Independence In The Philippines Essay

First, many Americans nowadays have as much difficulty finding the Philippines on a map as they did in 1898. Especially people living in inland states have difficulty understanding the isolated island culture. The Philippines communication and transportation are essentially along rivers or the coast. Because we tend to think about peoples in a nation-state context where people have been a nation for a long time, it’s hard to explain that when Americans were fighting in the Philippines, they were not just fighting nationalists with a concept of a Philippine nation.

U.S. ground troops arrived in the Philippines in June 1898. In December 1898, McKinley finally outlined his plan for occupying and administering the archipelago, announcing that the U.S. intended to annex the Philippines. The United States was determined to exercise control and the Filipinos were equally determined to be independent. Fighting began on the night of February 4-5 1899, along the Manila perimeter.

The Army would secure private property, suppress crime, establish a judicial system, ensure religious freedom, protect local customs and traditions, build schools and roads, restore trade, and perform a host of other civic reform duties. McKinley intended

Congress approved a proposal with the (Philippine Independence Act) of 1934 to grant independence within 10 years. This was delayed a couple of years by the end of World War II, but then was realized for the Philippines in 1946. Instead of allowing self-determination and independence following a century’s long establishment by Spain, the U.S. imposed their dominance to use the Philippines as an outpost colony in the Pacific. The Philippine War was the initial stepping stone for an enlarged American global presence in the Pacific. While the war quickly faded from memory in the U.S., in the Philippines it is remembered for its bloody years and the fomenting of subsequent decades of continuing imperial control by a foreign