History of the Philippines
Monday, 12. May 2008, 00:45:43
History of Philippines
The history of the Philippines may be divided into four distinct phases: the pre-Spanish period (before 1521); the Spanish period (1521-1898); the American period (1898-1946); and the years since independence (1946-present).
Pre-Spanish Period
The first people in the Philippines, the Negritos, are believed to have come to the islands 30,000 years ago from Borneo and Sumatra, making their way across then-existing land bridges. Subsequently, people of Malay stock came from the south in successive waves, the earliest by land bridges and later in boats called barangays. The Malays settled in scattered communities, also called barangays, which were ruled by chieftains known as datus. Chinese merchants and traders arrived and settled in the ninth century A.D. In the 14th century, Arabs arrived, introducing Islam in the south and extending some influence even into Luzon. The Malays, however, remained the dominant group until the Spanish arrived in the 16th century.
Spanish Period
Ferdinand Magellan claimed the Philippines for Spain in 1521, and for the next 377 years, the islands were under Spanish rule. This period was the era of conversion to Roman Catholicism. A Spanish colonial social system was developed, complete with a strong centralized government and considerable clerical influence. The Filipinos were restive under the Spanish, and this long period was marked by numerous uprisings. The most important of these began in 1896 under the leadership of Emilio Aguinaldo and continued until the Americans defeated the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay on May 1, 1898, during the Spanish-American War. Aguinaldo declared independence from Spain on June 12, 1898.
American Period
Following Admiral Dewey's defeat of the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay, the United States occupied the Philippines. Spain ceded the islands to the United States under the terms of the Treaty of Paris (December 10, 1898) that ended the war.
A war of resistance against U.S. rule, led by Revolutionary President Aguinaldo, broke out in 1899. Although Americans have historically used the term "the Philippine Insurrection," Filipinos and an increasing number of American historians refer to these hostilities as the Philippine-American War (1899-1902), and in 1999 the U.S. Library of Congress reclassified its references to use this term. In 1901, Aguinaldo was captured and swore allegiance to the United States, and resistance gradually died out.
U.S. administration of the Philippines was always declared to be temporary and aimed to develop institutions that would permit and encourage the eventual establishment of a free and democratic government. Therefore, U.S. officials concentrated on the creation of such practical supports for democratic government as public education and a sound legal system.
The first legislative assembly was elected in 1907. A bicameral legislature, largely under Philippine control, was established. A civil service was formed and was gradually taken over by the Filipinos, who had effectively gained control by the end of World War I. The Catholic Church was disestablished, and a considerable amount of church land was purchased and redistributed.
In 1935, under the terms of the Tydings-McDuffie Act, the Philippines became a self-governing commonwealth. Manuel Quezon was elected president of the new government, which was designed to prepare the country for independence after a 10-year transition period. World War II intervened, however, and in May 1942, Corregidor, the last American/Filipino stronghold, fell. U.S. forces in the Philippines surrendered to the Japanese, placing the islands under Japanese control.
The war to regain the Philippines began when Gen. Douglas MacArthur landed on Leyte on October 20, 1944. Filipinos and Americans fought together until the Japanese surrender in September 1945. Much of Manila was destroyed during the final months of the fighting, and an estimated 1 million Filipinos lost their lives in the war.
As a result of the Japanese occupation, the guerrilla warfare that followed, and the battles leading to liberation, the country suffered great damage and a complete organizational breakdown. Despite the shaken state of the country, the United States and the Philippines decided to move forward with plans for independence. On July 4, 1946, the Philippine Islands became the independent Republic of the Philippines, in accordance with the terms of the Tydings-McDuffie Act. In 1962, the official Independence Day was changed from July 4 to June 12, commemorating the date independence from Spain was declared by General Aguinaldo in 1898.
Post-Independence Period
The early years of independence were dominated by U.S.-assisted postwar reconstruction. A communist-inspired Huk Rebellion (1945-53) complicated recovery efforts before its successful suppression under the leadership of President Ramon Magsaysay. The succeeding administrations of Presidents Carlos P. Garcia (1957-61) and Diosdado Macapagal (1961-65) sought to expand Philippine ties to its Asian neighbors, implement domestic reform programs, and develop and diversify the economy.
In 1972, President Ferdinand E. Marcos (1965-86) declared martial law, citing growing lawlessness and open rebellion by the communist rebels as his justification. Marcos governed from 1973 until mid-1981 in accordance with the transitory provisions of a new constitution that replaced the commonwealth constitution of 1935. He suppressed democratic institutions and restricted civil liberties during the martial law period, ruling largely by decree and popular referenda. The government began a process of political normalization during 1978-81, culminating in the reelection of President Marcos to a 6-year term that would have ended in 1987. The Marcos government's respect for human rights remained low despite the end of martial law on January 17, 1981. His government retained its wide arrest and detention powers. Corruption and favoritism contributed to a serious decline in economic growth and development under Marcos.
The assassination of opposition leader Benigno (Ninoy) Aquino upon his return to the Philippines in 1983, after a long period of exile, coalesced popular dissatisfaction with Marcos and set in motion a succession of events that culminated in a snap presidential election in February 1986. The opposition united under Aquino's widow, Corazon Aquino, and Salvador Laurel, head of the United Nationalist Democratic Organization (UNIDO). The election was marred by widespread electoral fraud on the part of Marcos and his supporters. International observers, including a U.S. delegation led by Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Indiana), denounced the official results. Marcos was forced to flee the Philippines in the face of a peaceful civilian-military uprising that ousted him and installed Corazon Aquino as president on February 25, 1986.
Under Aquino's presidency progress was made in revitalizing democratic institutions and respect for civil liberties. However, the administration also was viewed by many as weak and fractious, and a return to full political stability and economic development was hampered by several attempted coups staged by disaffected members of the Philippine military.
Fidel Ramos was elected president in 1992. Early in his administration, Ramos declared "national reconciliation" his highest priority. He legalized the communist party and created the National Unification Commission (NUC) to lay the groundwork for talks with communist insurgents, Muslim separatists, and military rebels. In June 1994, President Ramos signed into law a general conditional amnesty covering all rebel groups, as well as Philippine military and police personnel accused of crimes committed while fighting the insurgents. In October 1995, the government signed an agreement bringing the military insurgency to an end. A peace agreement with one major Muslim insurgent group was signed in 1996.
Joseph Ejercito Estrada's election as president in May 1998 marked the Philippines' third democratic succession since the ouster of Marcos. Estrada was elected with overwhelming mass support on a platform promising poverty alleviation and an anti-crime crackdown.
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, elected vice president in 1998, assumed the presidency in January 2001 after widespread demonstrations that followed the breakdown of Estrada's impeachment trial on corruption charges. The Philippine Supreme Court subsequently endorsed unanimously the constitutionality of the transfer of power. National elections will take place in May 2004. In December 2002, Macapagal-Arroyo announced she would not be a candidate for a full term as president.
History of the Philippines
On the night of his execution by the Spanish colonialists in 1896, Jose Rizal, the famous filipino nationalist, called his homeland the "Pearl of the Orient Seas".
The Philippines is situated at a crossroads of the Pacific Ocean and the South China and Sulu Seas. Philippines, also referred to as the 'archipelago', has welcomed people from the East and West, creating a human mixture sustained by the enormous tropical resources.
Some 30,000 years ago the earliest inhabitants had arrived from the Asian mainland, perhaps over land bridges built during the ice ages. By the tenth century A.D. coastal villagers welcomed Chinese commerce and settlers, followed by Muslim traders from Borneo. In 1521, Ferdinand Magellan claimed the land for Spain, whose imperial rule lasted until the United States of America gained possession after victories in the Spanish-American War in 1898 and the Philippine-American War from 1899 to 1901. United States authority, although interrupted by the Japanese occupation during World War II, led to independence for a republic founded on July 4, 1946.
There are 77 million Filipinos that inhabit about 700 of the nation's 7,100 islands. Cultural distinctions remain among the nation's more than 75 ethnic groups.
Pre-Colonial History
The Philippines is an archipelago of 7,107 islands in the South China Sea situated between Taiwan to the north and Borneo to the south. Just 2,000 of its islands are inhabited and only 500 are larger than a kilometre square. The islands of Luzon, Mindanao, Palawan, Panay, Mindoro, Samar, Negros, Leyte and Cebu make up 90% of the nation's land area.
In the cycle of ice ages, glaciers store a significant portion of the earth's water in the form of ice causing a corresponding drop in the world's ocean levels. During periods of glaciation, the Philippine archipelago has been joined to the continental land mass of Asia. Evidence of human occupation in the Philippines dates to as far back as 30,000 years ago.
At the end of the last ice age, 10,000 years ago, the land connections to south-east Asia flooded and created the Indonesian and Philippine archipelagos. Since then, the islands have been settled by successive migrations of people moving through the archipelago in boats, principally from the Malay peninsula and Indonesia but also from the coasts of Indo-China and, to a lesser extent, from China and Taiwan as well.
Later migrations tended to bring with them a more sophisticated technology and social organization, assimilating or displacing further inland the earlier arrivals. Today the Philippines is made up of some sixty cultural groups speaking eighty or more languages and local dialects. The five largest cultural-linguistic groups, Tagalog, Cebuano, Ilocano, Hiligaynon and Bicolano, account for about three-quarters of the population.
The last phase of migration before the arrival of the Spanish was of Muslim traders from Indonesia, politically organized in territorial states under the authority of sultans and rajas. The Muslims had firearms and by the 1500s, they had penetrated and converted the Sulu archipelago and Mindanao and established a colony at Manila. The Spanish, who had only recently expelled their own Muslim population from Spain, put an end to further Muslim expansion in the Philippines.
Spanish Colony
Ferdinand Magellan set out from Spain in 1519 on the first voyage to circumnavigate the globe with five ships and a complement of 264 crew. Three years later in 1522, only the one ship, the Victoria, returned to Spain with 18 men.
The Philippines were the death of Magellan. The expedition sighted the island of Samar on March 16, 1521. Magellan was welcomed by two Rajas, Kolambu and Siagu. He named the islands the Archipelago of San Lazaro, erected a cross and claimed the lands for Spain. The friendly Rajas took Magellan to Cebu to meet Raja Humabon. Humabon and 800 Cebuanos were baptized as Christians. Magellan agreed to help Raja Humabon put down Lapu-Lapu, a rebellious datu on the nearby island of Mactan. In a battle between Spanish soldiers and Lapu-Lapu's warriors, Magellan was killed on April 27, 1521.
Disputes over women caused relations between Raja Humabon and the remaining Spaniards to deteriorate. The Cebuanos killed 27 Spaniards in a skirmish and the Spaniards, deciding to resume their explorations, departed Cebu.
For all its losses, the voyage was a huge financial success. The Victoria's 26 ton cargo of cloves sold for 41,000 ducats. This returned the 20,000 ducats the venture had cost plus a 105 percent profit. Four more expeditions followed between 1525 and 1542. The commander of the fourth expedition, Ruy Lopez de Villalobos, named the islands after Philip, heir to the Spanish throne (r. Philip II 1556-1598).
The Philippines was not formally organized as a Spanish colony until 1565 when Philip II appointed Miguel Lopez de Legazpi the first Governor-General. Legazpi selected Manila for the capital of the colony in 1571 because of its fine natural harbour and the rich lands surrounding the city that could supply it with produce.
The Spanish did not develop the trade potential of the Philippine's agricultural or mineral resources. The colony was administered from Mexico and its commerce centered on the galleon trade between Canton and Acapulco in which Manila functioned secondarily as an entrepot. Smaller Chinese junks brought silk and porcelain from Canton to Manila where the cargoes were re-loaded on galleons bound for Acapulco and the Spanish colonies in the Americas. The Chinese goods were paid for in Mexican silver.
Spanish rule had two lasting effects on Philippine society; the near universal conversion of the population to Roman Catholicism and the creation of a landed elite. Although under the direct order of Philip II that the conversion of the Philippines to Christianity was not to be accomplished by force, the monastic orders of the Augustinians, Dominicans, Franciscans, Recollects and Jesuits set to their missionary duties with purpose. Unable to extirpate the indigenous pagan beliefs by coercion and fear, Philippine Catholicism incorporates a deep substrate of native customs and ritual.
While the missionaries spread through the colony to found their parishes and estates in the barangays, the officials of the civil administration preferred to stay in Manila and govern indirectly through the traditional barangay datu or village chief. Although the traditional kinship organization of the barangay had maintained the communal use of land, the Spanish governors brought with them their feudal notions of land tenure with "encomienderos" and subordinate vassals. The traditional village chiefs became a class of landed nobility wielding considerable local authority. The creation of a priviledged landed-holding elite on whom most of the rural population was dependent as landless tenants introduced a class division in Philippine society that has been the perennial source of social discontent and political strife ever since.
In most villages, the priest and the local "principale" or "notable" represented between them Spanish authority. The "friarocracy" of the religious orders and the oligarchy of the landholders were the twin pillars of colonial society whose main interests were in keeping their positions of authority and priviledge.
The Spanish hold on the Philippines first began to weaken in 1762 when the British briefly captured Manila during the Seven Years' War. In support of the British invasion, the long persecuted Chinese merchant community rose in revolt against the Spanish authority. The Treaty of Paris returned Manila to Spain at the end of the War but with increasing diversion of the China trade to Britain and, even more importantly, with an irretrievable loss of prestige and respect in the eyes of its Filipino subjects.
Spain had governed the colony for two hundred years in almost complete isolation from the outside world. The royal monopolies prohibited foreign ships from trading in the Philippines. After the Seven Years' War, in collusion with local merchants and officials, foreign ships and merchants could ever more easily circumvent the monopolies and enter the Philippine trade.
Spanish-American War/Philippine Independence
World War II and Japanese Occupation
The attack on the Philippines started on December 8, 1941 ten hours after the attack on Pearl Harbour in Hawaii. As at Pearl Harbour, the American aircraft were entirely destroyed on the ground. Lacking air cover, the American Asiatic Fleet in the Philippines withdrew to Java on December 12, 1941.
Japanese troops landed at the Lingayen Gulf on December 22, 1941 and advanced across central Luzon towards Manila. On the advice of President Quezon, General MacArthur declared Manila an open city on December 25, 1941 and removed the Commonwealth government to Corregidor. The Japanese occupied Manila on January 2, 1942.
The 76,000 starving and sick American and Filipino defenders in Bataan surrendered to the Japanese on April 9, 1942. The Japanese led their captives on a cruel and criminal Death March on which 7-10,000 died or were murdered before arriving at the internment camps ten days later.
The 13,000 survivors on Corregidor surrendered on May 6, 1942.
For over three years and right to the day of Japan's surrender, the Philippines were to suffer grievously under the depredations of military occupation.
General MacArthur discharged his promise to return to the Philippines on October 20, 1944. The landings on the island of Leyte were accomplished massively with an amphibious force of 700 vessels and 174,000 army and navy servicemen. Through December 1944, the islands of Leyte and Mindoro were cleared of Japanese.
On January 9, 1945 the Americans landed unopposed at the Lingayen Gulf on Luzon and closed on Manila. The Japanese fought desperately, street by street, to hold the city. From February 3 to 23, its liberation took almost a month. When at last the fighting ended in the old Spanish citadel of Intramuros, Manila was in ruins.
Even after the capture of Manila, the Japanese fought on to the bitter end. The Americans made landings to remove the Japanese garrisons on Palawan, Mindanao, Panay and Cebu. The Japanese made their last stand entrenched in northern Luzon. General Yamashita, the Tiger of Malaya, did not surrender in Baguio until September 2, 1945; the same day as General Umezu surrendered formally for Japan on board the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
The liberation of the Philippines was costly. In the Philippines alone, the Americans lost 60,628 men and the Japanese an estimated 300,000. Filipino casualties are estimated at over a million and, sadly, these occurred mainly in the last months of the war when the final outcome had long been decided in any event.
The most serious long term consequence of World War II on the Philippines was to aggravate and embitter its internal social divisions. Prior to his departure for exile in the United States, President Quezon had advised Dr. Jose Laurel to stay behind and cooperate in the civil administration of the Japanese occupation. Whether it was good advice or not, President Quezon had hoped that with the cooperation of Filipinos, the occupation might be less severe. Following Laurel's morally ambiguous example, the Philippine elite, with regrettably few exceptions, collaborated extensively with the Japanese in their harsh exploitation of the country. President Laurel and his wartime government was despised.
On the contrary, the great majority of the Philippine people mounted a remarkably effective resistance to the Japanese occupation. Investigations after the war showed that 260,000 Filipinos had been actively engaged in guerrilla organizations and an even larger number operated covertly in the anti-Japanese underground. By the end of the war, the Japanese had effective control in only twelve of the country's forty-eight provinces.
The largest guerrilla organization was the Hukbalahap (People's Anti-Japanese Army) led by Luis Taruc. He had armed some 30,000 guerrillas who controlled most of Luzon.
By war's end, the members of the resistance firmly believed that the widespread collaboration and corruption of the well-to-do had discredited the ruling elite and that they had thereby forfeited any moral authority to govern.
The United States intended to restore the pre-war Commonwealth government. Luis Taruc and the Huks had well known socialist sympathies and communist associations. Despite their political affiliations, the Huks fully expected the American forces to treat them as allies and war heroes in recognition of their resistance and contribution to the war effort. Instead, the U.S. Army military police set out to disarm them as dangerous insurgents. MacArthur had Taruc arrested and jailed.
Republic Philippines
History of the Philippines
On the night of his execution by the Spanish colonialists in 1896, Jose Rizal, the famous filipino nationalist, called his homeland the "Pearl of the Orient Seas".
The Philippines is situated at a crossroads of the Pacific Ocean and the South China and Sulu Seas. Philippines, also referred to as the 'archipelago', has welcomed people from the East and West, creating a human mixture sustained by the enormous tropical resources.
Some 30,000 years ago the earliest inhabitants had arrived from the Asian mainland, perhaps over land bridges built during the ice ages. By the tenth century A.D. coastal villagers welcomed Chinese commerce and settlers, followed by Muslim traders from Borneo. In 1521, Ferdinand Magellan claimed the land for Spain, whose imperial rule lasted until the United States of America gained possession after victories in the Spanish-American War in 1898 and the Philippine-American War from 1899 to 1901. United States authority, although interrupted by the Japanese occupation during World War II, led to independence for a republic founded on July 4, 1946.
There are 77 million Filipinos that inhabit about 700 of the nation's 7,100 islands. Cultural distinctions remain among the nation's more than 75 ethnic groups.
Pre-Colonial History
The Philippines is an archipelago of 7,107 islands in the South China Sea situated between Taiwan to the north and Borneo to the south. Just 2,000 of its islands are inhabited and only 500 are larger than a kilometre square. The islands of Luzon, Mindanao, Palawan, Panay, Mindoro, Samar, Negros, Leyte and Cebu make up 90% of the nation's land area.
In the cycle of ice ages, glaciers store a significant portion of the earth's water in the form of ice causing a corresponding drop in the world's ocean levels. During periods of glaciation, the Philippine archipelago has been joined to the continental land mass of Asia. Evidence of human occupation in the Philippines dates to as far back as 30,000 years ago.
At the end of the last ice age, 10,000 years ago, the land connections to south-east Asia flooded and created the Indonesian and Philippine archipelagos. Since then, the islands have been settled by successive migrations of people moving through the archipelago in boats, principally from the Malay peninsula and Indonesia but also from the coasts of Indo-China and, to a lesser extent, from China and Taiwan as well.
Later migrations tended to bring with them a more sophisticated technology and social organization, assimilating or displacing further inland the earlier arrivals. Today the Philippines is made up of some sixty cultural groups speaking eighty or more languages and local dialects. The five largest cultural-linguistic groups, Tagalog, Cebuano, Ilocano, Hiligaynon and Bicolano, account for about three-quarters of the population.
The last phase of migration before the arrival of the Spanish was of Muslim traders from Indonesia, politically organized in territorial states under the authority of sultans and rajas. The Muslims had firearms and by the 1500s, they had penetrated and converted the Sulu archipelago and Mindanao and established a colony at Manila. The Spanish, who had only recently expelled their own Muslim population from Spain, put an end to further Muslim expansion in the Philippines.
Spanish Colony
Ferdinand Magellan set out from Spain in 1519 on the first voyage to circumnavigate the globe with five ships and a complement of 264 crew. Three years later in 1522, only the one ship, the Victoria, returned to Spain with 18 men.
The Philippines were the death of Magellan. The expedition sighted the island of Samar on March 16, 1521. Magellan was welcomed by two Rajas, Kolambu and Siagu. He named the islands the Archipelago of San Lazaro, erected a cross and claimed the lands for Spain. The friendly Rajas took Magellan to Cebu to meet Raja Humabon. Humabon and 800 Cebuanos were baptized as Christians. Magellan agreed to help Raja Humabon put down Lapu-Lapu, a rebellious datu on the nearby island of Mactan. In a battle between Spanish soldiers and Lapu-Lapu's warriors, Magellan was killed on April 27, 1521.
Disputes over women caused relations between Raja Humabon and the remaining Spaniards to deteriorate. The Cebuanos killed 27 Spaniards in a skirmish and the Spaniards, deciding to resume their explorations, departed Cebu.
For all its losses, the voyage was a huge financial success. The Victoria's 26 ton cargo of cloves sold for 41,000 ducats. This returned the 20,000 ducats the venture had cost plus a 105 percent profit. Four more expeditions followed between 1525 and 1542. The commander of the fourth expedition, Ruy Lopez de Villalobos, named the islands after Philip, heir to the Spanish throne (r. Philip II 1556-1598).
The Philippines was not formally organized as a Spanish colony until 1565 when Philip II appointed Miguel Lopez de Legazpi the first Governor-General. Legazpi selected Manila for the capital of the colony in 1571 because of its fine natural harbour and the rich lands surrounding the city that could supply it with produce.
The Spanish did not develop the trade potential of the Philippine's agricultural or mineral resources. The colony was administered from Mexico and its commerce centered on the galleon trade between Canton and Acapulco in which Manila functioned secondarily as an entrepot. Smaller Chinese junks brought silk and porcelain from Canton to Manila where the cargoes were re-loaded on galleons bound for Acapulco and the Spanish colonies in the Americas. The Chinese goods were paid for in Mexican silver.
Spanish rule had two lasting effects on Philippine society; the near universal conversion of the population to Roman Catholicism and the creation of a landed elite. Although under the direct order of Philip II that the conversion of the Philippines to Christianity was not to be accomplished by force, the monastic orders of the Augustinians, Dominicans, Franciscans, Recollects and Jesuits set to their missionary duties with purpose. Unable to extirpate the indigenous pagan beliefs by coercion and fear, Philippine Catholicism incorporates a deep substrate of native customs and ritual.
While the missionaries spread through the colony to found their parishes and estates in the barangays, the officials of the civil administration preferred to stay in Manila and govern indirectly through the traditional barangay datu or village chief. Although the traditional kinship organization of the barangay had maintained the communal use of land, the Spanish governors brought with them their feudal notions of land tenure with "encomienderos" and subordinate vassals. The traditional village chiefs became a class of landed nobility wielding considerable local authority. The creation of a priviledged landed-holding elite on whom most of the rural population was dependent as landless tenants introduced a class division in Philippine society that has been the perennial source of social discontent and political strife ever since.
In most villages, the priest and the local "principale" or "notable" represented between them Spanish authority. The "friarocracy" of the religious orders and the oligarchy of the landholders were the twin pillars of colonial society whose main interests were in keeping their positions of authority and priviledge.
The Spanish hold on the Philippines first began to weaken in 1762 when the British briefly captured Manila during the Seven Years' War. In support of the British invasion, the long persecuted Chinese merchant community rose in revolt against the Spanish authority. The Treaty of Paris returned Manila to Spain at the end of the War but with increasing diversion of the China trade to Britain and, even more importantly, with an irretrievable loss of prestige and respect in the eyes of its Filipino subjects.
Spain had governed the colony for two hundred years in almost complete isolation from the outside world. The royal monopolies prohibited foreign ships from trading in the Philippines. After the Seven Years' War, in collusion with local merchants and officials, foreign ships and merchants could ever more easily circumvent the monopolies and enter the Philippine trade.
Spanish-American War/Philippine Independence
World War II and Japanese Occupation
The attack on the Philippines started on December 8, 1941 ten hours after the attack on Pearl Harbour in Hawaii. As at Pearl Harbour, the American aircraft were entirely destroyed on the ground. Lacking air cover, the American Asiatic Fleet in the Philippines withdrew to Java on December 12, 1941.
Japanese troops landed at the Lingayen Gulf on December 22, 1941 and advanced across central Luzon towards Manila. On the advice of President Quezon, General MacArthur declared Manila an open city on December 25, 1941 and removed the Commonwealth government to Corregidor. The Japanese occupied Manila on January 2, 1942.
The 76,000 starving and sick American and Filipino defenders in Bataan surrendered to the Japanese on April 9, 1942. The Japanese led their captives on a cruel and criminal Death March on which 7-10,000 died or were murdered before arriving at the internment camps ten days later.
The 13,000 survivors on Corregidor surrendered on May 6, 1942.
For over three years and right to the day of Japan's surrender, the Philippines were to suffer grievously under the depredations of military occupation.
General MacArthur discharged his promise to return to the Philippines on October 20, 1944. The landings on the island of Leyte were accomplished massively with an amphibious force of 700 vessels and 174,000 army and navy servicemen. Through December 1944, the islands of Leyte and Mindoro were cleared of Japanese.
On January 9, 1945 the Americans landed unopposed at the Lingayen Gulf on Luzon and closed on Manila. The Japanese fought desperately, street by street, to hold the city. From February 3 to 23, its liberation took almost a month. When at last the fighting ended in the old Spanish citadel of Intramuros, Manila was in ruins.
Even after the capture of Manila, the Japanese fought on to the bitter end. The Americans made landings to remove the Japanese garrisons on Palawan, Mindanao, Panay and Cebu. The Japanese made their last stand entrenched in northern Luzon. General Yamashita, the Tiger of Malaya, did not surrender in Baguio until September 2, 1945; the same day as General Umezu surrendered formally for Japan on board the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
The liberation of the Philippines was costly. In the Philippines alone, the Americans lost 60,628 men and the Japanese an estimated 300,000. Filipino casualties are estimated at over a million and, sadly, these occurred mainly in the last months of the war when the final outcome had long been decided in any event.
The most serious long term consequence of World War II on the Philippines was to aggravate and embitter its internal social divisions. Prior to his departure for exile in the United States, President Quezon had advised Dr. Jose Laurel to stay behind and cooperate in the civil administration of the Japanese occupation. Whether it was good advice or not, President Quezon had hoped that with the cooperation of Filipinos, the occupation might be less severe. Following Laurel's morally ambiguous example, the Philippine elite, with regrettably few exceptions, collaborated extensively with the Japanese in their harsh exploitation of the country. President Laurel and his wartime government was despised.
On the contrary, the great majority of the Philippine people mounted a remarkably effective resistance to the Japanese occupation. Investigations after the war showed that 260,000 Filipinos had been actively engaged in guerrilla organizations and an even larger number operated covertly in the anti-Japanese underground. By the end of the war, the Japanese had effective control in only twelve of the country's forty-eight provinces.
The largest guerrilla organization was the Hukbalahap (People's Anti-Japanese Army) led by Luis Taruc. He had armed some 30,000 guerrillas who controlled most of Luzon.
By war's end, the members of the resistance firmly believed that the widespread collaboration and corruption of the well-to-do had discredited the ruling elite and that they had thereby forfeited any moral authority to govern.
The United States intended to restore the pre-war Commonwealth government. Luis Taruc and the Huks had well known socialist sympathies and communist associations. Despite their political affiliations, the Huks fully expected the American forces to treat them as allies and war heroes in recognition of their resistance and contribution to the war effort. Instead, the U.S. Army military police set out to disarm them as dangerous insurgents. MacArthur had Taruc arrested and jailed.
Republic Philippines
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Philippine Prehistory - The First Inhabitants - 40,000 BP
The Philippines is an archipelago of 7,107 islands in the South China Sea situated between Taiwan to the north and Borneo to the south. Just 2,000 of its islands are inhabited and only 500 are larger than a kilometre square. The nine largest islands of Luzon, Mindanao, Palawan, Panay, Mindoro, Samar, Negros, Leyte and Cebu make up 90% of the nation's land area.
Over the past two million years, the earth has undergone twenty cycles of glaciation. During these ice ages, glaciers accumulate on land a substantial quantity of the earth's water in the form of ice and cause the water levels in the world's oceans to drop. At the height of the last ice age, the sea levels around the Philippines were at least 50 metres lower than they are today. The present sea beds surrounding the Malay peninsula and the islands of Sumatra, Java, Borneo and Palawan were all above water making one huge extension to the continental land mass of Asia.
The earth's climate began warming 18,000 years ago and the oceans regained their present high levels about 8,000 years ago.
No pre-hominid or hominid species such as australopithecus or homo erectus has been found in the Philippines. The first human beings probably reached the Philippines about 40,000 years ago at roughly the same time as they reached Australia and New Guinea. The Philippines, like Australia and New Guinea, were never actually joined to the south east Asian mainland but, at the low ocean levels, the water barrier was much less. The earliest human bones found in the Philippines were on Palawan of modern type and date to 22,000 B.P. although stone tools from Palawan date back to 30,000 B.P.
The original people of the Philippines were the ancestors of the people known today as Negritos or Aeta. They are an Australo-Melanesian people with dark skin and tight, curly brown hair. They are also distinctively small and of short stature. As the Pygmies in the equatorial forests of Africa, the Aeta are believed to have adapted locally to the tropical jungles of the Philippines.
The Aeta are a nomadic hunting and gathering people who forage in small family bands with an informal organization and leadership. They were once widespread throughout the Philippines but are now found only in the remote highland areas of Luzon, Palawan, Panay, Negros and Mindanao.
Negrito and Negrillo
That's what the white man said!!!
The perspective approach to history has been one of constructed mystification. Anthropology is a conjured up science for categorizing people and is blatantly wedged in erroneous idiotic sequences for mass stupefaction. The following statement is an example: The indigenous Negritos of Australia are described as a "SPECIAL MODIFICATION OF THE NEGROID TYPE" by early explorers. (Isn't that a statement of stupidity?)---a special modification. Why were they a special modification, and who modified them--GOD? The White man has always had a freaked out imagination that he discovered the world. Once he arrived in Asia, Oceania, and other termed “exotic places,” he found Blacks already there. He couldn't explain his findings so he termed the “denials—refusals to explain” or “mysteries.” As you will see, Africans were not contained only in the Continent of Africa.
Two ancient skulls, one from central Africa and the other from the Black Sea Republic of Georgia, have shaken the human family tree to its roots, sending scientists scrambling to see if their favorite theories are among the fallen fruit. This skull is the earliest known record of the human family which was discovered in Chad (Central Africa). The new find was nicknamed ‘Toumai’ and comes from the little-known interval of human lineage. Christopher Columbus knew that the African Mali Tribe had come to America almost 200 years before he set foot on American soil. Tiger Woods made known to America that he did not want to be referred to as an "African-American." He wasn't Black. People should keep their mouths closed if they don't know from whence they speak. What Tiger Woods does not mention is that his mother is an admixture of the Negrito from Thailand. The indigenous people from Thailand were Negroes in antiquity--You're still a Negro Mr. Tiger Negrito Woods.
Pygmy
The history of the Philippines may be divided into four distinct phases: the pre-Spanish period (before 1521); the Spanish period (1521-1898); the American period (1898-1946); and the years since independence (1946-present).
Pre-Spanish Period
The first people in the Philippines, the Negritos, are believed to have come to the islands 30,000 years ago from Borneo and Sumatra, making their way across then-existing land bridges. Subsequently, people of Malay stock came from the south in successive waves, the earliest by land bridges and later in boats called barangays. The Malays settled in scattered communities, also called barangays, which were ruled by chieftains known as datus. Chinese merchants and traders arrived and settled in the ninth century A.D. In the 14th century, Arabs arrived, introducing Islam in the south and extending some influence even into Luzon. The Malays, however, remained the dominant group until the Spanish arrived in the 16th century.
Spanish Period
Ferdinand Magellan claimed the Philippines for Spain in 1521, and for the next 377 years, the islands were under Spanish rule. This period was the era of conversion to Roman Catholicism. A Spanish colonial social system was developed, complete with a strong centralized government and considerable clerical influence. The Filipinos were restive under the Spanish, and this long period was marked by numerous uprisings. The most important of these began in 1896 under the leadership of Emilio Aguinaldo and continued until the Americans defeated the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay on May 1, 1898, during the Spanish-American War. Aguinaldo declared independence from Spain on June 12, 1898.
American Period
Following Admiral Dewey's defeat of the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay, the United States occupied the Philippines. Spain ceded the islands to the United States under the terms of the Treaty of Paris (December 10, 1898) that ended the war.
A war of resistance against U.S. rule, led by Revolutionary President Aguinaldo, broke out in 1899. Although Americans have historically used the term "the Philippine Insurrection," Filipinos and an increasing number of American historians refer to these hostilities as the Philippine-American War (1899-1902), and in 1999 the U.S. Library of Congress reclassified its references to use this term. In 1901, Aguinaldo was captured and swore allegiance to the United States, and resistance gradually died out.
U.S. administration of the Philippines was always declared to be temporary and aimed to develop institutions that would permit and encourage the eventual establishment of a free and democratic government. Therefore, U.S. officials concentrated on the creation of such practical supports for democratic government as public education and a sound legal system.
The first legislative assembly was elected in 1907. A bicameral legislature, largely under Philippine control, was established. A civil service was formed and was gradually taken over by the Filipinos, who had effectively gained control by the end of World War I. The Catholic Church was disestablished, and a considerable amount of church land was purchased and redistributed.
In 1935, under the terms of the Tydings-McDuffie Act, the Philippines became a self-governing commonwealth. Manuel Quezon was elected president of the new government, which was designed to prepare the country for independence after a 10-year transition period. World War II intervened, however, and in May 1942, Corregidor, the last American/Filipino stronghold, fell. U.S. forces in the Philippines surrendered to the Japanese, placing the islands under Japanese control.
The war to regain the Philippines began when Gen. Douglas MacArthur landed on Leyte on October 20, 1944. Filipinos and Americans fought together until the Japanese surrender in September 1945. Much of Manila was destroyed during the final months of the fighting, and an estimated 1 million Filipinos lost their lives in the war.
As a result of the Japanese occupation, the guerrilla warfare that followed, and the battles leading to liberation, the country suffered great damage and a complete organizational breakdown. Despite the shaken state of the country, the United States and the Philippines decided to move forward with plans for independence. On July 4, 1946, the Philippine Islands became the independent Republic of the Philippines, in accordance with the terms of the Tydings-McDuffie Act. In 1962, the official Independence Day was changed from July 4 to June 12, commemorating the date independence from Spain was declared by General Aguinaldo in 1898.
Post-Independence Period
The early years of independence were dominated by U.S.-assisted postwar reconstruction. A communist-inspired Huk Rebellion (1945-53) complicated recovery efforts before its successful suppression under the leadership of President Ramon Magsaysay. The succeeding administrations of Presidents Carlos P. Garcia (1957-61) and Diosdado Macapagal (1961-65) sought to expand Philippine ties to its Asian neighbors, implement domestic reform programs, and develop and diversify the economy.
In 1972, President Ferdinand E. Marcos (1965-86) declared martial law, citing growing lawlessness and open rebellion by the communist rebels as his justification. Marcos governed from 1973 until mid-1981 in accordance with the transitory provisions of a new constitution that replaced the commonwealth constitution of 1935. He suppressed democratic institutions and restricted civil liberties during the martial law period, ruling largely by decree and popular referenda. The government began a process of political normalization during 1978-81, culminating in the reelection of President Marcos to a 6-year term that would have ended in 1987. The Marcos government's respect for human rights remained low despite the end of martial law on January 17, 1981. His government retained its wide arrest and detention powers. Corruption and favoritism contributed to a serious decline in economic growth and development under Marcos.
The assassination of opposition leader Benigno (Ninoy) Aquino upon his return to the Philippines in 1983, after a long period of exile, coalesced popular dissatisfaction with Marcos and set in motion a succession of events that culminated in a snap presidential election in February 1986. The opposition united under Aquino's widow, Corazon Aquino, and Salvador Laurel, head of the United Nationalist Democratic Organization (UNIDO). The election was marred by widespread electoral fraud on the part of Marcos and his supporters. International observers, including a U.S. delegation led by Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Indiana), denounced the official results. Marcos was forced to flee the Philippines in the face of a peaceful civilian-military uprising that ousted him and installed Corazon Aquino as president on February 25, 1986.
Under Aquino's presidency progress was made in revitalizing democratic institutions and respect for civil liberties. However, the administration also was viewed by many as weak and fractious, and a return to full political stability and economic development was hampered by several attempted coups staged by disaffected members of the Philippine military.
Fidel Ramos was elected president in 1992. Early in his administration, Ramos declared "national reconciliation" his highest priority. He legalized the communist party and created the National Unification Commission (NUC) to lay the groundwork for talks with communist insurgents, Muslim separatists, and military rebels. In June 1994, President Ramos signed into law a general conditional amnesty covering all rebel groups, as well as Philippine military and police personnel accused of crimes committed while fighting the insurgents. In October 1995, the government signed an agreement bringing the military insurgency to an end. A peace agreement with one major Muslim insurgent group was signed in 1996.
Joseph Ejercito Estrada's election as president in May 1998 marked the Philippines' third democratic succession since the ouster of Marcos. Estrada was elected with overwhelming mass support on a platform promising poverty alleviation and an anti-crime crackdown.
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, elected vice president in 1998, assumed the presidency in January 2001 after widespread demonstrations that followed the breakdown of Estrada's impeachment trial on corruption charges. The Philippine Supreme Court subsequently endorsed unanimously the constitutionality of the transfer of power. National elections will take place in May 2004. In December 2002, Macapagal-Arroyo announced she would not be a candidate for a full term as president.
History of the Philippines
On the night of his execution by the Spanish colonialists in 1896, Jose Rizal, the famous filipino nationalist, called his homeland the "Pearl of the Orient Seas".
The Philippines is situated at a crossroads of the Pacific Ocean and the South China and Sulu Seas. Philippines, also referred to as the 'archipelago', has welcomed people from the East and West, creating a human mixture sustained by the enormous tropical resources.
Some 30,000 years ago the earliest inhabitants had arrived from the Asian mainland, perhaps over land bridges built during the ice ages. By the tenth century A.D. coastal villagers welcomed Chinese commerce and settlers, followed by Muslim traders from Borneo. In 1521, Ferdinand Magellan claimed the land for Spain, whose imperial rule lasted until the United States of America gained possession after victories in the Spanish-American War in 1898 and the Philippine-American War from 1899 to 1901. United States authority, although interrupted by the Japanese occupation during World War II, led to independence for a republic founded on July 4, 1946.
There are 77 million Filipinos that inhabit about 700 of the nation's 7,100 islands. Cultural distinctions remain among the nation's more than 75 ethnic groups.
Pre-Colonial History
The Philippines is an archipelago of 7,107 islands in the South China Sea situated between Taiwan to the north and Borneo to the south. Just 2,000 of its islands are inhabited and only 500 are larger than a kilometre square. The islands of Luzon, Mindanao, Palawan, Panay, Mindoro, Samar, Negros, Leyte and Cebu make up 90% of the nation's land area.
In the cycle of ice ages, glaciers store a significant portion of the earth's water in the form of ice causing a corresponding drop in the world's ocean levels. During periods of glaciation, the Philippine archipelago has been joined to the continental land mass of Asia. Evidence of human occupation in the Philippines dates to as far back as 30,000 years ago.
At the end of the last ice age, 10,000 years ago, the land connections to south-east Asia flooded and created the Indonesian and Philippine archipelagos. Since then, the islands have been settled by successive migrations of people moving through the archipelago in boats, principally from the Malay peninsula and Indonesia but also from the coasts of Indo-China and, to a lesser extent, from China and Taiwan as well.
Later migrations tended to bring with them a more sophisticated technology and social organization, assimilating or displacing further inland the earlier arrivals. Today the Philippines is made up of some sixty cultural groups speaking eighty or more languages and local dialects. The five largest cultural-linguistic groups, Tagalog, Cebuano, Ilocano, Hiligaynon and Bicolano, account for about three-quarters of the population.
The last phase of migration before the arrival of the Spanish was of Muslim traders from Indonesia, politically organized in territorial states under the authority of sultans and rajas. The Muslims had firearms and by the 1500s, they had penetrated and converted the Sulu archipelago and Mindanao and established a colony at Manila. The Spanish, who had only recently expelled their own Muslim population from Spain, put an end to further Muslim expansion in the Philippines.
Spanish Colony
Ferdinand Magellan set out from Spain in 1519 on the first voyage to circumnavigate the globe with five ships and a complement of 264 crew. Three years later in 1522, only the one ship, the Victoria, returned to Spain with 18 men.
The Philippines were the death of Magellan. The expedition sighted the island of Samar on March 16, 1521. Magellan was welcomed by two Rajas, Kolambu and Siagu. He named the islands the Archipelago of San Lazaro, erected a cross and claimed the lands for Spain. The friendly Rajas took Magellan to Cebu to meet Raja Humabon. Humabon and 800 Cebuanos were baptized as Christians. Magellan agreed to help Raja Humabon put down Lapu-Lapu, a rebellious datu on the nearby island of Mactan. In a battle between Spanish soldiers and Lapu-Lapu's warriors, Magellan was killed on April 27, 1521.
Disputes over women caused relations between Raja Humabon and the remaining Spaniards to deteriorate. The Cebuanos killed 27 Spaniards in a skirmish and the Spaniards, deciding to resume their explorations, departed Cebu.
For all its losses, the voyage was a huge financial success. The Victoria's 26 ton cargo of cloves sold for 41,000 ducats. This returned the 20,000 ducats the venture had cost plus a 105 percent profit. Four more expeditions followed between 1525 and 1542. The commander of the fourth expedition, Ruy Lopez de Villalobos, named the islands after Philip, heir to the Spanish throne (r. Philip II 1556-1598).
The Philippines was not formally organized as a Spanish colony until 1565 when Philip II appointed Miguel Lopez de Legazpi the first Governor-General. Legazpi selected Manila for the capital of the colony in 1571 because of its fine natural harbour and the rich lands surrounding the city that could supply it with produce.
The Spanish did not develop the trade potential of the Philippine's agricultural or mineral resources. The colony was administered from Mexico and its commerce centered on the galleon trade between Canton and Acapulco in which Manila functioned secondarily as an entrepot. Smaller Chinese junks brought silk and porcelain from Canton to Manila where the cargoes were re-loaded on galleons bound for Acapulco and the Spanish colonies in the Americas. The Chinese goods were paid for in Mexican silver.
Spanish rule had two lasting effects on Philippine society; the near universal conversion of the population to Roman Catholicism and the creation of a landed elite. Although under the direct order of Philip II that the conversion of the Philippines to Christianity was not to be accomplished by force, the monastic orders of the Augustinians, Dominicans, Franciscans, Recollects and Jesuits set to their missionary duties with purpose. Unable to extirpate the indigenous pagan beliefs by coercion and fear, Philippine Catholicism incorporates a deep substrate of native customs and ritual.
While the missionaries spread through the colony to found their parishes and estates in the barangays, the officials of the civil administration preferred to stay in Manila and govern indirectly through the traditional barangay datu or village chief. Although the traditional kinship organization of the barangay had maintained the communal use of land, the Spanish governors brought with them their feudal notions of land tenure with "encomienderos" and subordinate vassals. The traditional village chiefs became a class of landed nobility wielding considerable local authority. The creation of a priviledged landed-holding elite on whom most of the rural population was dependent as landless tenants introduced a class division in Philippine society that has been the perennial source of social discontent and political strife ever since.
In most villages, the priest and the local "principale" or "notable" represented between them Spanish authority. The "friarocracy" of the religious orders and the oligarchy of the landholders were the twin pillars of colonial society whose main interests were in keeping their positions of authority and priviledge.
The Spanish hold on the Philippines first began to weaken in 1762 when the British briefly captured Manila during the Seven Years' War. In support of the British invasion, the long persecuted Chinese merchant community rose in revolt against the Spanish authority. The Treaty of Paris returned Manila to Spain at the end of the War but with increasing diversion of the China trade to Britain and, even more importantly, with an irretrievable loss of prestige and respect in the eyes of its Filipino subjects.
Spain had governed the colony for two hundred years in almost complete isolation from the outside world. The royal monopolies prohibited foreign ships from trading in the Philippines. After the Seven Years' War, in collusion with local merchants and officials, foreign ships and merchants could ever more easily circumvent the monopolies and enter the Philippine trade.
Spanish-American War/Philippine Independence
World War II and Japanese Occupation
The attack on the Philippines started on December 8, 1941 ten hours after the attack on Pearl Harbour in Hawaii. As at Pearl Harbour, the American aircraft were entirely destroyed on the ground. Lacking air cover, the American Asiatic Fleet in the Philippines withdrew to Java on December 12, 1941.
Japanese troops landed at the Lingayen Gulf on December 22, 1941 and advanced across central Luzon towards Manila. On the advice of President Quezon, General MacArthur declared Manila an open city on December 25, 1941 and removed the Commonwealth government to Corregidor. The Japanese occupied Manila on January 2, 1942.
The 76,000 starving and sick American and Filipino defenders in Bataan surrendered to the Japanese on April 9, 1942. The Japanese led their captives on a cruel and criminal Death March on which 7-10,000 died or were murdered before arriving at the internment camps ten days later.
The 13,000 survivors on Corregidor surrendered on May 6, 1942.
For over three years and right to the day of Japan's surrender, the Philippines were to suffer grievously under the depredations of military occupation.
General MacArthur discharged his promise to return to the Philippines on October 20, 1944. The landings on the island of Leyte were accomplished massively with an amphibious force of 700 vessels and 174,000 army and navy servicemen. Through December 1944, the islands of Leyte and Mindoro were cleared of Japanese.
On January 9, 1945 the Americans landed unopposed at the Lingayen Gulf on Luzon and closed on Manila. The Japanese fought desperately, street by street, to hold the city. From February 3 to 23, its liberation took almost a month. When at last the fighting ended in the old Spanish citadel of Intramuros, Manila was in ruins.
Even after the capture of Manila, the Japanese fought on to the bitter end. The Americans made landings to remove the Japanese garrisons on Palawan, Mindanao, Panay and Cebu. The Japanese made their last stand entrenched in northern Luzon. General Yamashita, the Tiger of Malaya, did not surrender in Baguio until September 2, 1945; the same day as General Umezu surrendered formally for Japan on board the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
The liberation of the Philippines was costly. In the Philippines alone, the Americans lost 60,628 men and the Japanese an estimated 300,000. Filipino casualties are estimated at over a million and, sadly, these occurred mainly in the last months of the war when the final outcome had long been decided in any event.
The most serious long term consequence of World War II on the Philippines was to aggravate and embitter its internal social divisions. Prior to his departure for exile in the United States, President Quezon had advised Dr. Jose Laurel to stay behind and cooperate in the civil administration of the Japanese occupation. Whether it was good advice or not, President Quezon had hoped that with the cooperation of Filipinos, the occupation might be less severe. Following Laurel's morally ambiguous example, the Philippine elite, with regrettably few exceptions, collaborated extensively with the Japanese in their harsh exploitation of the country. President Laurel and his wartime government was despised.
On the contrary, the great majority of the Philippine people mounted a remarkably effective resistance to the Japanese occupation. Investigations after the war showed that 260,000 Filipinos had been actively engaged in guerrilla organizations and an even larger number operated covertly in the anti-Japanese underground. By the end of the war, the Japanese had effective control in only twelve of the country's forty-eight provinces.
The largest guerrilla organization was the Hukbalahap (People's Anti-Japanese Army) led by Luis Taruc. He had armed some 30,000 guerrillas who controlled most of Luzon.
By war's end, the members of the resistance firmly believed that the widespread collaboration and corruption of the well-to-do had discredited the ruling elite and that they had thereby forfeited any moral authority to govern.
The United States intended to restore the pre-war Commonwealth government. Luis Taruc and the Huks had well known socialist sympathies and communist associations. Despite their political affiliations, the Huks fully expected the American forces to treat them as allies and war heroes in recognition of their resistance and contribution to the war effort. Instead, the U.S. Army military police set out to disarm them as dangerous insurgents. MacArthur had Taruc arrested and jailed.
Republic Philippines
History of the Philippines
On the night of his execution by the Spanish colonialists in 1896, Jose Rizal, the famous filipino nationalist, called his homeland the "Pearl of the Orient Seas".
The Philippines is situated at a crossroads of the Pacific Ocean and the South China and Sulu Seas. Philippines, also referred to as the 'archipelago', has welcomed people from the East and West, creating a human mixture sustained by the enormous tropical resources.
Some 30,000 years ago the earliest inhabitants had arrived from the Asian mainland, perhaps over land bridges built during the ice ages. By the tenth century A.D. coastal villagers welcomed Chinese commerce and settlers, followed by Muslim traders from Borneo. In 1521, Ferdinand Magellan claimed the land for Spain, whose imperial rule lasted until the United States of America gained possession after victories in the Spanish-American War in 1898 and the Philippine-American War from 1899 to 1901. United States authority, although interrupted by the Japanese occupation during World War II, led to independence for a republic founded on July 4, 1946.
There are 77 million Filipinos that inhabit about 700 of the nation's 7,100 islands. Cultural distinctions remain among the nation's more than 75 ethnic groups.
Pre-Colonial History
The Philippines is an archipelago of 7,107 islands in the South China Sea situated between Taiwan to the north and Borneo to the south. Just 2,000 of its islands are inhabited and only 500 are larger than a kilometre square. The islands of Luzon, Mindanao, Palawan, Panay, Mindoro, Samar, Negros, Leyte and Cebu make up 90% of the nation's land area.
In the cycle of ice ages, glaciers store a significant portion of the earth's water in the form of ice causing a corresponding drop in the world's ocean levels. During periods of glaciation, the Philippine archipelago has been joined to the continental land mass of Asia. Evidence of human occupation in the Philippines dates to as far back as 30,000 years ago.
At the end of the last ice age, 10,000 years ago, the land connections to south-east Asia flooded and created the Indonesian and Philippine archipelagos. Since then, the islands have been settled by successive migrations of people moving through the archipelago in boats, principally from the Malay peninsula and Indonesia but also from the coasts of Indo-China and, to a lesser extent, from China and Taiwan as well.
Later migrations tended to bring with them a more sophisticated technology and social organization, assimilating or displacing further inland the earlier arrivals. Today the Philippines is made up of some sixty cultural groups speaking eighty or more languages and local dialects. The five largest cultural-linguistic groups, Tagalog, Cebuano, Ilocano, Hiligaynon and Bicolano, account for about three-quarters of the population.
The last phase of migration before the arrival of the Spanish was of Muslim traders from Indonesia, politically organized in territorial states under the authority of sultans and rajas. The Muslims had firearms and by the 1500s, they had penetrated and converted the Sulu archipelago and Mindanao and established a colony at Manila. The Spanish, who had only recently expelled their own Muslim population from Spain, put an end to further Muslim expansion in the Philippines.
Spanish Colony
Ferdinand Magellan set out from Spain in 1519 on the first voyage to circumnavigate the globe with five ships and a complement of 264 crew. Three years later in 1522, only the one ship, the Victoria, returned to Spain with 18 men.
The Philippines were the death of Magellan. The expedition sighted the island of Samar on March 16, 1521. Magellan was welcomed by two Rajas, Kolambu and Siagu. He named the islands the Archipelago of San Lazaro, erected a cross and claimed the lands for Spain. The friendly Rajas took Magellan to Cebu to meet Raja Humabon. Humabon and 800 Cebuanos were baptized as Christians. Magellan agreed to help Raja Humabon put down Lapu-Lapu, a rebellious datu on the nearby island of Mactan. In a battle between Spanish soldiers and Lapu-Lapu's warriors, Magellan was killed on April 27, 1521.
Disputes over women caused relations between Raja Humabon and the remaining Spaniards to deteriorate. The Cebuanos killed 27 Spaniards in a skirmish and the Spaniards, deciding to resume their explorations, departed Cebu.
For all its losses, the voyage was a huge financial success. The Victoria's 26 ton cargo of cloves sold for 41,000 ducats. This returned the 20,000 ducats the venture had cost plus a 105 percent profit. Four more expeditions followed between 1525 and 1542. The commander of the fourth expedition, Ruy Lopez de Villalobos, named the islands after Philip, heir to the Spanish throne (r. Philip II 1556-1598).
The Philippines was not formally organized as a Spanish colony until 1565 when Philip II appointed Miguel Lopez de Legazpi the first Governor-General. Legazpi selected Manila for the capital of the colony in 1571 because of its fine natural harbour and the rich lands surrounding the city that could supply it with produce.
The Spanish did not develop the trade potential of the Philippine's agricultural or mineral resources. The colony was administered from Mexico and its commerce centered on the galleon trade between Canton and Acapulco in which Manila functioned secondarily as an entrepot. Smaller Chinese junks brought silk and porcelain from Canton to Manila where the cargoes were re-loaded on galleons bound for Acapulco and the Spanish colonies in the Americas. The Chinese goods were paid for in Mexican silver.
Spanish rule had two lasting effects on Philippine society; the near universal conversion of the population to Roman Catholicism and the creation of a landed elite. Although under the direct order of Philip II that the conversion of the Philippines to Christianity was not to be accomplished by force, the monastic orders of the Augustinians, Dominicans, Franciscans, Recollects and Jesuits set to their missionary duties with purpose. Unable to extirpate the indigenous pagan beliefs by coercion and fear, Philippine Catholicism incorporates a deep substrate of native customs and ritual.
While the missionaries spread through the colony to found their parishes and estates in the barangays, the officials of the civil administration preferred to stay in Manila and govern indirectly through the traditional barangay datu or village chief. Although the traditional kinship organization of the barangay had maintained the communal use of land, the Spanish governors brought with them their feudal notions of land tenure with "encomienderos" and subordinate vassals. The traditional village chiefs became a class of landed nobility wielding considerable local authority. The creation of a priviledged landed-holding elite on whom most of the rural population was dependent as landless tenants introduced a class division in Philippine society that has been the perennial source of social discontent and political strife ever since.
In most villages, the priest and the local "principale" or "notable" represented between them Spanish authority. The "friarocracy" of the religious orders and the oligarchy of the landholders were the twin pillars of colonial society whose main interests were in keeping their positions of authority and priviledge.
The Spanish hold on the Philippines first began to weaken in 1762 when the British briefly captured Manila during the Seven Years' War. In support of the British invasion, the long persecuted Chinese merchant community rose in revolt against the Spanish authority. The Treaty of Paris returned Manila to Spain at the end of the War but with increasing diversion of the China trade to Britain and, even more importantly, with an irretrievable loss of prestige and respect in the eyes of its Filipino subjects.
Spain had governed the colony for two hundred years in almost complete isolation from the outside world. The royal monopolies prohibited foreign ships from trading in the Philippines. After the Seven Years' War, in collusion with local merchants and officials, foreign ships and merchants could ever more easily circumvent the monopolies and enter the Philippine trade.
Spanish-American War/Philippine Independence
World War II and Japanese Occupation
The attack on the Philippines started on December 8, 1941 ten hours after the attack on Pearl Harbour in Hawaii. As at Pearl Harbour, the American aircraft were entirely destroyed on the ground. Lacking air cover, the American Asiatic Fleet in the Philippines withdrew to Java on December 12, 1941.
Japanese troops landed at the Lingayen Gulf on December 22, 1941 and advanced across central Luzon towards Manila. On the advice of President Quezon, General MacArthur declared Manila an open city on December 25, 1941 and removed the Commonwealth government to Corregidor. The Japanese occupied Manila on January 2, 1942.
The 76,000 starving and sick American and Filipino defenders in Bataan surrendered to the Japanese on April 9, 1942. The Japanese led their captives on a cruel and criminal Death March on which 7-10,000 died or were murdered before arriving at the internment camps ten days later.
The 13,000 survivors on Corregidor surrendered on May 6, 1942.
For over three years and right to the day of Japan's surrender, the Philippines were to suffer grievously under the depredations of military occupation.
General MacArthur discharged his promise to return to the Philippines on October 20, 1944. The landings on the island of Leyte were accomplished massively with an amphibious force of 700 vessels and 174,000 army and navy servicemen. Through December 1944, the islands of Leyte and Mindoro were cleared of Japanese.
On January 9, 1945 the Americans landed unopposed at the Lingayen Gulf on Luzon and closed on Manila. The Japanese fought desperately, street by street, to hold the city. From February 3 to 23, its liberation took almost a month. When at last the fighting ended in the old Spanish citadel of Intramuros, Manila was in ruins.
Even after the capture of Manila, the Japanese fought on to the bitter end. The Americans made landings to remove the Japanese garrisons on Palawan, Mindanao, Panay and Cebu. The Japanese made their last stand entrenched in northern Luzon. General Yamashita, the Tiger of Malaya, did not surrender in Baguio until September 2, 1945; the same day as General Umezu surrendered formally for Japan on board the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
The liberation of the Philippines was costly. In the Philippines alone, the Americans lost 60,628 men and the Japanese an estimated 300,000. Filipino casualties are estimated at over a million and, sadly, these occurred mainly in the last months of the war when the final outcome had long been decided in any event.
The most serious long term consequence of World War II on the Philippines was to aggravate and embitter its internal social divisions. Prior to his departure for exile in the United States, President Quezon had advised Dr. Jose Laurel to stay behind and cooperate in the civil administration of the Japanese occupation. Whether it was good advice or not, President Quezon had hoped that with the cooperation of Filipinos, the occupation might be less severe. Following Laurel's morally ambiguous example, the Philippine elite, with regrettably few exceptions, collaborated extensively with the Japanese in their harsh exploitation of the country. President Laurel and his wartime government was despised.
On the contrary, the great majority of the Philippine people mounted a remarkably effective resistance to the Japanese occupation. Investigations after the war showed that 260,000 Filipinos had been actively engaged in guerrilla organizations and an even larger number operated covertly in the anti-Japanese underground. By the end of the war, the Japanese had effective control in only twelve of the country's forty-eight provinces.
The largest guerrilla organization was the Hukbalahap (People's Anti-Japanese Army) led by Luis Taruc. He had armed some 30,000 guerrillas who controlled most of Luzon.
By war's end, the members of the resistance firmly believed that the widespread collaboration and corruption of the well-to-do had discredited the ruling elite and that they had thereby forfeited any moral authority to govern.
The United States intended to restore the pre-war Commonwealth government. Luis Taruc and the Huks had well known socialist sympathies and communist associations. Despite their political affiliations, the Huks fully expected the American forces to treat them as allies and war heroes in recognition of their resistance and contribution to the war effort. Instead, the U.S. Army military police set out to disarm them as dangerous insurgents. MacArthur had Taruc arrested and jailed.
Republic Philippines
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Philippine Prehistory - The First Inhabitants - 40,000 BP
The Philippines is an archipelago of 7,107 islands in the South China Sea situated between Taiwan to the north and Borneo to the south. Just 2,000 of its islands are inhabited and only 500 are larger than a kilometre square. The nine largest islands of Luzon, Mindanao, Palawan, Panay, Mindoro, Samar, Negros, Leyte and Cebu make up 90% of the nation's land area.
Over the past two million years, the earth has undergone twenty cycles of glaciation. During these ice ages, glaciers accumulate on land a substantial quantity of the earth's water in the form of ice and cause the water levels in the world's oceans to drop. At the height of the last ice age, the sea levels around the Philippines were at least 50 metres lower than they are today. The present sea beds surrounding the Malay peninsula and the islands of Sumatra, Java, Borneo and Palawan were all above water making one huge extension to the continental land mass of Asia.
The earth's climate began warming 18,000 years ago and the oceans regained their present high levels about 8,000 years ago.
No pre-hominid or hominid species such as australopithecus or homo erectus has been found in the Philippines. The first human beings probably reached the Philippines about 40,000 years ago at roughly the same time as they reached Australia and New Guinea. The Philippines, like Australia and New Guinea, were never actually joined to the south east Asian mainland but, at the low ocean levels, the water barrier was much less. The earliest human bones found in the Philippines were on Palawan of modern type and date to 22,000 B.P. although stone tools from Palawan date back to 30,000 B.P.
The original people of the Philippines were the ancestors of the people known today as Negritos or Aeta. They are an Australo-Melanesian people with dark skin and tight, curly brown hair. They are also distinctively small and of short stature. As the Pygmies in the equatorial forests of Africa, the Aeta are believed to have adapted locally to the tropical jungles of the Philippines.
The Aeta are a nomadic hunting and gathering people who forage in small family bands with an informal organization and leadership. They were once widespread throughout the Philippines but are now found only in the remote highland areas of Luzon, Palawan, Panay, Negros and Mindanao.
Negrito and Negrillo
That's what the white man said!!!
The perspective approach to history has been one of constructed mystification. Anthropology is a conjured up science for categorizing people and is blatantly wedged in erroneous idiotic sequences for mass stupefaction. The following statement is an example: The indigenous Negritos of Australia are described as a "SPECIAL MODIFICATION OF THE NEGROID TYPE" by early explorers. (Isn't that a statement of stupidity?)---a special modification. Why were they a special modification, and who modified them--GOD? The White man has always had a freaked out imagination that he discovered the world. Once he arrived in Asia, Oceania, and other termed “exotic places,” he found Blacks already there. He couldn't explain his findings so he termed the “denials—refusals to explain” or “mysteries.” As you will see, Africans were not contained only in the Continent of Africa.
Two ancient skulls, one from central Africa and the other from the Black Sea Republic of Georgia, have shaken the human family tree to its roots, sending scientists scrambling to see if their favorite theories are among the fallen fruit. This skull is the earliest known record of the human family which was discovered in Chad (Central Africa). The new find was nicknamed ‘Toumai’ and comes from the little-known interval of human lineage. Christopher Columbus knew that the African Mali Tribe had come to America almost 200 years before he set foot on American soil. Tiger Woods made known to America that he did not want to be referred to as an "African-American." He wasn't Black. People should keep their mouths closed if they don't know from whence they speak. What Tiger Woods does not mention is that his mother is an admixture of the Negrito from Thailand. The indigenous people from Thailand were Negroes in antiquity--You're still a Negro Mr. Tiger Negrito Woods.
Pygmy
