The 19th century

By the late 18th century, political and economic changes in Europe were finally beginning to
affect Spain and, thus, the Philippines. Important as a stimulus to trade was the gradual
elimination of the monopoly enjoyed by the galleon to Acapulco. The last galleon arrived
in Manila in 1815, and by the mid-1830s Manila was open to foreign merchants almost without
restriction. The demand for Philippine sugar and abaca (hemp) grew apace, and the volume of
exports to Europe expanded even further after the completion of the Suez Canal in 1869.
The growth of commercial agriculture resulted in the appearance of a new class. Alongside the
landholdings of the church and the rice estates of the pre-Spanish nobility there arose haciendas
of coffee, hemp, and sugar, often the property of enterprising Chinese-Filipino mestizos. Some of
the families that gained prominence in the 19th century have continued to play an important role
in Philippine economics and politics.
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Not until 1863 was there public education in the Philippines, and even then the church controlled
the curriculum. Less than one-fifth of those who went to school could read and write Spanish,
and far fewer could speak it properly. The limited higher education in the colony was entirely
under clerical direction, but by the 1880s many sons of the wealthy were sent to Europe to study.
There, nationalism and a passion for reform blossomed in the liberal atmosphere. Out of this
talented group of overseas Filipino students arose what came to be known as the Propaganda
Movement. Magazines, poetry, and pamphleteering flourished. José Rizal, this movement’s most
brilliant figure, produced two political novels—Noli me tangere (1886; Touch Me Not) and El
filibusterismo (1891; The Reign of Greed)—which had a wide impact in the Philippines. In 1892
Rizal returned home and formed the Liga Filipina, a modest reform-minded society, loyal to
Spain, that breathed no word of independence. But Rizal was quickly arrested by the overly
fearful Spanish, exiled to a remote island in the south, and finally executed in 1896. Meanwhile,
within the Philippines there had developed a firm commitment to independence among a
somewhat less privileged class.
Shocked by the arrest of Rizal in 1892, these activists quickly formed the Katipunan under the
leadership of Andres Bonifacio, a self-educated warehouseman. The Katipunan was dedicated to
the expulsion of the Spanish from the islands, and preparations were made for armed revolt.
Filipino rebels had been numerous in the history of Spanish rule, but now for the first time they
were inspired by nationalist ambitions and possessed the education needed to make success a real
possibility.
The Philippine Revolution
In August 1896, Spanish friars uncovered evidence of the Katipunan’s plans, and its leaders were
forced into premature action. Revolts broke out in several provinces around Manila. After
months of fighting, severe Spanish retaliation forced the revolutionary armies to retreat to the
hills. In December 1897 a truce was concluded with the Spanish. Emilio Aguinaldo, a municipal
mayor and commander of the rebel forces, was paid a large sum and was allowed to go to Hong
Kong with other leaders; the Spanish promised reforms as well. But reforms were slow in
coming, and small bands of rebels, distrustful of Spanish promises, kept their arms; clashes grew
more frequent.
 Emilio Aguinaldo.Brown Brothers

Meanwhile, war had broken out between Spain and the United States(the Spanish-American
War). After the U.S. naval victory in the Battle of Manila Bay in May 1898, Aguinaldo and his
entourage returned to the Philippines with the help of Adm. George Dewey. Confident of U.S.
support, Aguinaldo reorganized his forces and soon liberated several towns south of Manila.
Independence was declared on June 12 (now celebrated as Independence Day). In September
a constitutionalcongress met in Malolos, north of Manila, which drew up a fundamental law
derived from European and Latin American precedents. A government was formed on the basis
of that constitution in January 1899, with Aguinaldo as president of the new country, popularly
known as the “Malolos Republic.”
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Meanwhile, U.S. troops had landed in Manila and, with important Filipino help, forced the
capitulation in August 1898 of the Spanish commander there. The Americans, however, would
not let Filipino forces enter the city. It was soon apparent to Aguinaldo and his advisers that
earlier expressions of sympathy for Filipino independence by Dewey and U.S. consular officials
in Hong Kong had little significance. They felt betrayed.
 U.S. soldiers in a trench near Manila, Phil., during the Spanish-American War, 1898. Hulton Archive/Getty Images

U.S. commissioners to the peace negotiations in Paris had been instructed to demand from Spain
the cession of the Philippines to the United States; such cession was confirmed with the signing
of the Treaty of Paris on December 10, 1898. Ratification followed in the U.S. Senate in
February 1899, but with only one vote more than the required two-thirds. Arguments of
“manifest destiny” could not overwhelm a determined anti-imperialist minority.
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By the time the treaty was ratified, hostilities had already broken out between U.S. and Filipino
forces. Since Filipino leaders did not recognize U.S. sovereignty over the islands and U.S.
commanders gave no weight to Filipino claims of independence, the conflict was inevitable. It
took two years of counterinsurgency warfare and some wise conciliatory moves in the political
arena to break the back of the nationalist resistance. Aguinaldo was captured in March 1901 and
shortly thereafter appealed to his countrymen to accept U.S. rule.
 Philippine-American War: ManilaPortion of the ruins of Manila, Philippines, after shelling by U.S. forces in
1899.Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

The Filipino revolutionary movement had two goals, national and social. The first goal,
independence, though realized briefly, was frustrated by the American decision to continue
administering the islands. The goal of fundamental social change, manifest in the nationalization
of friar lands by the Malolos Republic, was ultimately frustrated by the power and resilience of
entrenched institutions. Share tenants who had rallied to Aguinaldo’s cause, partly for economic
reasons, merely exchanged one landlord for another. In any case, the proclamation of a republic
in 1898 had marked the Filipinos as the first Asian people to try to throw off European colonial
rule.

A district of Manila, Phil., set afire during an insurrection, 1899. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
The period of U.S. influence

The juxtaposition of U.S. democracyand imperial rule over a subject people was sufficiently
jarring to most Americans that, from the beginning, the training of Filipinos for self-government
and ultimate independence—the Malolos Republic was conveniently ignored—was an essential
rationalization for U.S. hegemony in the islands. Policy differences between the two main
political parties in the United Statesfocused on the speed with which self-government should be
extended and the date on which independence should be granted.
In 1899 Pres. William McKinley sent to the Philippines a five-person fact-
finding commission headed by Cornell University president Jacob G. Schurman. Schurman
reported back that Filipinos wanted ultimate independence, but this had no immediate impact on
policy. McKinley sent out the Second Philippine Commission in 1900, under William Howard
Taft; by July 1901 it had established civil government.
In 1907 the Philippine Commission, which had been acting as both legislature and governor-
general’s cabinet, became the upper house of a bicameral body. The new 80-member Philippine
Assembly was directly elected by a somewhat restricted electorate from single-member districts,
making it the first elective legislative body in Southeast Asia. When Gov.- Gen. Francis B.
Harrison appointed a Filipino majority to the commission in 1913, the American voice in the
legislative process was further reduced.
Harrison was the only governor-general appointed by a Democratic president in the first 35 years
of U.S. rule. He had been sent by Woodrow Wilson with specific instructions to prepare the
Philippines for ultimate independence, a goal that Wilson enthusiastically supported. During
Harrison’s term, a Democratic-controlled Congress in Washington, D.C., hastened to fulfill long-
standing campaign promises to the same end. The Jones Act, passed in 1916, would have fixed a
definite date for the granting of independence if the Senate had had its way, but the House
prevented such a move. In its final form the act merely stated that it was the “purpose of the
people of the United States” to recognize Philippine independence “as soon as a stable
government can be established therein.” Its greater importance was as a milestone in the
development of Philippine autonomy. Under Jones Act provisions, the commission was
abolished and was replaced by a 24-member Senate, almost wholly elected. The electorate was
expanded to include all literate males.
Some substantial restrictions on Philippine autonomy remained, however. Defense and foreign
affairs remained exclusive U.S. prerogatives. American direction of Philippine domestic affairs
was exercised primarily through the governor-general and the executive branch of insular
government. There was little more than one decade of thoroughly U.S. administration in the
islands, however—too short a time in which to establish lasting patterns. Whereas Americans
formed 51 percent of the civil service in 1903, they were only 29 percent in 1913 and 6 percent
in 1923. By 1916 Filipino dominance in both the legislative and judicial branches of government
also served to restrict the U.S. executive and administrative roles.
By 1925 the only American left in the governor-general’s cabinet was the secretary of public
instruction, who was also the lieutenant governor-general. This is one indication of the high
priority given to education in U.S. policy. In the initial years of U.S. rule, hundreds of
schoolteachers came from the United States. But Filipino teachers were trained so rapidly that by
1927 they constitutednearly all of the 26,200 teachers in public schools. The school population
expanded fivefold in a generation; education consumed half of governmental expenditures at all
levels, and educational opportunity in the Philippines was greater than in any other colony
in Asia.
As a consequence of this pedagogical explosion, literacy doubled to nearly half in the 1930s, and
educated Filipinos acquired a common language and a linguistic key to Western civilization. By
1939 some one-fourth of the population could speak English, a larger proportion than for any of
the native dialects. Perhaps more important was the new avenue of upward social mobility that
education offered. Educational policy was the only successful U.S. effort to establish a
sociocultural basis for political democracy.
American attempts to create equality of economic opportunity were more modest and less
successful. In a predominantly agricultural country the pattern of landownership is crucial. The
trend toward greater concentration of ownership, which began in the 19th century, continued
during the American period, despite some legal barriers. Vast American-owned plantations were
forestalled, but legal restrictions had little effect on those politically well-connected Filipinos
who were intent on amassing fortunes. The percentage of farmers under share tenancy doubled
between 1900 and 1935, and the frustration of the tenants erupted in three small rebellions in
central Luzon during the 1920s and ’30s.
Nor was U.S. trade policy conduciveto the diffusion of economic power. From 1909 the Payne-
Aldrich Tariff Act allowed free entry of Philippine products into the U.S. market, at the same
time U.S. products, mostly manufactured, were exempted from tariff in the Philippines. The free
flow of U.S. imports was a powerful deterrent to Philippine industrial growth. Export agriculture,
especially sugar, prospered in the protected U.S. market. Owners of mills and large plantations
profited most, thus reinforcing the political dominance of the landed elite.
American preparation of the Philippines for democratic self-government suffered from
an inherent contradiction, perhaps not recognized at the time. Transferring governmental
responsibility to those capable of undertaking it was not consistent with building a social and
economic base for political democracy. Self-government meant, of necessity, assumption of
power by those Filipinos who were already in positions of leadership in society. But those men
came for the most part from the landed elite; preservation of their political and economic
position was incompatible with equalizing opportunity. Even the expansion of an educated
middle class did not necessarily result in a transformation of the pattern of power. Most middle-
class aspirants for political leadership adjusted to the values and the practices of the existing
power elite.
Filipino leaders quickly and skillfully utilized the opportunities for self-government that the
Americans opened to them. The Filipino political genius was best reflected in an extralegal
institution—the political party. The first party, the Federal Party, was U.S.-backed and stressed
cooperation with the overlords, even to the point of statehood for the Philippines. But when
openly nationalist appeals were allowed in the 1907 election, the Nacionalista Party, advocating
independence, won overwhelmingly. The Federalists survived with a new name, Progressives,
and a new platform, ultimate independence after social reform. But neither the Progressives nor
their successors in the 1920s, the Democrats, ever gained more than one-third of the seats in the
legislature. The Nacionalista Party under the leadership of Manuel Quezon and Sergio
Osmeñadominated Philippine politics from 1907 until independence.
More significant than the competition between the Nacionalistas and their opposition was the
continuing rivalry between Quezon and Osmeña. In fact, understanding this personality conflict
provides more insight into the realities of prewar Philippine politics than any examination of
policy or ideology.
In 1933 the U.S. Congress passed the Hare-Hawes-Cutting Act, which set a date for Philippine
independence. The act was a fulfillment of the vague pledge in the Jones Act; it was also
responsive to the demands of a series of “independence missions” sent to Washington by the
Philippine legislature. But this unprecedented transfer of sovereignty was decided upon in the
dark days of the Great Depression of the 1930s—and with the help of some incongruous allies.
The Depression had caused American farm interests to look desperately for relief, and those who
suffered real or imaginary hurt from the competition of Philippine products sought to exclude
those products. They had already failed in a direct attempt to amend the tariff on Philippine
imports but found that the respectable cloak of the advocacy of independence increased the
effectiveness of their efforts. Tied to independence was the end of free entry into American
markets of Philippine sugar, coconut oil, rope, and other less important items. That those
economic interests were able to accomplish what they did is partly explainable by the fact that
their political clout was great compared with that of the small group of American traders and
investors in the Philippines.
The Philippine legislature rejected the Hare-Hawes-Cutting Act, apparently as a result of the
Osmeña-Quezon feud, much to the displeasure of American officialdom. But, when Quezon
came to Washington the following year to work for a new bill, the same alliance of forces in the
U.S. Congress obliged by producing the almost identical Tydings-McDuffie Act. Endorsed by
Quezon and accepted with alacrityby the Manila legislature, it provided for a 10-year
commonwealth during which the U.S. would retain jurisdiction over defense and foreign affairs.
Filipinos were to draft their own constitution, subject to the approval of the U.S. president.
A constitutional convention was quickly elected and a constitution (which bore a strong
resemblance to its U.S. model) framed and approved by plebiscite and by Pres. Franklin D.
Roosevelt. The last governor-general, Frank Murphy, became the first high commissioner, with
more of a diplomatic than a governing role. The commonwealth was inaugurated on November
15, 1935. The Nacionalista Party patched up its internal quarrels and nominated Quezon for
president and Osmeña for vice president. They were elected overwhelmingly.
 Manuel Quezon, first president of the Philippine Commonwealth. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

The commonwealth period was intended to be devoted to preparation for economic and political
independence and perfection of democratic institutions. But even before the tragic events of
World War II, the transition did not run smoothly.

World War II
Japanese aggression in Chinaprompted much attention to military preparedness. Nearly one-
fourth of the national budget was devoted to defense. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, retiring as army
chief of staff in Washington, was called by President Quezon to direct plans and preparations.
Meanwhile, agrarian unrest festered, and leftist political activity grew. Quezon pushed significant
reform legislation through the National Assembly, but implementation was feeble, despite the
rapid accumulation of power in his hands.
The Japanese attack of the Philippines on December 8, 1941, came at a time when the U.S.
military buildup had hardly begun. Their advance was rapid; before Christmas, Manila was
declared an “open city,” while Quezon and Osmeña were evacuated to MacArthur’s headquarters
on Corregidor Island. Despite a desire, at one point, to return to Manila in order to surrender,
Quezon was persuaded to leave the Philippines in March 1942 on a U.S. submarine; he was
never to return. Osmeña also went. Filipino and American forces, under Gen. Jonathan M.
Wainwright, surrendered in May. An Executive Commission made up of more than 30 members
of the old Filipino political elite had been cooperating with Japanese military authorities in
Manila since January.
The Executive Commission lasted until September 1943, when it was superseded by an
“independent Philippine Republic.” The president, chosen by the Japanese, was José Laurel,
former associate justice of the commonwealth Supreme Court and the only Filipino to hold an
honorary degree from Tokyo Imperial University. More than half of the commonwealth Senate
and more than one-third of the House served at one time in the Japanese-sponsored regime. Yet
collaboration with Japan was neither as willing nor as widespread as elsewhere in Southeast
Asia.
Even before the fall of Bataan Peninsula to the Japanese in April 1942, guerrilla units were
forming throughout the Philippines. Most were led by middle-class officers and were
enthusiastically pro-United States; in central Luzon, however, a major force was the Hukbalahap,
which, under communist leadership, capitalized on earlier agrarian unrest. Though in a number
of instances collaborators secretly assisted guerrillas, many guerrillas in the hills were bitter
against those who appeared to benefit from the occupation. The differences between the two
groups became an important factor in early postwar politics.
Soon after the U.S. landings on Leytein October 1944, commanded by MacArthur, civil
government was returned to the commonwealth, at least in name. Sergio Osmeña, who had
become president in exile on the death of Quezon in August, had few resources to deal with the
problems at hand, however. Osmeña’s role was complicated by the fact that MacArthur chose to
lionize Manuel A. Roxas, a leading collaborator who had also been in contact with U.S. military
intelligence. As president of the Senate, Roxas became, in effect, MacArthur’s candidate for
president. Roxas was nominated in January 1946 in a separate convention of the “liberal wing”
of the Nacionalista Party, as it was first called. Thus was born the Philippines’ second major
political party, the Liberals.
Osmeña, though he had the advantages of incumbency, was old and tired and did not fully use
the political tools he possessed. In April Roxas was elected by a narrow margin. The following
month he was inaugurated as the last chief executive of the commonwealth, and on July 4, 1946,
when the Republic of the Philippines was proclaimed, he became its first president.