Philippine Islands

The Philippine Islands under American rule ran from 1898 to the Commonwealth of 1935. The United States acquired the archipelago from Spain by purchase, for twenty million dollars, in the treaty ending the Spanish-American War. Filipinos had already declared independence that June, having fought Spain for two years, and had a constitution and a republic. The Philippine-American War that followed lasted officially from 1899 to 1902 and in practice much longer in the south. It killed some twenty thousand Filipino combatants and, through disease, famine and reconcentration, several hundred thousand civilians. The water cure and the Balangiga reprisals were debated in the United States Senate at the time. American policy afterwards was assimilationist in a way the European empires were not: English-language public schooling was introduced almost immediately and teachers were shipped in by the boatload, an elected assembly followed in 1907, and Filipinos progressively filled the civil service. Land reform did not happen, and the landed families that dominated under Spain dominated under the Americans and afterwards. Free trade with the United States tied the economy to sugar and coconut exports. The Jones Act of 1916 promised eventual independence, and the Tydings-McDuffie Act of 1934 set a date. The Commonwealth was inaugurated in 1935 as the transitional government. Mark Twain and the Anti-Imperialist League opposed the annexation publicly. Emilio Aguinaldo, the republic's president, was captured in 1901 and lived until 1964. The Moro provinces in the south were governed separately by the army until 1913. American teachers who arrived in 1901 were known as Thomasites after the ship that carried them.

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