Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
as American troops took charge of the city. But crushing the Filipinos was not easy. The
US forces, for all their superior firepower, were nagged by relentless heat, torrential rain
and pervasive disease. Aguinaldo still commanded Filipino forces, though the intensity
of the Manila assault had shocked him. Malolos, to the north of Manila, the seat of his
revolutionary government, was overrun, but by June 1899 the Americans had become
bogged down and controlled territory no more than 40km from Manila. The war
degenerated into a
manhunt
for Aguinaldo, and when he was finally captured in March
1902 in Palanan on Luzon's east coast, the war ended o
cially three months later. After
a brief internment, the wily general took an oath of allegiance to the US, was granted a
pension from the US government and retired from public life until 1935 (see below).
The war had resulted in the death of at least 600,000 Filipinos and 4234 Americans;
exact records were not kept of Filipino casualties.
From the beginning, Washington was divided over how much independence its
erstwhile charge should be given, what measures would be in place to ensure the
protection of US interests there and who would be president.
Benevolent assimilation
When the Philippine-American War ended, American teachers fanned out across the
country to begin President McKinley's policy of “
benevolent assimilation
”, and soon
became known as Thomasites, after the ship on which they had arrived. The spread of
schools has been applauded by historians as America's single greatest achievement in
the Philippines. The Thomasites took to their task with apostolic fervour and Filipinos
quickly achieved the highest literacy rate in Southeast Asia.
The American administration in the Philippines, guided by Washington, sought to
inculcate Filipinos with American ethics, to turn the Philippines into a stable, prosperous,
self-confident model of democracy in a developing country. Filipinos learned to behave,
dress and eat like Americans, sing American songs and speak Americanized English.
American educators decided that teaching Filipinos in their many own languages would
require too many textbooks, so American English became the lingua franca of the
Philippines. Meanwhile, the debate was still raging over what form of government the
Philippines should have. It wasn't until 1935 that a bill was passed in Washington
allowing President Roosevelt to recognize a new Philippine constitution and the ten-year
transition status of “
Commonwealth of the Philippines
” - autonomous but not
completely independent. Presidential elections were held in September of that year and
won by
Manuel Quezon
(1878-1944), leading light among a new breed of postwar
politicians, who soundly beat Aguinaldo who had come out of retirement. (Aguinaldo
was to cooperate with the Japanese in World War II, but after briefly being jailed by the
Americans a second time, lived to see Philippine independence.)
World War II
One of the questions about the new Commonwealth was a military one: could it
defend itself? Quezon realized how vulnerable the archipelago was and invited the
US commander of the country,
General Douglas MacArthur
, to become military adviser
to the autonomous regime. MacArthur accepted, demanding US$33,000 a year and an
air-conditioned suite in the
Manila Hotel
.
1896
1897
1898
José Rizal executed by the Spanish
in Manila; the Philippine Revolution
breaks out
Bonifacio is executed
by rival rebel leader
Emilio Aguinaldo
Spanish-American War; the
US navy destroys the Spanish
fleet in Manila Bay
