Anticipating the visit of the prominent Chicago architect and
planner Daniel Burnham to the Philippines, the observations
of W. Cameron Forbes, then freshly appointed to the (US)
Philippine Commission as secretary of commerce and police,
reflected pride in perceived American achievements in the
archipelago, but also traces of the bleaker realities of colonial life in the
new US tropical empire, despite Forbes's bracing technocratic optimism.
Orchestrated by Forbes together with the US secretary of war (and former
Philippine governor-general) William Howard Taft to produce a major
plan of proposed improvements for the capital in Manila—along with an
original plan for the town of Baguio, the piney Cordillera resort that the
Philippine Commission (1903a) had already declared the “summer capital
of the Archipelago”—Burnham's visit to the Philippines was meant to
address at least some of the problems of empire by aesthetic means, through
interventions in landscape and built environment. If “things were in a
depressed condition,” for Forbes (1904a, 2) and the Insular Government,1
the
Burnham plans would uplift them (cf. Morley 2016), meanwhile leaving an
enduring stamp—and perhaps entrenching US geopolitical and economic
interests—in the dual Philippine capitals.
Burnham was by this time the celebrated master planner of Chicago's
1893 “White City” World's Columbian Exposition and was also well
kirsch / Burnham Plans and US Landscape Imperialism 317
known for the skyscraping and Beaux-Arts achievements of his Chicago
architectural firm, Burnham and Root. Concurrently with the Philippine
projects, Burnham was contributing or had recently contributed to major
City Beautiful planning efforts that included Cleveland, San Francisco, and
Washington, DC, later followed by his enduring 1909 plan of Chicago. In
these designs Burnham had taken lessons from the blend of monumental
neoclassicism, the emerging field of landscape architecture, and
circumscribed public spaces that had been “crowd-tested” in the temporary,
festival spaces of the White City, for developing more or less permanent
projects of urban landscape transformation (Hines 1979; Smith 2006; Ellem
2014; Vernon 2014). Given this track record in the production of spectacular
urban spaces, Burnham's involvement in the American effort to remodel
Manila was a matter of prestige for the Insular Government, in particular for
Forbes, the Boston Brahmin grandson of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who had
drawn on his own networks of cultural capital to enlist Burnham (Hines 1979,
197–216). The opportunity to mark the emergence of an American empire
in tropical Asia was evidently also attractive for Burnham, who like Forbes
easily adopted the Republican aura of the reluctant—or not so reluctant—
imperialist. When Forbes, prior to his own departure for Manila in July 1904,
had asked the architect's advice on who to hire for the Manila and Baguio
projects after Frederic Law Olmsted proved unavailable, Burnham, perhaps
divining Forbes's intentions, recommended himself.
Burnham steamed into Manila Bay with a designer from his firm, the
architect Pierce Anderson, on 7 December 1904. The two remained in the
Philippines for about six weeks, carrying out site visits around Manila and
initiating work on the plans; meanwhile Burnham was feted by US Insular
officials and military leaders. Burnham and Anderson also journeyed with
Forbes to Baguio, located 233 kilometers north of Manila, by train, steam, and
horseback—and roughly 1,540 meters up from sea level—where 10 square
miles (26 square kilometers) had just been set aside by the commission within
which the summer capital plan was to take shape. The “Plan of Proposed
Improvements” for Manila (Burnham and Anderson 1906), submitted to
Congress from Chicago in June 1905, would situate Manila, the Spanish
colonial capital since 1571, within an evolving American planning tradition
at a moment when North American urban spaces were themselves being
intensively reconstructed. In the Philippines, as I argue in this article, the
Burnham plans would also serve to place landscape aesthetics squarely on the
318 Pshev?65, no. 3 (2017)
agenda of US cultural imperialism and geopolitics. The Manila plan would
present, alongside a bayfront landscape enhanced for elite consumption,
at least a quasi-democratic distribution of City Beautiful public spaces and
greenways. However, the continuing investment in Baguio—which required
construction and maintenance of a road ascending 5,000 feet by steep
switchbacks to a then largely American enclave of mountain cottages, playing
fields, sanitarium, and soon Forbes's own magnificent Topside residence, a
modern stone bungalow perched majestically on a ridge overlooking Baguio
and surrounding mountains and valleys, complete with stables, gardens, and
guest quarters—appeared as singularly tone-deaf to local conditions. On the
heels of the decade of devastating warfare, famine, and disease to which
Forbes (1904a) referred in his 29 August letter, the high costs of building
the summer capital at Baguio (and providing access to it) would open the
commission to criticism on both sides of the Pacific.
Taking Burnham's 1904–1905 visit to the Philippines as a starting
point, this article examines the efforts to extend American empire through
landscape, focusing on aesthetic dimensions or what might be called
a landscape vision of US empire. Its purpose is to understand how the
ideological contradictions of the imperial moment—for the US, between
democracy and empire, liberator and subjugator (Kirsch 2011)—were built
into American colonial spaces, sometimes brutally, but sometimes through
aesthetic means in the formation of setting and landscape.2
As proposed
interventions in landscape, the Burnham plans offer glimpses of the linked
spatial and symbolic strategies for structuring social encounters and everyday
relations of power in the Philippines—or in the case of Baguio, for attempting
literally to rise above them. But the story also illustrates the precariousness
of landscape—and empire—as spatial strategies of power. Before we rejoin
Burnham and Anderson on Manila Bay in 1904, in the next section it is
necessary to turn briefly to the convergence of landscape and aesthetics,
which was a key premise of Burnham and Anderson's work, and to situate the
aesthetic landscape as an element of US imperialism within broader efforts
to reproduce empire over time in the Philippines through the production of
colonial spaces and subjectivities.
The Aesthetic Landscape
Landscape is commonly taken to mean the (usually scenic) setting for
human experience, or the representation of such settings in painting and
kirsch / Burnham Plans and US Landscape Imperialism 319
other visual arts.3
In traditional geographical research, landscape emerged
as a key morphological concept describing lands as shaped by both nature
and human practices into differentiated regional settings, each with a
distinctive regional economy and “look of the land” (Sauer 1925; Vidal de la
Blache 1908). Because the highly visualized convergences of aesthetics and
landscape, which appear as perfectly “natural,” were historically developed,
a history of the landscape idea can also be read in part in the history of
aesthetics; their meanings are practically intertwined.
Kant interpreted the field of aesthetics from classical Greek roots
as constituting a specialized engagement with the material world as
apprehended by the senses, a science of sense perception (Williams 1983,
31). By the mid-nineteenth century, the term was gaining currency in English
in more explicit connection with visual appearance and its human effects,
especially in relation to beauty and the arts (Williams 1983). Landscape
as a site for sensory apprehension and the experience of beauty, grandeur,
and symbolic elements emerged as a conceptual category alongside the
professionalization of landscape aesthetics and expertise. Perhaps initially
through landscape painting, the Europeans “represented their world as a
source of aesthetic enjoyment—as landscape” (Cosgrove 1998, 1, italics
added). The Europeans also extended the aesthetic landscape ideal, evoking
beauty, order, and harmony into the material environment of the landscape
“itself” in landed estates and gardens, public parks, and urban architecture
(Cosgrove and Daniels 1988). It was an aesthetic sensibility of landscape that
Burnham had cultivated in his own planning efforts (Hines 1972), largely in
connection with the new discipline of landscape or landscape architecture
in late–nineteenth-century North America (most prominently reflected in
Olmstead's work) and its incorporation into City Beautiful urban planning.
For Denis Cosgrove (1998), taking landscape as a historically constructed
way of seeing, rather than as a received concept in cultural and historical
geography, helped to open the aesthetic landscape to a potent critique of
ideology. Thus were the Palladian landscapes of the Veneto “intended to
serve the purpose of reflecting back to the powerful viewer, at ease in his villa,
the image of a controlled and well-ordered, productive and relaxed world
wherein serious matters are laid aside” (ibid., 24). Whether painted on canvas
or sculpted into the material environment, aesthetic landscapes have served
at times to erase the conditions of their own production, or to naturalize a
particular “order of things,” especially at moments of political (territorial) or
320 Pshev?65, no. 3 (2017)
property transition (cf. Mitchell 1996). The Burnham plans for Manila and
Baguio would offer cover, respectively, for both kinds of transition, setting
the tone for a US landscape imperialism that would become more widely
distributed across the Philippines in the following decade (cf. Morley
2016). To recognize the political dimensions of landscape aesthetics is not,
of course, to reject the value of aesthetics in built environments, to reduce
the stakes of urban planning to their aesthetic dimensions, nor even to
foreclose on the possibilities of social uplift through beautification that
animated City Beautiful planners. What I do wish to emphasize, however,
by way of a short history of the making of plans, is the prioritization of
aesthetics by an influential regime of Insular state actors who became
deeply invested in what might be called a landscape vision of US empire
in the Philippines.
In telling this story, this article offers an engagement with social
formation and symbolic landscape (Cosgrove 1998) in the context of early
US colonial state interventions in the Philippines and attempts to read
these landscapes “through” Lefebvrian categories of spatial production and
state theory (Lefebvre 1991, 2009; cf. Lico 2007).4
Lefebvre understood
space as a multifaceted product of contested social relations; similarly
he saw the state itself as existing in persistent tension with social forces
that threatened to undermine it at weak points, withering away an always
precarious authority. This authority was especially unstable in colonial and
imperial contexts in which the state lacked legitimacy. Hence, for Gerard
Lico (2007, 244), “The colonial landscape is not simply a palimpsest
reflecting asymmetric power relations undergirding colonial society; it is
also a terrain of discipline and resistance.” Reading the aesthetic landscape
through Lefebvrian categories allows us to examine the Burnham plans
not only as represented spaces—the plans themselves—or in terms of their
concrete outcomes (and contemporary traces) in the physical landscape,
but also as moments in a process of seeing, interpreting, and reconstructing
spaces that were intended to reflect the interests and values of those who
produced them. It compels us, in this context, to be attuned to registers
of beauty and delight that were central to their production and function
as landscapes. But while landscapes may be designed as naturalizing or
aggrandizing symbolic spaces, their meanings, let alone their capacities
for channeling social behavior, are not inherently stable, even though
landscape iconography has been fashioned classically to evoke a sense of
kirsch / Burnham Plans and US Landscape Imperialism 321
permanence or timelessness (Gottmann 1952). Hence, the stabilization of
meaning in form is precisely the cultural work—and aesthetic politics—
that produced landscapes are intended to achieve (Cosgrove and Daniels
1988; Mitchell 1996; Olwig 2002).
In the Philippines efforts to create a distinctively American colonial
landscape at the start of the twentieth century, while also creating a set of
landscapes distinctly for Americans, were prioritized by a small “aesthetic
regime” of elite Insular state actors as pivotal problems of Philippine
governance, an essential cultural politics of landscape and built environment.
The fledgling summer capital at Baguio, located near the site of an earlier
Spanish Army garrison and sanitarium at La Trinidad (Worcester 1914/2004;
Reed 1999; Brody 2010), most closely embodied this aesthetic. Also inspired
by the British “hill station” at Simla, India, advocates deemed a summer
health resort at Baguio to be vital for Americans living in the tropics as a
space not only for surviving the hardships of colonial life in the tropics, but
also for enjoying its beauty and pleasures, signaling the aesthetic registers
on which the American empire was to be experienced by its agents abroad.5
To understand how the Burnham plans were produced and in different
ways realized in the Philippine landscape, this article turns more closely
to the relations through which the political and aesthetic project of US
landscape imperialism was forged, including intimate, embodied relations
of cultural authority, race, nation, class, and gender, and particular kinds
of relationships, like friendship, in which meaning, information, and
“common sense” were easily shared. Hence, as a means of drawing together
the intimate with the imperial and geopolitical, the next section introduces
a rudimentary “regime theory” of agency in the production of colonial
state spaces, situating Burnham's visit under the umbrella of a wider set of
spatial transformations, including port, road, and railroad expansion and the
refashioning of civic and market spaces.
Forbes, William Cameron. 1904a. Letter to Daniel H. Burnham, 29 Aug. Box 1, FF 31. Daniel H.
Burnham Collection, Ryerson and Burnham Archives, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL.
———. 1904b. Journal, 4 Sept. Journals of W. Cameron Forbes (JWCF), vol. 1. W. Cameron Forbes
Papers, MS Am 1365. Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
———. 1904c. Journal, 5 Sept. JWCF, vol. 1. W. Cameron Forbes Papers, MS Am 1365. Houghton
Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
———. 1904d. Journal, 17 Sept. JWCF, vol. 1. W. Cameron Forbes Papers, MS Am 1365. Houghton
Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
———. 1904e. Journal, 8 Dec. JWCF, vol. 1. W. Cameron Forbes Papers, MS Am 1365. Houghton
Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
———. 1904f. Journal, 22 Dec. JWCF, vol. 1. W. Cameron Forbes Papers, MS Am 1365. Houghton
Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
354 Pshev?65, no. 3 (2017)
———. 1904g. Journal, 26 Dec. JWCF, vol. 1. W. Cameron Forbes Papers, MS Am 1365. Houghton
Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
———. 1905a. Journal, 1 Jan. JWCF, vol. 1. W. Cameron Forbes Papers, MS Am 1365. Houghton
Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
———. 1905b. Journal, 8 Jan. JWCF, vol. 1. W. Cameron Forbes Papers, MS Am 1365. Houghton
Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
———. 1905c. Journal, 3 Feb. JWCF, vol. 1. W. Cameron Forbes Papers, MS Am 1365. Houghton
Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
———. 1905d. Journal, 1 May. JWCF, vol. 1. W. Cameron Forbes Papers, MS Am 1365. Houghton
Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
———. 1905e. Journal, 26 June. JWCF, vol. 1. W. Cameron Forbes Papers, MS Am 1365. Houghton
Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
———. 1905f. Journal, 5 Sept. JWCF, vol. 1. W. Cameron Forbes Papers, MS Am 1365. Houghton
Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
———. 1906a. Journal, 5 May. JWCF, vol. 2. W. Cameron Forbes Papers, MS Am 1365. Houghton
Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
———. 1906b. Journal, 26 May. JWCF, vol. 2. W. Cameron Forbes Papers, MS Am 1365. Houghton
Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
———. 1907. Journal, 28 April. JWCF, vol. 2. W. Cameron Forbes Papers, MS Am 1365. Houghton
Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
———. 1930a. Journals of William Cameron Forbes (JWCF), v
The Philippines (/ˈfɪlɪpiːnz/ (listen); Filipino: Pilipinas),[14] officially the Republic of the Philippines (Filipino: Republika ng Pilipinas),[d] is an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. It is situated in the western Pacific Ocean and consists of around 7,641 islands that are broadly categorized under three main geographical divisions from north to south: Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. The Philippines is bounded by the South China Sea to the west, the Philippine Sea to the east, and the Celebes Sea to the southwest. It shares maritime borders with Taiwan to the north, Japan to the northeast, Palau to the east and southeast, Indonesia to the south, Malaysia to the southwest, Vietnam to the west, and China to the northwest. The Philippines covers an area of 300,000 km2 (120,000 sq mi) and, as of 2021, it had a population of around 109 million people,[7] making it the worlds thirteenth-most populous country. The Philippines has diverse ethnicities and cultures throughout its islands. Manila is the countrys capital, while the largest city is Quezon City; both lie within the urban area of Metro Manila.
Negritos, some of the archipelagos earliest inhabitants, were followed by successive waves of Austronesian peoples. Adoption of animism, Hinduism and Islam established island-kingdoms called Kedatuan, Rajahnates, and Sultanates. The arrival of Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese explorer leading a fleet for Spain, marked the beginning of Spanish colonization. In 1543, Spanish explorer Ruy López de Villalobos named the archipelago Las Islas Filipinas in honor of Philip II of Spain. Spanish settlement through Mexico, beginning in 1565, led to the Philippines becoming part of the Spanish Empire for more than 300 years. During this time, Catholicism became the dominant religion, and Manila became the western hub of trans-Pacific trade. In 1896, the Philippine Revolution began, which then became entwined with the 1898 Spanish–American War. Spain ceded the territory to the United States, while Filipino revolutionaries declared the First Philippine Republic. The ensuing Philippine–American War ended with the United States establishing control over the territory, which they maintained until the Japanese invasion of the islands during World War II. Following liberation, the Philippines became independent in 1946. Since then, the unitary sovereign state has often had a tumultuous experience with democracy, which included the overthrow of a decades-long dictatorship by a non-violent revolution.
The Philippines is an emerging market and a newly industrialized country whose economy is transitioning from being agriculture-centered to services- and manufacturing-centered. It is a founding member of the United Nations, World Trade Organization, Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, and the East Asia Summit. The Philippiness position as an island country on the Pacific Ring of Fire that is close to the equator makes it prone to earthquakes and typhoons. The country has a variety of natural resources and is home to a globally significant level of biodiversity.
Contents
1Etymology
2History
2.1Prehistory (pre–900)
2.2Early states (900–1565)
2.3Colonial rule (1565–1946)
2.4Postcolonial period (1946–present)
3Geography and environment
3.1Biodiversity
3.2Climate
4Government and politics
4.1Foreign relations
4.2Military
4.3Administrative divisions
5Demographics
5.1Ethnic groups
5.2Languages
5.3Religion
5.4Health
5.5Education
6Economy
6.1Science and technology
6.2Tourism
7Infrastructure
7.1Transportation
7.2Water supply and sanitation
8Culture
8.1Values
8.2Architecture
8.3Music and dance
8.4Literature
8.5Cinema
8.6Mass media
8.7Cuisine
8.8Sports
9See also
10Notes
11References
11.1Citations
11.2Bibliography
12Further reading
13External links
13.1Government
13.2Trade
13.3General information
13.4Books and articles
13.5Wikimedia
13.6Others
Etymology
Main article: Name of the Philippines
Philip II of Spain
Spanish explorer Ruy López de Villalobos, during his expedition in 1542, named the islands of Leyte and Samar "Felipinas" after Philip II of Spain, then the Prince of Asturias. Eventually the name "Las Islas Filipinas" would be used to cover the archipelagos Spanish possessions.[15] Before Spanish rule was established, other names such as Islas del Poniente (Islands of the West) and Ferdinand Magellans name for the islands, San Lázaro, were also used by the Spanish to refer to islands in the region.[16][17][18][19]
During the Philippine Revolution, the Malolos Congress proclaimed the establishment of the República Filipina or the Philippine Republic. From the period of the Spanish–American War (1898) and the Philippine–American War (1899–1902) until the Commonwealth period (1935–1946), American colonial authorities referred to the country as The Philippine Islands, a translation of the Spanish name.[20] The United States began the process of changing the reference to the country from The Philippine Islands to The Philippines, specifically when it was mentioned in the Philippine Autonomy Act or the Jones Law.[21] The full official title, Republic of the Philippines, was included in the 1935 constitution as the name of the future independent state,[22] it is also mentioned in all succeeding constitutional revisions.[23][24]
History
Main article: History of the Philippines
For a chronological guide, see Timeline of Philippine history.
Prehistory (pre–900)
Main article: Prehistory of the Philippines
There is evidence of early hominins living in what is now the Philippines as early as 709,000 years ago.[25] A small number of bones from Callao Cave potentially represent an otherwise unknown species, Homo luzonensis, that lived around 50,000 to 67,000 years ago.[26][27] The oldest modern human remains found on the islands are from the Tabon Caves of Palawan, U/Th-dated to 47,000 ± 11–10,000 years ago.[28] The Tabon Man is presumably a Negrito, who were among the archipelagos earliest inhabitants, descendants of the first human migrations out of Africa via the coastal route along southern Asia to the now sunken landmasses of Sundaland and Sahul.[29]
The first Austronesians reached the Philippines at around 2200 BC, settling the Batanes Islands and northern Luzon from Taiwan. From there, they rapidly spread downwards to the rest of the islands of the Philippines and Southeast Asia.[30][31] This population assimilated with the existing Negritos resulting in the modern Filipino ethnic groups which display various ratios of genetic admixture between Austronesian and Negrito groups.[32] Genetic signatures also indicate the possibility of migration of Austroasiatic, Papuan, and South Asian people.[33] Jade artifacts have been found dated to 2000 BC,[34][35] with the lingling-o jade items crafted in Luzon made using raw materials originating from Taiwan.[36] By 1000 BC, the inhabitants of the archipelago had developed into four kinds of social groups: hunter-gatherer tribes, warrior societies, highland plutocracies, and port principalities.[37]
Early states (900–1565)
Main article: History of the Philippines (900–1565)
The Laguna Copperplate Inscription, the oldest known writing found in the Philippines
The earliest known surviving written record found in the Philippines is the Laguna Copperplate Inscription.[38] By the 14th century, several the large coastal settlements had emerged as trading centers and became the focal point of societal changes.[39] Some polities had exchanges with other states across Asia.[40][41] Trade with China is believed to have begun during the Tang dynasty, and grew more extensive during the Song dynasty,[42] and by the second millennium some polities participated in the tributary system of China.[43][40] Indian cultural traits, such as linguistic terms and religious practices, began to spread within the Philippines during the 10th century, likely via the Hindu Majapahit empire.[44][39][45] By the 15th century, Islam was established in the Sulu Archipelago and spread from there.[46]
Polities founded in the Philippines from the 10th–16th centuries include Maynila,[47] Tondo, Namayan, Pangasinan, Cebu, Butuan, Maguindanao, Lanao, Sulu, and Ma-i.[48] The early polities were typically made up of three-tier social structures: a nobility class, a class of "freemen", and a class of dependent debtor-bondsmen.[39][40] Among the nobility were leaders called "Datus", responsible for ruling autonomous groups called "barangay" or "dulohan".[39] When these barangays banded together, either to form a larger settlement[39] or a geographically looser alliance,[40] the more esteemed among them would be recognized as a "paramount datu",[39][37] rajah, or sultan[49] which headed the community state.[50] Warfare developed and escalated during the 14th to 16th centuries,[51] and throughout these periods population density is thought to have been low,[52] which was also caused by the frequency of typhoons and the Philippines location on the Pacific Ring of Fire.[53] In 1521, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan arrived in the area, claimed the islands for Spain and was then killed by Lapulapus fighters at the Battle of Mactan.[54]
Colonial rule (1565–1946)
Main articles: History of the Philippines (1565–1898) and History of the Philippines (1898–1946)
Manila in 1847.
Colonization began when Spanish explorer Miguel López de Legazpi arrived from Mexico in 1565.[55][56]: 20–23 In 1571, Spanish Manila became the capital of the Spanish East Indies,[57] which encompassed Spanish territories in Asia and the Pacific.[58][59] The Spanish successfully invaded the different local states by employing the principle of divide and conquer,[60] bringing most of what is now the Philippines into a single unified administration.[61][62] Disparate barangays were deliberately consolidated into towns, where Catholic missionaries were more easily able to convert the inhabitants to Christianity.[63]: 53, 68 [64] From 1565 to 1821, the Philippines was governed as part of the Mexico-based Viceroyalty of New Spain, later administered from Madrid following the Mexican War of Independence.[65] Manila was the western hub of the trans-Pacific trade.[66] Manila galleons were constructed in Bicol and Cavite.[67][68]
During its rule, Spain quelled various indigenous revolts,[69] as well as defending against external military challenges.[70][71][failed verification] Spanish forces included soldiers from elsewhere in New Spain[72] as well as broader Latin America, many of whom deserted and intermingled with the wider population.[73][74][75] Immigration blurred the racial caste system[63]: 98 [76][77] Spain maintained in towns and cities.[78] War against the Dutch from the west, in the 17th century, together with conflict with the Muslims in the south nearly bankrupted the colonial treasury.[79]
Administration of the Philippine islands was considered a drain on the economy of Spain,[70] and there were debates to abandon it or trade it for other territory. However, this was opposed because of economic potential, security, and the desire to continue religious conversion in the islands and the surrounding region.[80][81] The Philippines survived on an annual subsidy provided by the Spanish Crown,[70] which averaged 250,000 pesos[82] and was usually paid through the provision of 75 tons of silver bullion being sent from the Americas.[83] British forces occupied Manila from 1762 to 1764 during the Seven Years War, with Spanish rule restored through the 1763 Treaty of Paris.[56]: 81–83 The Spanish considered their war with the Muslims in Southeast Asia an extension of the Reconquista.[84] The Spanish–Moro conflict lasted for several hundred years. In the last quarter of the 19th century, Spain conquered portions of Mindanao and Jolo,[85] and the Moro Muslims in the Sultanate of Sulu formally recognized Spanish sovereignty.[86][87]
Filipino Ilustrados in Spain formed the Propaganda Movement. Photographed in 1890.
In the 19th century, Philippine ports opened to world trade, and shifts started occurring within Filipino society.[88][89] The Latin American wars of independence and renewed immigration led to shifts in social identity, with the term Filipino shifting from referring to Spaniards born in the Philippines to a term encompassing all people in the archipelago. This identity shift was driven by wealthy families of mixed ancestry, to which it became a national identity.[90][91]
Revolutionary sentiments were stoked in 1872 after three activist Catholic priests were executed on weak pretences.[92][93][94] This would inspire a propaganda movement in Spain, organized by Marcelo H. del Pilar, José Rizal, Graciano López Jaena, and Mariano Ponce, lobbying for political reforms in the Philippines. Rizal was executed on December 30, 1896, on charges of rebellion. This radicalized many who had previously been loyal to Spain.[95] As attempts at reform met with resistance, Andrés Bonifacio in 1892 established the militant secret society called the Katipunan, who sought independence from Spain through armed revolt.[96]
The Katipunan started the Philippine Revolution in 1896.[97] Internal disputes led to an election in which Bonifacio lost his position and Emilio Aguinaldo was elected as the new leader of the revolution.[98]: 145–147 In 1897, the Pact of Biak-na-Bato brought about the exile of the revolutionary leadership to Hong Kong. In 1898, the Spanish–American War began and reached the Philippines. Aguinaldo returned, resumed the revolution, and declared independence from Spain on June 12, 1898.[63]: 112–113 The First Philippine Republic was established on January 21, 1899.[99]
General Douglas MacArthur coming ashore during the Battle of Leyte on October 20, 1944
The islands had been ceded by Spain to the United States along with Puerto Rico and Guam as a result of the latters victory in the Spanish–American War in 1898.[100][101] As it became increasingly clear the United States would not recognize the First Philippine Republic, the Philippine–American War broke out.[102] The war resulted in the deaths of 250,000 to 1 million civilians, mostly because of famine and disease.[103] After the defeat of the First Philippine Republic in 1902, an American civilian government was established through the Philippine Organic Act.[104] American forces continued to secure and extend their control over the islands, suppressing an attempted extension of the Philippine Republic,[98]: 200–202 [105] securing the Sultanate of Sulu,[106] and establishing control over interior mountainous areas that had resisted Spanish conquest.[107]
Cultural developments strengthened the continuing development of a national identity,[108][109] and Tagalog began to take precedence over other local languages.[63]: 121 Governmental functions were gradually devolved to Filipinos under the Taft Commission[110] and in 1935 the Philippines was granted Commonwealth status with Manuel Quezon as president and Sergio Osmeña as vice president.[111] Quezons priorities were defence, social justice, inequality and economic diversification, and national character.[110] Tagalog was designated the national language,[112] womens suffrage was introduced,[113] and land reform mooted.[114][115]
During World War II the Japanese Empire invaded,[116] and the Second Philippine Republic, under Jose P. Laurel, was established as a puppet state.[117][118] From 1942 the Japanese occupation of the Philippines was opposed by large-scale underground guerrilla activity.[119][120][121] Atrocities and war crimes were committed during the war, including the Bataan Death March and the Manila massacre.[122][123] Allied troops defeated the Japanese in 1945. It is estimated that over one million Filipinos had died by the end of the war.[124][125] On October 11, 1945, the Philippines became one of the founding members of the United Nations.[126][127] On July 4, 1946, the Philippines was officially recognized by the United States as an independent nation through the Treaty of Manila, during the presidency of Manuel Roxas.[127][128][129]
Postcolonial period (1946–present)
Main articles: History of the Philippines (1946–1965), History of the Philippines (1965–1986), and History of the Philippines (1986–present)
Efforts to end the Hukbalahap Rebellion began during Elpidio Quirinos term,[130] however, it was only during Ramon Magsaysays presidency that the movement was suppressed.[131] Magsaysays successor, Carlos P. Garcia, initiated the Filipino First Policy,[132] which was continued by Diosdado Macapagal, with celebration of Independence Day moved from July 4 to June 12, the date of Emilio Aguinaldos declaration,[133][134] and pursuit of a claim on the eastern part of North Borneo.[135][136]
In 1965, Macapagal lost the presidential election to Ferdinand Marcos. Early in his presidency, Marcos initiated numerous infrastructure projects[137] but, together with his wife Imelda, was accused of corruption and embezzling billions of dollars in public funds.[138] Nearing the end of his term, Marcos declared martial law on September 21, 1972.[139][140] This period of his rule was characterized by political repression, censorship, and human rights violations.[141]
On August 21, 1983, Marcos chief rival, opposition leader Benigno Aquino Jr., was assassinated on the tarmac at Manila International Airport. Marcos called a snap presidential election in 1986.[142] Marcos was proclaimed the winner, but the results were widely regarded as fraudulent.[143] The resulting protests led to the People Power Revolution,[144] which forced Marcos and his allies to flee to Hawaii, and Aquinos widow, Corazon Aquino, was installed as president.[142][145]
The 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo was the second largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century.
The return of democracy and government reforms beginning in 1986 were hampered by national debt, government corruption, and coup attempts.[146][147] A communist insurgency[148][149] and a military conflict with Moro separatists persisted,[150] while the administration also faced a series of disasters, including the sinking of the MV Doña Paz in December 1987,[151] and the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in June 1991.[152][153] Aquino was succeeded by Fidel V. Ramos, whose economic performance, at 3.6% growth rate,[154][155] was overshadowed by the onset of the 1997 Asian financial crisis.[156][157]
Ramos successor, Joseph Estrada, was overthrown by the 2001 EDSA Revolution and succeeded by his vice president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, on January 20, 2001.[158] Arroyos 9-year administration was marked by economic growth[159] but was tainted by corruption and political scandals.[160][161] On November 23, 2009, 34 journalists and several civilians were killed in Maguindanao.[162][163]
Economic growth continued during Benigno Aquino IIIs administration, which pushed for good governance and transparency.[164][165] In 2015, a shootout in Mamasapano resulted in the death of 44 members of the Philippine National Police-Special Action Force, which caused a delay in the passage of the Bangsamoro Organic Law.[166][167]
Former Davao City mayor Rodrigo Duterte won the 2016 presidential election, becoming the first president from Mindanao.[168][169] Duterte launched an anti-drug campaign[170][171] and an infrastructure program.[172][173] The implementation in 2018 of the Bangsamoro Organic Law led to the creation of the autonomous Bangsamoro region in Mindanao.[174][175] In early 2020, the -19 pandemic reached the country[176][177] causing the gross domestic product to shrink by 9.5%, the countrys worst annual economic performance since records began in 1947.[178]
Marcos son, Bongbong Marcos, won the 2022 presidential election, together with Dutertes daughter, Sara Duterte, as vice president.[179]
Geography and environment
Main articles: Geography of the Philippines and List of islands of the Philippines
Topography of the Philippines
The Philippines is an archipelago composed of about 7,640 islands,[180][181] covering a total area, including inland bodies of water, of around 300,000 square kilometers (115,831 sq mi),[182][183] with cadastral survey data suggesting it may be larger.[184] The exclusive economic zone of the Philippines covers 2,263,816 km2 (874,064 sq mi).[185] Its 36,289 kilometers (22,549 mi) coastline gives it the worlds fifth-longest coastline.[186] It is located between 116° 40, and 126° 34 E longitude and 4° 40 and 21° 10 N latitude and is bordered by the Philippine Sea to the east,[187][188] the South China Sea to the west,[189] and the Celebes Sea to the south.[190] The island of Borneo is located a few hundred kilometers southwest,[191] and Taiwan is located directly to the north. Sulawesi is located to the southwest, and Palau is located to the east of the islands.[192][193]
The highest mountain is Mount Apo, measuring up to 2,954 meters (9,692 ft) above sea level and located on the island of Mindanao.[194] Running east of the archipelago, the Philippine Trench extends 10,540-meter (34,580 ft) down at the Emden Deep.[195][196][197] The longest river is the Cagayan River in northern Luzon, measuring about 520 kilometers (320 mi).[198] Manila Bay,[199] upon the shore of which the capital city of Manila lies, is connected to Laguna de Bay,[200] the largest lake in the Philippines, by the Pasig River.[201] The Puerto Princesa Subterranean River, wh.
PHOTO DE PRESSE 1930 AVEC CAMERON FORBES AMBASSADEUR GOUVERNEUR GÉNÉRAL DES ÉTATS-UNIS PHILIPPINES 2024
