's colonies there won independence.
B.2. Open Trade and the New Filipino Elite
In the 19th century the Industrial Revolution transformed the world. Modern methods of production and transportation, notably sugar mills and steamships, opened the Philippines for economic development. British, French, Dutch, and North American traders began to demand Philippine agricultural products, including sugar, cigars, and abaca (Manila hemp). Sugar became the leading export crop. In 1834 Spain lifted restrictions on trade between foreign nations and the Philippines.
Chinese merchants in Manila helped to finance and shape the new export opportunities, often acting as intermediaries between foreign traders and local producers. In 1839 the colonial government issued a decree granting Chinese freedom of occupation and residence. Many Chinese emigrated to the Philippines after the Taiping Rebellion (1851-1864) in China. Aware of the political and social advantages enjoyed by Roman Catholics in the colony, many Chinese converted to Catholicism and married Filipina women. Their descendants, called mestizos (a Spanish term for racially mixed people), were readily accepted by society. Through the acquisition of land, they became an economically privileged class in the new cash-crop economy. These mestizos formed the major component of a new Filipino elite of planters, merchants, and civil servants.
C. Filipino Resistance to Colonial Rule
In 1863 the colonial government introduced a system of free primary-school education. Institutions of higher learning remained limited, however, and only a few admitted non-Spaniards. The new Filipino elite became known as ilustrados (Spanish for “the enlightened ones”) because they could afford higher education. Some ilustrados studied abroad in Spain.
By the second half of the 19th century the ilustrados had begun to agitate for reforms in both the civil and ecclesiastical establishments. In Spain the revolution of 1868 had produced a democratic constitution that provided for equality and civil and political rights. In the Philippines the ilustrados asked that these rights be extended to Filipinos. Filipino priests also agitated for reforms. They wanted the church to follow official Vatican policy, which dictated that religious orders would relinquish control to indigenous diocesan priests in places that had been successfully converted to Christianity. The Spanish friars in the Philippines held considerable power, forming what was called a friarocracy. They conducted many functions of government on the local level, controlled education at all levels, and were the largest landholders. They resented that their influence was being questioned by Filipino priests, and their response was increasingly racist. They successfully resisted the local movement to replace them.
C.1. Filipino Reformists
In 1872 the colonial government arrested hundreds of ilustrados and priests after an uprising by workers at the military fort of Cavite. Three Filipino priests were convicted of organizing the uprising and executed. This crackdown by the colonial authorities intensified the nationalist character of the reform movement. Filipino liberals who were sent into exile in Europe and ilustrados attending European universities formed the Propaganda Movement, using publications such as La Solidaridad (Solidarity) to call for social and political reform. The Filipino intellectuals Graciano López Jaena, M. H. del Pilar, and José Rizal were the foremost leaders of the movement. Rizal's novels Noli Me Tangere (1886; Touch Me Not, translated 1961) and El Filibusterismo (1891; The Subversive, translated 1962) exposed to the world the injustices imposed on Filipinos under the colonial regime. C.2. Katipunan Revolutionaries
By the time Rizal returned to Manila in 1892, it was apparent that Spain, itself in the throes of domestic unrest, was unwilling to undertake substantial colonial reforms. Considered a threat to the colonial regime, Rizal was arrested shortly after his return and sent into exile on Mindanao. Soon after Rizal's exile, Andrés Bonifacio, a self-educated man of the urban working class, organized a secret society called Katipunan, short for Kataastaasan Kagalang-galang na Katipunan ng mga Anak ng Bayan (The Highest and Most Respectable Society of the Sons of the People). The Katipunan, which advocated revolution rather than reform, gained a popular base of support, with membership concentrated among urban and rural workers. Spanish officials discovered, through an informant parish priest, the existence of the Katipunan in August 1896. Bonifacio, realizing the Katipunan could no longer hide its activity, proclaimed the beginning of the revolution. Katipunan members first attacked Spanish military installations, and then the insurrection spread throughout the provinces of central Luzon. Rizal was arrested and convicted by a military tribunal on fabricated charges of involvement with the Katipunan. His execution by a firing squad on December 30 merely served to spread the revolt to the entire country. Rizal, as a martyr, became the ultimate symbol of Filipino nationalism.
Leadership of the Katipunan passed from Bonifacio to its most successful general, Emilio Aguinaldo, a former schoolteacher. A year of fighting between Katipunan forces, which used guerrilla tactics, and government troops ended in a negotiated truce, the Pact of Biac-na-bató, in 1897. In accordance with the pact, Aguinaldo and his staff went into voluntary exile in Hong Kong, while the Spanish authorities promised reforms within three years.
D. The Spanish-American War
In April 1898 war broke out between Spain and the United States over their competing imperialist interests in Cuba, then also a Spanish colony where an independence movement was taking place. In May U.S. Commodore (later Admiral) George Dewey commanded the Asiatic Squadron into Manila Bay, where it easily destroyed the antiquated Spanish fleet at anchor there. Lacking adequate ground troops, however, Dewey sent for Aguinaldo in Hong Kong and encouraged him to reactivate his rebel forces.Aguinaldo believed the United States would help Filipinos achieve independence. He organized a revolutionary government that issued a declaration of independence on June 12, and his forces surrounded the Spanish garrison at Manila. By that time, Manila had become the focus of the Spanish-American War. Negotiations between U.S. military commanders and the Spanish governor resulted in a secret agreement to end the conflict in a mock battle, staged in August, in which Spanish forces surrendered control of Manila. The arrangement specifically excluded the Filipino nationalists. Aguinaldo had meanwhile established a capital at the Luzon city of Malolos, and in September his government convened a constituent assembly to draft a constitution.
Peace negotiations between Spain and the United States began in late September. By the Treaty of Paris, signed in December, Spain ceded the Philippines and other territories to the United States. In return, the United States gave Spain $20 million. United States president William McKinley then issued a proclamation declaring U.S. policy to be one of “benevolent assimilation.”
The Filipinos refused to recognize the transfer of sovereignty, however, and fighting broke out on February 4, 1899. More than 125,000 American soldiers eventually went into combat in the conflict known as the Philippine-American War. Filipino troops, who used tactics of guerrilla warfare, were of indeterminate numbers. United States forces soon secured major ports, lowland areas, and urban centers. Malolos fell to the United States in March 1899. With the capture of Aguinaldo in March 1901, organized Filipino resistance collapsed and the war ended. More than 4,000 American and 16,000 Filipino soldiers died in combat, while thousands of Filipino civilians died from the effects of the war, including famine and disease.
E. United States Rule
The United States moved quickly to establish a political administration in the Philippines. In 1901 William Howard Taft, later president of the United States, was appointed the first civilian governor-general, replacing the military governor, General Arthur MacArthur. The governor-general was vested with executive powers and served as head of the Philippine Commission, a body appointed by the U.S. president that served as an executive cabinet and held legislative powers. The commission passed many new laws to set up the fundamentals of a national government, including a judicial system, legal code, civil service, and police force. Elections were held for municipal and provincial governments, and political and bureaucratic positions were opened to Filipinos. In 1907 an elected legislative assembly became the lower house of a bicameral legislature. The appointed Philippine Commission formed the upper house. In 1916 an elected senate replaced the commission. Monetary, military, and foreign policies were controlled by the U.S. Congress and president. In all other matters, bills passed by the new legislature became law upon approval by the governor-general.E.1. Elites, Education, and Economy
The United States defined and justified its colonial role as one of tutelage; that is, preparing the Philippines for eventual independence. While a few Filipinos remained opposed to American colonial control, virtually all of the ilustrados, who made up the educated and wealthy classes, saw economic and political opportunity under American tutelage. Many of the U.S. policies in the Philippines reinforced the dominant position of the ilustrados within Philippine society. Most of the vast landholdings of the friar estates, which the civilian administration purchased from the Vatican in 1904, were sold to members of the already wealthy ilustrado elite. Most agricultural workers, meanwhile, continued to toil the land as tenants. In addition, most government positions at all levels were held by ilustrados, who were able to wield their wealth and influence to gain political power.
Education was touted as the means by which all Filipinos could achieve a rising standard of living. The United States established a national public school system, building on the existing parochial schools. Thousands of American teachers arrived to teach courses in the secularized and expanded system. English was the primary medium of instruction. Filipinos from every walk of life sought a secular education, and functional literacy increased from about 20 percent in 1901 to 50 percent in 1941. A middle class developed as upward mobility presented new, but still limited, opportunities.
Unrestricted free trade between the Philippines and the United States, established in 1913, had a decisive influence on the Philippine economy, which became an agricultural export economy producing sugar, abaca, copra, and tobacco for the U.S. market. Except for gold mining, there was little development of industry; manufactured goods were supplied by the United States on a duty-free basis. Economic development under U.S. rule tended to encourage large landholdings among a relatively small elite, leading to an increase in tenant farming among landless peasants. The global economic depression of the 1930s worsened the plight of the rural population.
The United States also established military garrisons in the Philippines, which became a strategic base for U.S. forces in the Pacific. The deep-water harbor at Subic Bay, near Manila, became a major anchorage for the U.S. naval fleet. The cavalry base at Fort Stotsenberg in central Luzon was transformed into an air-force installation, Clark Air Base.
E.2. Shifting American Policies
United States politics soon began to influence the course of events in the islands. Taft and his immediate successors were unwilling to delegate full authority to the Filipinos. With the election of Woodrow Wilson to the United States presidency in 1912, a new policy was adopted. In 1916 the Jones Act instituted an elected Philippine senate and promised eventual independence. These moves, however, were slowed with the election of Warren G. Harding as president of the United States in 1920. The following year Harding appointed a commission, headed by General Leonard Wood, to investigate the political and economic situation in the islands. The commission reported that immediate independence would be disastrous both for the Filipino people and for U.S. interests in the western Pacific. Wood, who was appointed governor-general of the Philippines in 1921, found himself bitterly opposed by the Filipino advocates of independence. The call for independence was led within the political establishment by Manuel Luis Quezon y Molina, president of the Philippine Senate; Sergio Osmeña, speaker of the House of Representatives before 1922; and Manuel Roxas y Acuña, the speaker after 1922. These politicians belonged to the Nationalist Party, which dominated Philippine politics from its founding in 1907 until the emergence of the Liberal Party after World War II ended in 1945.
E.3. Commonwealth of the Philippines
With the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 as president of the United States, the official policy changed once again. On January 13, 1933, the Congress of the United States passed the Hare-Hawes-Cutting Bill granting Philippine independence after 12 years, but reserving military and naval bases for the United States and imposing tariffs and quotas on Philippine exports. The bill was rejected by Quezon for domestic political advantage. The Philippine Senate then advocated a new bill that won Roosevelt's support. The resulting Tydings-McDuffie Act of 1934 stipulated that the Philippines would become an independent republic on July 4, 1946. Until then a commonwealth government, with a constitution and an elected Filipino president, would have autonomy in all affairs except foreign policy. In November 1935 the commonwealth government was inaugurated with Quezon as president and Osmeña as vice president.F. World War II and Japanese Occupation
On December 7, 1941, Japanese forces attacked the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, marking the beginning of Japan's involvement in World War II. Just ten hours later, Japanese air forces struck Clark Air Base in the Philippines, destroying the American B-17 bombers stationed there. Japanese ground troops entered Luzon at Lingayen Gulf on December 22 and occupied Manila on January 2, 1942.
Just before the Pearl Harbor attack, President Roosevelt recalled General Douglas MacArthur into active service, making him commander in chief of the Allied forces in the Philippines. MacArthur was a former U.S. chief of staff who was in the Philippines serving as field marshal, at Quezon's invitation, to help build a commonwealth army.
MacArthur withdrew all his forces, which included many Filipino soldiers, to the island fortress of Corregidor, in Manila Bay, and the nearby Bataan Peninsula. The United States, at the time concentrating its forces in Europe, lacked the fleet that MacArthur hoped for to fight the war in the Philippines. In 1942, when it became clear that the American forces were being completely overwhelmed at Bataan and Corregidor, Roosevelt ordered MacArthur to evacuate Quezon and Osmeña and directed him to lead the war against Japan from Australia. The American and Filipino troops who were left behind surrendered at Bataan in April and at Corregidor in May. The Japanese forced their prisoners of war on an infamous Death March across treacherous terrain to a prison camp near Cabunatuan. Thousands of American and Filipino soldiers died of malnutrition, illness, and torture.
While Quezon set up a government-in-exile in the United States, the Japanese secured the collaboration of some officials who had stayed behind. In 1943 Japan recognized a nominally independent Philippine republic with José P. Laurel as president.
Although some Filipinos became known as collaborators, others waged guerrilla warfare against the Japanese. Across the archipelago, guerrilla bands organized into a highly effective guerrilla movement aided by the fragmented island geography and inaccessibility of mountain bases. Formed in 1942, the Hukbalahaps, or Huks (short for Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon, or People's Anti-Japanese Party), were one of the most effective guerrilla groups. The Huk forces were primarily the rural poor of central and southern Luzon.
When MacArthur returned to the Philippines in October 1944, it was as commander of a massive invasion force. The ensuing naval battle of Leyte Gulf was one of the largest ever fought. In February 1945 U.S. troops reached Manila, which was devastated in fighting that continued until July. World War II ended with the Japanese surrender to the Allies on September 2. Manila was the second most destroyed city of World War II, after Warsaw, Poland. With the destruction of Manila's urban infrastructure—universities, hospitals, newspaper printing plants, government offices, factories and port facilities—the Philippines was left without its most modern sector.
G. Republic of the Philippines
In 1944 Osmeña succeeded Quezon, who died in the United States, as president of the government-in-exile. Osmeña returned to Manila in 1945, and plans went forward to inaugurate the independent Republic of the Philippines. Manuel Roxas challenged the elderly Osmeña for the presidency and split from the Nationalist Party to form the Liberal Party. Roxas won the election of April 1946 and became the first president of the new republic, with Elpidio Quirino as vice president. The Republic of the Philippines was formally proclaimed on July 4, 1946.
The postwar administration faced staggering problems. The country's infrastructure and economy were in ruins. To help in the republic's rehabilitation, the United States established preferential trade relations and awarded the new nation several hundred million dollars in war damage and rehabilitation aid. As a condition of receiving the aid, the Philippines was forced to agree to give U.S. investors parity, or equal economic rights with Filipinos. The parity privileges included the right to exploit the country's natural resources, which required an amendment to the Philippine constitution. Other trade agreements and contingencies also tied the Philippine economy to that of the United States. In addition, the United States maintained a military presence in the Philippines. In 1947 the U.S. government secured an agreement allowing it to retain jurisdiction over numerous military installations, including Clark Air Base and Subic Bay, for a period of 99 years. In 1959 the Philippines amended the agreement, giving the United States a new 25-year lease for fewer bases.
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