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.
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