Day 7

Revisiting the Past: The Formation of Philippine Colonial Society

Learning Objectives:

1. To identify factors that motivated explorations and discoveries during the 16th
century.
2. To explain the causes and effects of global economic, social, and political changes in
European nations which undertook explorations in the Americas, Africa, and Asia.

CONCEPT NOTES:

AGE OF DISCOVERY

Fifteenth and the sixteenth century is a crucial stage in world history. The states of Europe began
their modern exploration of the world with a series of sea voyages and island search. States of
Spain and Portugal were leading countries in this initiative though other countries, particularly
England and the Netherlands, are explorers too.

The Treaty of Tordesillas was a treaty between Portugal and Spain in 1494 in which they agreed
to divide up all the land in the Americas between the two of them, no matter who was already
living there. Pope Alexander VI was the Pope at the time of the treaty. He drew an imaginary
line 2,193 kilometers to the west of the Cape Verde Islands, gave Portugal the land to the east of
this line, and gave Spain the land to the west of this line. King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen
Isabella of Castile were the rulers of Spain at the time and together they signed this treaty in
Tordesillas, Spain, which is how the treaty got its name. (A treaty is an agreement between two
or more countries.) This also changed Spanish and Portuguese exploration of the New World,
which in part explains why the Portuguese-speaking part of South America became one country
called Brazil and the Spanish-speaking colonies split up into many different independent
countries including Argentina, Colombia, and many others.

16TH CENTURY EUROPEAN EXPLORATION

Beginning in the early fifteenth century, European states began to embark on a series of
global explorations that inaugurated a new chapter in world history.

Known as the Age of Discovery, or

These explorations increased European
knowledge of the world, particularly in
the Age of Exploration, this period
discovery of sub-Saharan Africa and the spanned the fifteenth through the
Americas. These explorations were early seventeenth century, during
frequently connected to conquest and
missionary work, as the states of Europe which time European expansion to
attempted to increase their influence, both places such as the Americas, Africa,
in political and religious terms,
throughout the world.
and the Far East flourished. This era is defined by figures such as Ferdinand Magellan,
whose 1519–1522 expedition was the first to traverse the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean and
the first to go around the globe. The European Age of Exploration developed alongside the
Renaissance or the rebirth of human spirit in Italy. Both periods in Western history acted as
transitional moments between the Middle Ages and the early modern period. Competition
between expanding European empires, such as Spain and England, fueled the evolution and
advancement of overseas exploration.

Motivated by religion, profit, and power, the size and influence of European empires
during this period expanded greatly. The effects of exploration were not only felt abroad
but also within the geographic confines of Europe itself. The economic, political, and
cultural effects of Europe’s beginning stages of global exploration impacted the long term
development of both European society and the entire world.

To sum it up here are the highlights of this era:

1. The age of European exploration and discovery represented a

new period of global interaction and interconnectivity. As a result
of technological advancements, Europeans were able to forge into
new and previously undiscovered territories. They understood this
to be a “New World.”

2. European exploration was driven by multiple factors, including economic, political, and
religious incentives. The growing desire to fulfill European demand for luxury goods, and
the desire to unearth precious materials such as gold and silver, acted as a particularly
crucial motivation.

3. The period of European global exploration sparked the beginning phases of European
empire and colonialism, which would continue to develop and intensify over the course of
the next several centuries.

4. As European exploration evolved and flourished, it saw the increasing oppression of

native populations and the enslavement of Africans. During this period, Europeans
increasingly dealt in African slaves and started the transatlantic slave trade.

Additional Notes:

Philippines was first discovered by Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese explorer and was
later on killed by a Filipino Chieftain Lapu-Lapu. Following his death, Spain sent another
expedition to continue colonizing the Philippines.
The Age of Exploration led, directly to new communication and trade routes being
established and the first truly global businesses to be established. Tea, several exotic fruits
and new technologies were also introduced into Europe. Trade routes are essential for
cultivating the country’s economic powers through the extensive raw materials that can be
used for economic growth. These raw materials are basically provided by the colonized
lands.

It also led to the decimation and extinction of Natives in other

nations due to European diseases and poor working conditions.
It also led indirectly to an increase in slavery (which was already
widely practiced throughout the world), as the explorations led to
a rise in supply and thus demand for cotton, indigo, and tobacco.
Slavery is a concept of making natives of the colonized country to
work for the colonizers with little or without compensation. Slavery was later on brought to
the entire world and the most affected nations are those of Africa.

Finally, as a result of the Age of Exploration, Spain dominated the end of the
sixteenth century. The Age of Exploration provided the foundation for the European
political and commercial worldwide imperialism of the late 1800s. Imperialism is a
situation in which a country dominates puts another country under its control. One of
the most prominent empire is that of Rome. From 1580 to 1640 Spain would inherit
the right to reign over Portugal, whose interests where now in the hands of its political and
geographical neighbor.

Spain's power, under Spanish leader Philip II, was bigger than ever
before and renewed and financed the power of the Papacy to fight
against Protestant Reformation. However, in the seventeenth century,
as the explorations were coming to an end and money was becoming
scarcer, other countries began to openly challenge the spirit of the
Tordesillas treaty and the power of Spain, which began to lapse and
lose its former power.

Day 8
Identifying Factors that Led to Colonization of Spaniards
Learning Objectives:
 1. Describe the reactions of the early Filipinos in the occupation of Spain
in the country.
2. Cite some important reasons for Spanish colonization in the Philippines.

CONCEPT NOTES:

Factors that led to Spanish Colonization of the Philippines

 ECONOMIC CONCERNS
o Accumulation of capital and the development of banking in Europe.
o The desire for spices and search for new routes by Spain and Portugal.
o The search for new trade routes was accompanied by a strong missionary
purpose.
 POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS CONCERNS
o The Reconquista or the movement to destroy Muslim power in the Iberian
Peninsula, ended with the capture of Granada in 1492.
o The Crusades (1096-1272) originally were a religious adventure to regain the
Holy Land from the Muslims. Later they developed into a highly commercial
enterprise.
o The Crusades brought the Europeans into close touch with the superior and
sophisticated civilizations of the East.
o This contact stimulated not only European interest in Oriental culture but also
the demand for its goods and products.

SPANISH COLONIZATION

Named after King Phillip II of Spain, the Philippines was the main outpost in Asia
for Spain, which had the majority of its empire in the New World, particularly Peru
and Mexico. The Philippines was visited by Magellan— an "able and ruthless"
Portuguese soldier-adventurer-seaman employed by the Spanish— and was formally
claimed by the Spaniard Miguel Lopez de Legazpi (also spelled Legaspi). Over the
years, missionaries introduced Christianity and tried to unify people, who had
different languages and ethnic backgrounds, under a central government based in
Manila.

 The Philippines was an important acquisition for Spain,
which at the time was competing with Portugal for control of the
major trade routes from Asia and the New World to Europe.
Philippine colonial history was often influenced more by events in
Europe than in the archipelago. Portugal's claim on the islands
 was halted when Spain annexed Portugal in 1580. Holland declared independence
from Spain in 1581, which led the growth of Dutch influence in Spice islands and the
Dutch East Indies south of the Philippines. Spanish in the Philippines fought off
attacks from the Dutch and the English.

 The Spanish left the Philippines with an education system, the Roman Catholic
religion, the Roman alphabet, private ownership of land, the Gregorian calendar,
egalitarian Christian doctrine, unequal distribution of wealth, global consciousness,
and various New World plants such as cassava, maize, and sweet potatoes.

Ferdinand Magellan was the first European recorded to have landed in the
Philippines. He arrived in March 1521 during his circumnavigation of the globe. He
claimed land for the king of Spain but was killed by a local chief. Following several
more Spanish expeditions, the first permanent settlement was established in Cebu in
1565. The Spanish set up their capital at Manila in 1571, and they named their new
colony after King Philip II of Spain. In doing so, the Spanish sought to acquire a
share in the profitable spice trade, develop better contacts with China and Japan,
and gain converts to Christianity. Only the third objective was eventually realized.
As with other Spanish colonies, church and state became inseparably linked in
carrying out Spanish objectives. Several Roman Catholic religious orders were
assigned the responsibility of Christianizing the local population. The civil
administration built upon the traditional village organization and used traditional
local leaders to rule indirectly for Spain. Through these efforts, a new cultural
community was developed, but Muslims (known as Moros by the Spanish) and
upland tribal peoples remained detached and alienated.

Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan landed on Homonhon Islet (Limasawa

Island), near Samar Island in the present-day Philippines, at dawn on March 16,
1521. He claimed the islands for Spain, named them the Islas del Poniente (Western
Islands) and held the Philippines first Catholic mass on April 14, 1521 on Cebu,
where he planted a cross on the spot where a local ruler was converted along with
the 800 of his people.

Magellan spent about a month in the Philippines. He was welcomed to the islands
of Samar, Leyte, and Limasawa. Within a week of arriving on Cebu he converted
400 islanders including Humabon and Juana, the island's king and queen. Professor
Susan Russell wrote: “Magellan's arrival in Cebu represents the first attempt by
Spain to convert Filipinos to Roman Catholicism. The story goes that Magellan met
with Chief Humabon of the island of Cebu, who had an ill grandson. Magellan (or
one of his men) was able to cure or help this young boy, and in gratitude Chief
Humabon allowed 800 of his followers to be 'baptized' Christian in a mass baptism.
[Source: Professor Susan Russell, Department of Anthropology, Center for Southeast
Asian Studies Northern Illinois University, seasite.niu.edu]

Magellan was killed on Mactan Island off Cebu Island by a local leader Lapu Lapu.
A plaque on Mactan reads: "Here Lapu Lapu and his men repulsed the Spanish
invaders, killing their leader, Ferdinand Magellan, thus Lapu Lapu became the first
Filipino to have repelled European aggression." Of the 300 or so men that left
Portugal with Magellan on his ship only 14 made it back alive.

Lapu Lapu is an enduring cultural hero in the Philippines. His defeat of Magellan
has been immortalized in movies, comic books and popular songs. Every year the
triumphant defeat of the Spanish is reenacted on the island of Mactan. Russell wrote:
Lapu Lapu’s “resistance to Western intrusion makes this story an important part of
the nationalist history of the Philippines. Many historians have claimed that the
Philippines peacefully 'accepted' Spanish rule; the reality is that many insurgencies
and rebellions continued on small scales in different places through the Hispanic
colonial period.”

The Spanish accomplished little in the Philippines. They introduced Catholicism,

established a Walled City in Manila but ultimately they were disappointed because
they couldn't find spices or gold (gold was only discovered in large quantities after
the Americans arrived). The primary purpose of the Philippines was to trade New
World silver for Chinese silk.

The Spanish were able to gain control of the coastal areas of the northern and
central islands, but not the southern islands, where Islam was deeply rooted, and the
jungle interior and highlands, where indigenous tribes, including headhunters, were
able to repel Spanish movements. The most high-status and affluent groups of people
were Chinese entrepreneurs, lured by business opportunities, and Spanish officials.
They intermarried with the local population, producing a new and distinctive
culture.

The Philippines was administered by the Viceroyalty of New Spain in present-day

Mexico but in many ways the Philippines was ruled by Catholic church. Most
Filipinos had little contact with the Spanish other than through the church. Their
acceptance of Christianity acted both to pacify the population and bond them with
the Spaniards. The church also acted as an administrative body.
 The Spanish introduced the idea of land holding to native people—many of whom
previously had limited notions about private property—and took control of large
swaths of land owned for centuries by native groups. This way many native
Philippine people came to live on land that was owned by the Spanish or people with
close ties to the Spanish and they became tenants or paid laborers.

LIFE IN THE SPANISH PHILIPPINES

Manila was the heart of the Spanish colony in the Philippines. Much of the
international trade conducted by Spain in Asia was linked to Manila somehow and
most of the rich and powerful had their homes here.

The Spaniards in Manila lived in the walled city of Intramuros. The governor,
administrators, friars, merchants, military officials, priests and soldiers from Spain
and some of their families all resided within the walls. Outside the walls was a
polyglot community of Filipinos, Chinese, Japanese and other foreigners.
Those that profited the most from trade and other economic activities,
primarily the Spanish elite, wore fine silks, traveled around un elegant
coaches, wore gold chains and gem-stubbed rings and were looked after by
an army of servants.

What went on the Philippines was similar to what happened in Latin

America. The Spanish seized land and established huge plantations which
made rich men out of landowners. Some of the indigenous people mixed
with the Spanish, some were overwhelmed by them. Both groups adopted
Catholicism.

Other groups like the Igorot resisted. The Spanish burned Igorot villages, destroyed
their crops and raped their women, yet in 350 years of Spanish occupation the Igorot
were never conquered.

The Spanish were not as harsh on the local people of the Philippines as they were in
Latin America but they did make an effort to stamp out traditions and customs they
regarded as “works of the devil.” Large Numbers of people were untouched by the
Spanish occupation.
Day 9
Identifying Factors that Led to Philippine Colonization of
Americans
Learning Objectives:

1. Describe the reactions of the early Filipinos in the occupation of

America in the country.
2. Cite some important reasons for American colonization in the Philippines.

CONCEPT NOTES:

The Americans came to the Philippines because of these reasons; The Spanish-American war of
1898; New lands; American bases; The policy of Manifest Destiny and the Filipino invitation.
The Philippines was once a part of the United States. This happened when we were an American
colony between 1896 and 1946 minus the years of the Filipino-American war (1899-1901) and
the second world war (1942-45).

However, the Americans promised to leave as soon as the Filipinos showed they could run their
own government. Of course, the Filipinos had no choice but to cooperate with the Americans.
Fortunately, the American colonial officials kept their word and treated the Filipinos well. That
is why, until today, the Filipinos who lived under the Americans generally speak well of the
American colonial era.
Theodore Roosevelt, the Asst. Sec. of the navy ordered George Dewey, the Commander of the
American Asiatic Squadron on February 25, 1898 to proceed immediately to Manila if war will
commence between the two countries. The Battle of Manila happens on May 1, 1898, and Adm.
Patricio Montojo of Spain surrendered to the Americans.

On February 15, 1898, the American warship Maine was blown up at Havana harbor.
Resolution was passed by US Congress declaring a state of war with Spain on April 21, 1898,
and passed a formal declaration on the 25th of April 1898.

UNITED STATES IN THE PHILIPPINES

According to Lonely Planet: “By 1902 the first Philippine Republic was dead and buried
and a succession of American neocolonial governors-general ensured it stayed that way.
The main intention of the Americans, like the Spanish, was to serve their own economic
needs, and by 1930 they had engineered an industrial and social revolution, with two of the
biggest booms coming from mining and prostitution. Not until 1935, once it had firmly
lassoed the country's resources, did the USA endorse the Commonwealth of the Philippines,
along with the drafting of a US-style constitution and the first national election. On paper at
least, democracy and freedom had at last come to the Philippines.”
American rule was relatively benign. The U.S. Bill of Rights was extended to Filipinos. The
Jones Act of 1916 established a two house Congress that were elected by the Filipinos but
controlled by a U.S. commission that only recognized the political parties it supported. This
Congress controlled the country until World War II.

The U.S. set up an education system in the Philippines. American-introduced sanitation

helped eradicate the periodic cholera epidemics that ravaged the Philippines and helped
defeat other diseases. The U.S. army established Fort Stotenberg in 1903 and added an
airfield in 1919 named after Major Harold Clark. The U.S. Navy opened a naval station at
Subic Bay in 1905. Beginning of U.S. Rule in the Philippines On January 20, 1899,
President McKinley appointed the First Philippine Commission (the Schurman
Commission), a five-person group headed by Dr. Jacob Schurman, president of Cornell
University, and including Admiral Dewey and General Otis, to investigate conditions in the
islands and make recommendations. In the report that they issued to the president the
following year, the commissioners acknowledged Filipino aspirations for independence;
they declared, however, that the Philippines was not ready for it. Specific recommendations
included the establishment of civilian government as rapidly as possible (the American chief
executive in the islands at that time was the military governor), including establishment of a
bicameral legislature, autonomous governments on the provincial and municipal levels, and
a system of free public elementary schools.

The Second Philippine Commission (the Taft Commission), appointed by McKinley on

March 16, 1900, and headed by William Howard Taft, was granted legislative as well as
limited executive powers. Between September 1900 and August 1902, it issued 499 laws. A
judicial system was established, including a Supreme Court, and a legal code was drawn up
to replace antiquated Spanish ordinances. A civil service was organized. The 1901
municipal code provided for popularly elected presidents, vice presidents, and councilors to
serve on municipal boards. The municipal board members were responsible for collecting
taxes, maintaining municipal properties, and undertaking necessary construction projects;
they also elected provincial governors. In July 1901 the Philippine Constabulary was
organized as an archipelago-wide police force to control brigandage and deal with the
remnants of the insurgent movement. After military rule was terminated on July 4, 1901,
the Philippine Constabulary gradually took over from United States army units the
responsibility for suppressing guerrilla and bandit activities.

From the very beginning, United States presidents and their representatives in the islands
defined their colonial mission as tutelage: preparing the Philippines for eventual
independence. Except for a small group of "retentionists," the issue was not whether the
Philippines would be granted self-rule, but when and under what conditions. Thus political
development in the islands was rapid and particularly impressive in light of the complete
lack of representative institutions under the Spanish. The Philippine Organic Act of July
1902 stipulated that, with the achievement of peace, a legislature would be established
composed of a lower house, the Philippine Assembly, which would be popularly elected,
and an upper house consisting of the Philippine Commission, which was to be appointed by
the president of the United States. The two houses would share legislative powers, although
the upper house alone would pass laws relating to the Moros and other non-Christian
peoples. The act also provided for extending the United States Bill of Rights to Filipinos and
sending two Filipino resident commissioners to Washington to attend sessions of the United
States Congress. In July 1907, the first elections for the assembly were held, and it opened
its first session on October 16, 1907. Political parties were organized, and, although open
advocacy of independence had been banned during the insurgency years, criticism of
government policies in the local newspapers was tolerated.

Taft, the Philippines' first civilian governor, outlined a comprehensive development plan
that he described as "the Philippines for the Filipinos . . . that every measure, whether in the
form of a law or an executive order, before its adoption, should be weighed in the light of
this question: Does it make for the welfare of the Filipino people, or does it not?" Its main
features included not only broadening representative institutions but also expanding a
system of free public elementary education and designing economic policies to promote the
islands' development. Filipinos widely interpreted Taft's pronouncements as a promise of
independence.

The 1902 Philippine Organic Act disestablished the Catholic Church as the state religion.
The United States government, in an effort to resolve the status of the friars, negotiated with
the Vatican. The church agreed to sell the friars' estates and promised gradual substitution of
Filipino and other non-Spanish priests for the friars. It refused, however, to withdraw the
religious orders from the islands immediately, partly to avoid offending Spain. In 1904 the
administration bought for US$7.2 million the major part of the friars' holdings, amounting
to some 166,000 hectares, of which one-half was in the vicinity of Manila. The land was
eventually resold to Filipinos, some of them tenants but the majority of them estate owners.

The Americans built roads, bridges and sewage systems in the Philippines. They eradicated
small pox and brought cholera under control. Some land owned by the church was
redistributed among the Filipinos but most of the land went to large land owners. Sanitation
and health were improved, infrastructure was expanded, and English was taught in schools,
which helped bring the archipelago's numerous ethnic groups closer together.

The linchpins of the system created under United States tutelage were the village- and
province-level notables--often labeled bosses or caciques by colonial administrators--who
garnered support by exchanging specific favors for votes. Reciprocal relations between
inferior and superior (most often tenants or sharecroppers with large landholders) usually
involved the concept of utang na loob (repayment of debts) or kinship ties, and they formed
the basis of support for village-level factions led by the notables. These factions decided
political party allegiance. The extension of voting rights to all literate males in 1916, the
growth of literacy, and the granting of women's suffrage in 1938 increased the electorate
considerably. The elite, however, was largely successful in monopolizing the support of the
newly enfranchised, and a genuinely populist alternative to the status quo was never really
established. [Source: Library of Congress]

Before World War II, the social life for Americans centered around the Army and Navy
Club and the Manila Polo Club. Filipinos were not welcome at either one of these places. In
the hottest months Americans in Manila retreated to mile-high Baguio, an American
version of a hill station.

In 1931 there were between 80,000 and 100,000 Chinese in the islands active in the local
economy; many of them had arrived after United States rule had been established. Some
16,000 Japanese were concentrated largely in the Mindanao province of Davao (the
incorporated city of Davao was labeled by local boosters the "Little Tokyo of the South")
and were predominant in the abaca industry. Yet the immigration of foreign laborers never
reached a volume sufficient to threaten indigenous control of the economy or the traditional
social structure as it did in British Malaya and Burma.

Day 10
Identifying Factors that Led to Philippine Colonization of
Americans
Learning Objectives:

1. Explain why the Filipinos collaborated with the Americans.

CONCEPT NOTES:

PHILIPPINES UNDER AMERICAN RULE…

The Philippine Revolution of 1896 to 1897 destabilized Spanish colonialism but failed to
remove Spanish colonial rule. The leaders of the revolution were exiled to Hong Kong.
When the United States invaded Cuba and Puerto Rico in 1898 to shore up its authority in
the Caribbean, the U.S. Pacific Squadron was sent to the Philippines to advance U.S. power
in the region, and it easily defeated the Spanish navy. Filipino revolutionaries hoped the
United States would recognize and assist it. Although American commanders and
diplomats helped return revolutionary leader Emilio Aguinaldo (1869— 1964) to the
Philippine Islands, they sought to use him and they avoided recognition of the independent
Philippine Republic that Aguinaldo declared in June 1898.

UNITED STATES IN THE PHILIPPINES

In August 1898 U.S. forces occupied Manila and denied the Republic’s troops entry into the
city. Spain and the United States negotiated the Philippines’ status at Paris without Filipino
consultation. The U.S. Senate and the American public debated the Treaty of Paris, which
granted the United States “sovereignty” over the Philippine Islands for $20 million. The
discussion emphasized the economic costs and benefits of imperialism to the United States
and the political and racial repercussions of colonial conquest.

When U.S. troops fired on Philippine The United States exercised formal colonial
rule over the Philippines, its largest overseas
troops in February 1899, the Philippine- colony, between 1899 and 1946. American
American War erupted. The U.S. economic and strategic interests in Asia and
Senate narrowly passed the Treaty of the Pacific were increasing in the late 1890s
in the wake of an industrial depression and
Paris, and the U.S. military enforced its in the face of global, inter imperial
provisions over the next three years competition. Spanish colonialism was
simultaneously being weakened by revolts in
through a bloody, racialized war of
Cuba and the Philippines, its largest
aggression. Following ten months of remaining colonies.
failed conventional combat, Philippine
troops adopted guerrilla tactics, which American forces ultimately defeated only through the
devastation of civilian property, the “reconcentration” of rural populations, and the torture
and killing of prisoners, combined with a policy of “attraction” aimed at Filipino elites.
While Filipino revolutionaries sought freedom and independent nationhood, a U.S.-based
“anti-imperialist” movement challenged the invasion as immoral in both ends and means.

Carried out in the name of promoting “self-government” over an indefinite but calibrated
timetable, U.S. colonial rule in the Philippines was characterized politically by dictatorial
government and one-party state-building with the collaboration of Filipino elites. The
colonial state was inaugurated with a Sedition Act that banned expressions in support of
Philippine independence, a Banditry Act that criminalized ongoing resistance, and a
Reconcentration Act that authorized the mass relocation of rural populations.

In the interests of “pacification,” American civilian proconsuls in the Philippine

Commission, a legislative body, initially led by William Howard Taft (1857-1930),
sponsored the Federalista Party under influential Manila-based elites. The party
developed into a functioning patronage network and political monopoly in support of
“Americanization” and, initially, U.S. statehood for the Philippines. When the suppression
of independence politics ended in 1905, it gave rise to new political voices and organizations
that consolidated by 1907 into the Nationalista Party, whose members were younger than
those of the Federalista Party and rooted in the provinces. When the Federalista Party
alienated its American patrons and its statehood platform failed to win mass support, U.S.
proconsuls abandoned it for the Nationalista Party, which over the remainder of the
colonial period developed into a vast, second party-state, under the leadership of Manuel
Quezon (18781944) and Sergio Osmena (1878-1961).

Political America and Philippines

Following provincial and municipal elections, “national” elections were held in 1907 for a
Philippine Assembly to serve under the commission as the lower house of a legislature. The
3 percent of the country’s population that was given the right to vote swept the Nationalistas
to power. The Nationalistas clashed with U.S. proconsuls over jurisdiction and policy
priorities, although both sides also manipulated and advertised these conflicts to secure their
respective constituencies, masking what were in fact functioning colonial collaborations.
Democratic Party dominance in the United States between 1912 and 1920 facilitated the
consolidation of the Nationalista party-state in the Philippines.

When Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), a Democrat, was elected president in 1912, he

appointed as governor-general Francis Burton Harrison (1873-1957), who, working closely
with the Nationalistas, accelerated the “Filipinization” of the bureaucracy and allowed the
Philippine Assembly to assume additional executive power. When Democrats passed the
Jones Act in 1916, which replaced the commission with a Philippine senate and committed
the United States to “eventual independence” for the Philippines, Quezon claimed credit for
these victories and, despite his own ambivalence about Philippine independence, translated
them into greater power.

Under pressure from protectionists, nativists, and military officials fearful of Japanese
imperialism, the U.S. Congress passed the Tydings-McDuffie Act in 1934. The act
inaugurated a ten-year “Philippine Commonwealth” government transitional to
“independence.” While serving as president of the commonwealth in the years prior to the
1941 Japanese invasion of the Philippine Islands, Quezon consolidated dictatorial power.
Colonial political structures, constructed where the ambitions and fears of the Filipino elite
connected with the American imperial need for collaborators, had successfully preserved the
power of provincial, landed elites, while institutionalizing this power in a countrywide
“nationalist” politics.

American manufacturers supported free trade, hoping to secure in the Philippines both
inexpensive raw materials and markets for finished goods, whereas sugar and tobacco
producers opposed free trade because they feared Philippine competition. The Payne-
Aldrich Tariff Act of 1909 established “free trade,” with the exception of rice, and set yearly
quota limits for Philippine exports to the United States.

Free trade promoted U.S. investment, and American companies came to dominate
Philippine factories, mills, and refineries. When a post-World War I economic boom
brought increased production and exports, Filipino nationalists feared economic and
political dependence on the United States, as well as the overspecialization of the Philippine
economy around primary products, overreliance on U.S. markets, and the political
enlistment of American businesses in the indefinite colonial retention of the Philippine
Islands.

Philippine-American colonialism also transformed both the Philippines and the United
States in cultural terms. In the Philippines, the colonial state introduced a secular, free
public school system that emphasized the English language (believed by U. S. officials to be
the inherent medium of “free” institutions), along with industrial and manual training to
facilitate capitalist economic development. While the Filipino elite retained and developed
Spanish as a language of literature, politics, and prestige into the 1920s—often contrasted
with “vulgar” Americanism—Filipinos increasingly learned and transformed English and
used it to their own purposes. Filipinos also reworked forms and elements from American
popular culture, especially in film, fashion, and literature. In addition, this period saw the
development of popular and literary culture in other Philippine languages. With the advent
of the commonwealth, Tagalog was declared the unifying “national” language.