THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF THE PHILIPPINES - in 1 Hour

The Philippines is an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean, consisting of over 7,000 islands. It sits on a subduction zone in the Ring of Fire, the geologic belt that surrounds the Pacific, and is the source of a great deal of the seismic activity experienced from Japan to Alaska to California. This geologic history has made the islands mineral-rich, but also means the inhabitants must deal with the destructive potential of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Of the 7,000 islands, only about 1,000 have human habitation, and most of those are around one square mile in size. The archipelago is split into three island groups, Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. Mindanao is the southernmost group, the Visayas are the central set, and Luzon is the northernmost, named for the largest island in the group, and in the Philippines as a whole. The island of Luzon is the most populated, and includes the capital of Manila. The earliest trace of Homo sapiens, the modern human, is approximately 47,000 years ago. They were preceded by earlier hominids, Homo luzonensis, named for where it was found near Luzon, is dated to approximately 134,000 years ago, and there is evidence that places Homo erectus on the islands as far back as 700,000 years ago. The ancestors of the modern native population had established themselves by around 3,000 BCE, having migrated from Taiwan, other nearby islands, and the Asian mainland. They were Austronesian, meaning they belonged to a sociocultural and language group, spread across maritime Southeast Asia, and reached as far west as Madagascar. Austronesian is the parent language of Malay, or Indonesian, Taiwanese, Tagalog, and others spoken throughout islands in the South Pacific. Early settlements in the Philippines tended to stay along rivers, and tended to be somewhat isolated by geography. Because of this, they did not develop an overarching political connection, instead maintaining communities via intermarriage and other kinship relations. Trade between and amongst the islands and the mainland was well-established by 2,000 BCE, evidenced by Philippine jade artifacts found throughout the local area, produced using techniques common to India in the Philippines. These objects, along with ideas and the people who carried them, traveled via the Maritime Jade Road, a massively extensive trade network that existed for approximately 3,000 years, until 1,000 CE. The last 1,500 years of this era appear to be a time of extended peace throughout the Philippine Islands and the nearby area. This is evidenced in part by the trade itself, but it is also supported by a lack of archaeological finds of human bones that show evidence of a violent death. Such evidence, however, may simply have not yet been found. Written Philippine history begins around 900 CE. The earliest document is the Laguna Copperplate Inscription, which is a record of the forgiveness of a debt. By this time, the people of the archipelago had begun to organize themselves into socio-political units, called barangays. These are akin to a city-state, and could be as small as 30 people, or as large as 500. Some of these came together in confederacies, ruled by a paramount leader chosen from among the rulers of the allied polities, called Dadis. In areas that had greater contact with the Indian subcontinent, they called the rulers Raja. Later, in areas that had adopted Islam, they were called Sultans. Society within these barangays was organized by class, with the highest being the Maginot, next the Freeman, the Maharlika, then finally the Enslaved, the Alipin, all with subcategories to specify a person's status. The early cultures of the Philippines practiced a polytheistic animism, in which all things have a spirit that must be attended in order to maintain good fortune and avoid bad. Ancestor worship was also included in this, with the ancestors sometimes taking on the aspect of animals, and vice versa. Magic and witchcraft were widely believed to have influence, and those who practiced these could be highly respected and or greatly feared. Filipinos were introduced to Buddhism and Hinduism sometime before the 9th century CE. The archaeological record and documents found in China and India show that some Philippine barangays and islands owed tribute to the Srivijaya Empire, a powerful Indonesian Buddhist state that controlled the maritime trade in the area between the 6th and 13th centuries. Their influence was followed by that of the Majapahit, a Hindu-Buddhist state centered on the island of Java. Both Buddhism and Hinduism influenced the existing belief systems and culture, and influence was made easier by the language connections that seemed to exist between Philippines and Indian Sanskrit. Islam first arrived in the Philippines via a missionary, Maktum Karim, in 1380. He accompanied merchants and preached Sunni Islam to people in the Sulu archipelago. He is also credited with building the first mosque in the Philippines. He was followed a decade later by the Indonesian Minangkabu Prince Raja Baguinda, who also set up the Sulu Sultanate. In the early 15th century, the Chinese mariner Zhang founded Chinese Muslim communities in the Philippines. This history of the Philippines is generally organized as pre- and post-colonial. Most of the information we have on the centuries leading up to the Spanish arrival is provided through the chronicles and histories of other countries, notably China. Some of these are in passing or only noted in trade records, others stand out and a bit more of their story can be told. The oldest documented barangay is Tondo, a large polity located on the Pasig River Delta in the modern Manila Bay. They were associated with the nearby Maynila, which was an independent barangay with whom they shared monopolies on trade across Southeast Asia. This trade was sufficiently important to the Chinese that under the Yongle Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, a governor was appointed to oversee it. In fact, most of the documented information we have about the Philippines in the pre-colonial era comes from records of other countries with whom the various barangay interacted. China provides the most extensive of these, but there is corroborating information from Japan, Champa, India, and others. This kingdom had declined by the early 16th century and had been overtaken by the Luzon. The Luzon were the local peoples around Tondo who took the opportunity of the conquest by Brunei to assert themselves. They were a militaristic culture who were involved in wars all over the Philippines, Indonesia, and mainland Asia, sometimes under the auspices of their state and sometimes as individuals and groups acting as mercenaries. Another largely documented state is the Sultanate of Sulu, so-called even though the society pre-existed the introduction of Islam and its political terminology. In the 12th and 13th centuries, people from the Visayas area moved into the Sulu archipelago in the Mindanao section of the Philippine Islands. They established their state and were known to trade throughout the area, including with the people of Champa on the Indonesian peninsula, some of whom moved to Sulu. There was a short war between the Sulu and the Champa in the 12th century, after which trade was normalized again, shortly before they were overtaken by an outside power. In the 13th century, according to Chinese records, the area was under the control of the Bruneian Sultanate, along with Ma'ay and Manila. Little else is said except that they regained their independence at some later date. They had certainly done so by the early 15th century, when its leader, Raja Baguinda, converted to Islam and was independently ruling the now Sultanate. Sometime before the 11th century, the Rajahnate of Butuan emerged on the island of Mindanao. It was a mixed kingdom, with the majority of people practicing Hinduism but the leadership practicing Buddhism. They were known for their expertise with gold and had extensive trade ties with China, as well as with the various kingdoms of the Indochina peninsula. There were other major independent polities, of whom less is known. They had separate agreements for trade with surrounding states and different cultural influences from them. The Kabbaloan Barangay was greatly influenced by China and Japan. Their clothing reflected the styles of both, as did cultural norms like blackened teeth. Other polities like Ma'ay and Pelulu were trade partners with China. There is also evidence of conflict between the people of the Visayan section of the archipelago and towns, on the Chinese coastline, instigated by the Filipinos. In the decades prior to European contact, the Bruneian Sultanate again pushed into the Philippines. They started with Tondo and Manila Bay, with the idea of breaking their monopoly on the Chinese trade of certain goods. They were successful, establishing Celerong, also known as the Kingdom of Manila, as a vassal state in 1500. Their leader, Sultan Bolquia, married into the ruling family of the Sultanate of Sulu, thereby connecting those two powers. The first contact between the people of the Philippines and Europeans was in 1521, when the Spanish expedition to circumnavigate the globe, led by the Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan, stopped there. They anchored off Suluan Island, in the central part of the archipelago on the 14th of March, 1521. Magellan planted the Spanish flag, calling the islands the Islas de San Lazaro. The next day, they landed at nearby Hamanhan Island, where Magellan met with the leaders of the Cebu and Limasawa peoples. Their leader, the Raja Humabon, spoke at length with Magellan, and then decided to convert to Catholicism. Spanish priests in the expedition baptized him, his wife, and many of their household. In the tradition of taking a new or additional name at one's baptism, the Raja became Carlos, in honor of King Charles I of Spain. His wife took the name Juana, in honor of the king's mother, Joana, daughter of the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella. The Raja then ordered the people of the nearby islands to welcome Magellan and his men, provide them with supplies, and convert to Catholicism. His level of influence is shown by the fact most of these people followed his lead into the church. However, Datu Lapu-Lapu, one of the chiefs on the island of Mactan, refused. Very little is known about him prior to these events, except that he was Humabon's rival for influence in the area. He rejected the idea of conversion and also prevented his neighboring leader, Datu Zula, from sending gifts to Magellan. This prompted Humabon and Zula to suggest that Magellan force the issue with a personal visit, which Magellan saw as an opportunity to both show strength to and a willingness to work in an alliance with the local peoples. On the 27th of April 1521, Magellan and his force landed on Mactan and were immediately barraged with spears, rocks, and arrows. This initial attack was more demoralizing than deadly to the Spanish. Offshore, the Spanish saw this attack and shot with both muskets and crossbows, but were too far away to have an effect. Magellan's next move was to push toward the native village and set fire to some of the houses. This gave even more force behind the Mactan defense. Magellan was immobilized by a poisoned arrow to the leg, and many of his people were quickly killed. By the account of his chronicler, Antonio Pigafetta, they focused on Magellan himself, which allowed a few of the Spanish to escape. Lapulapu also made a point of killing all of the natives who aided the Spanish in their attack. This did not include Raja Humabon and Datuzula. Despite their promise to fight alongside the Spanish, they stayed away. The Raja did try to ransom the body of the Portuguese navigator, but Lapulapu refused any of his offers. Seeing the attitudes of his fellows, Humabon seems to have repudiated his conversion, going as far as to kill some of the Spanish soldiers who escaped the battle. The expedition continued on its way, returning to Spain the next year, having finished the first circumnavigation of the earth. It was four decades before the Spanish or Portuguese again tried to take any Philippine territory. After the disastrous experience of Magellan in the Philippines, the Spanish did not make another attempt to colonize until 1542. This expedition was led by Ruy López de Villalobos. He set out from Mexico with six ships and approximately 400 people. Against his navigator's advice, he landed in Mindanao, but far away from any of the Chinese or Malay traders they'd hoped to find. Isolated, they made repairs on their ships, but were prevented from getting back out to sea by the weather. Without supplies, they resorted to eating whatever they could find, much of which made them sick. The survivors eventually left and landed on Sarangani. They claimed the territory for Spain and named it for Charles V's son, Crown Prince Philip. Shortly after, they were greeted by a Portuguese ship with a letter from the government of the Malaccas in Indonesia, demanding to know why the Spanish were in Portuguese territory, which began a brief correspondence that consisted of the Portuguese asking the Spanish to leave, and the Spanish explaining the elements of the treaties that allowed them to colonize in the region. The Villalobos expedition tried to return to Mexico, but were still incredibly low on supplies. They were captured by the Portuguese, who jailed Villalobos and sent the remaining Spaniards on a ship back to Lisbon, to be returned to Spain from there. Finally, in November 1564, an expedition under Miguel López de Legazpi left Mexico sailing west, and reached the Philippines in February of the next year. They arrived at Cebu, in the central part of the archipelago, conquering it, despite local opposition. This marks the first Spanish colony in the islands, and the beginning of a colonial hold that would last until the end of the 19th century. They expanded to the island of Panay in 1568, and came into contact with Muslim pirates who attacked the settlement. He sent Conquistador Martín de Goiti to conquer Maynila and Tondo. Tondo surrendered in the face of the massive naval force. Maynila was taken and renamed Nueva Castilla, or New Castle, and made the capital of the Spanish East Indies, which encompassed the Philippines and all Pacific Spanish territories. Despite the official name change, it has remained Maynila, though with different spellings to the modern day. The Spanish took the Bering guys a little at a time, conquering via force and culture. The colonies grew rapidly through settlement directly from Spain and from the Americas. Like Britain, Spain used its colonies as a place to send undesirables, and so many who came from Europe were criminals or debtors. There was also a large part of the population who came from New Spain, and they created a Mexican-Filipino subculture. The Catholic missionaries were hugely influential in this effort, as they built schools and hospitals alongside their churches. The Spanish also built presidios, or fortresses, which proved their worth to the locals when outsiders attacked. This does not mean the islanders did not push back. In 1587, a group of local Dattis leaders conspired to overthrow the Spanish. They tried to involve nearby Brunei and Borneo, playing on the conflict between their Muslim population and the Catholic Spaniards. They also had promises from the Japanese, but they did not follow through. The whole plan was revealed to the Spanish via a spy. The Dattis were executed and their heads were displayed as a warning. The rest of the people involved were fined, imprisoned, or exiled. There were also external forces fighting against the Spanish. The Portuguese were a major source of conflict until the 1580 Iberian Union, which brought the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal under the same government for a few decades. Chinese pirates were a constant annoyance, but were not a serious threat. A few times the Japanese claimed prior control over the territory and asked for fealty and tribute, but this ended with a normalization of trade relations between Japan and Spain in the early 17th century. The nearby Muslim states regularly attacked Philippine islands, both because they wanted specifically to push out the Spanish, because they were Catholic, and because they wanted the territory, a desire that existed long before the Spanish arrived. The biggest external threat, however, was the Dutch. This was not solely a fight over colonial territory, as the Dutch and Spanish had long standing conflict in Europe. The vagaries of inheritance meant that the Habsburgs, who ruled Spain, also gained control of the Netherlands in the early 16th century. The main conflict between the Dutch and their Habsburg rulers was religious. Spain and the Habsburgs were Catholic, and demanded that everyone in their territories be Catholic as well. Many of the Dutch were members of the newly emerging Protestant sects. This ongoing conflict, known as the Eighty Years' War, spilled over into Southeast Asia and the Pacific, where the Dutch held Indonesia and the Spanish held the Philippines. Three battles were fought between the Spanish and Dutch fleets, all indecisive. Ultimately, the conflict between Spain and the Netherlands was subsumed into the Thirty Years' War and resolved within it. In 1599, King Philip ordered a referendum in the Philippines that would approve Spanish rule. Unsurprisingly, it passed. They could now claim to the rest of the world that their overlordship of the archipelago was legitimate in the eyes of the people who lived there. Spain used the Philippines as it did its other colonies, exploiting natural resources for the benefit of the empire, using it to reduce population pressure at home, and as a piece in the great colonial rivalry of the era. This required consistent governance across the entirety of the Spanish-held parts of the archipelago, which was established relatively quickly. The Philippines were then integrated into the Viceroyalty of New Spain, which oversaw all of the Spanish colonies in the Americas and the Pacific. Unlike their American colonies, however, the Philippines did not produce a great deal of wealth for the crown, and in fact, often cost more to maintain than it contributed. This loss was deemed worth it though, because of their strategic value, although it did mean that the maintenance, particularly of military fortifications, was not consistent. The Spanish systems of agriculture were forced into the native Filipinos, with the encomienda, or collective farm, at its center. In this system, all of the land belongs to the king, the people work it for him as well as for themselves, and they owe a portion of their crop to the crown after each harvest. For many, the focus was on cash crops, tobacco, coffee, indigo, and sugar, both for themselves and for trade. That trade, and the trade of all the goods coming out of the Philippines, was limited to Spain and Spanish holdings. In the 18th century, the Spanish Philippines were involved in more European conflicts, with the Seven Years' War. Britain took the opportunity of their opposing sides to make it run at Manila, in hopes of gaining control over what could be one of the most important trade cities in Asia. It was a logical extension of the East India Company's unofficial rule over the subcontinent, which was backed by the might of the British Empire. A British fleet sailed into Manila Bay on the 24th of September, 1762. Over the next 12 days, they bombarded the city's fortifications, took control of some of the surrounding area, and assessed the Spanish ability to defend their capital. They found it wanting, which was in their favor. On the dawn of the 6th of October, they pushed into the city with little effort. The Spanish contingent at the Royal Gate refused to surrender, and 180 of them were killed. Manuel Rojo de Rio Eviero, the Archbishop and Temporary Governor of Manila, agreed to surrender in hopes it would stop any more violence. He described the aftermath of the battle as a pillage that lasted over a day, and made a point of saying that it was not only the British soldiers, but also locals who took advantage of the moment of lawlessness. It ended only with an agreement to pay a $4 million ransom, which was only partially paid. The agreement between Rojo and British Lieutenant General William Draper had assured the Catholic Church and its activities would not be interfered with, that the property of the Spanish citizens of the Philippines would be respected, and they would have the same freedoms of travel and trade as did the British. In the meantime, members of the Spanish Colonial Administration fled the city and arranged a sort of government-in-exile in Pampanga under the leadership of Simón de Anda y Salazar, the head judge of the Royal Audencia of Manila. Anda wrote to inform Archbishop Rojo that he had assumed the position of Governor General, an assumption the Archbishop refused to accept. This stopped any potential negotiation between Anda and the British, as the former refused to even talk to the latter until he was addressed as the Governor General. But the British refused to recognize him as such, because they'd already been working with Rojo. This did not stop the Audencia from putting together an army of 10,000 to prevent the British from making any gains beyond Manila Bay. Fighting continued through the early months of 1763, past the official end of the Seven Years' War, because neither of the governments in Europe was aware of the capture of Manila, nor were the people in the Philippines aware the war had ended. But in the meantime, after the death of Archbishop Rojo in January 1764, the British and Governor General Anda agreed to an armistice. It went into effect at almost the exact time the British got word that the war was over. Their new orders explained the archipelago was to be retained by Spain. The occupation ended in the first week of April, 1764. The shift to industrialism throughout the world at the turn of the 19th century made the Filipino trade in raw materials too valuable to be limited to only Spain. In 1834, Spain opened the ports to the world. At the same time, improvements in communication and transportation made it easier for people to get involved in this increased mercantilism. The communal state-owned encomienda were privatized, and private businesses were opened to cater to the new trade opportunities. A Filipino middle class emerged, as well as a wealthy one. Those who could afford to send their sons to European and American universities, these young men came home with ideas of freedom and liberty. This coincided with the wars fought in the Spanish colonies in the Americas, which were their fights for independence from the mother country. Some Filipinos fought in these wars, and like the French who fought in the American Revolution, they brought home new ideas. A Filipino national identity emerged, including both the descendants of Spanish colonists and the local indigenous peoples. This came to be opposed to recent Spanish immigrants, who took over governmental positions and sought to keep the Filipinos in a second-class position. This led to a brief revolt in Manila in 1823. By mid-century, the demonstrations for independence were common and came together in what's called the propaganda movement. The leaders of these sought basic civil rights and equal status under the law for Spanish and Filipino people, including giving the Philippines a place in the Spanish Parliament and the status of a province. They sought to abolish the use of forced labor, and to end the requirement that some goods only be sold to the government. Lastly, they wanted secular control over the priesthoods. The propaganda movement ended with the arrest and deportation of one of its leaders, Jose Rizal. A revolutionary movement called the Katipunan took its place. The Philippine Revolution began in August 1898, with the express purpose of making the Philippines an independent country. The rebels did fairly well in the countryside, but failed to take Manila. This war between Spain and its colony was combined with another war between Spain and another of its territories, Cuba. The push for independence on that Caribbean island got the United States involved, which changed the balance of power. The Americans took the opportunity to gain a foothold in the Western Pacific. With the Battle of Manila Bay on the 1st of May 1898, the Americans essentially decided the conflict between Spain and the Philippines in favor of themselves. The battle marks the end of the Spanish colonial period for the archipelago. The Philippine revolutionaries, under the leadership of Emilio Aguinaldo, created a temporary government in June 1898, which oversaw the writing of a constitution and elections. The First Philippine Republic was born on the 21st of January, 1899, with Aguinaldo as president. The U.S., however, refused to recognize the new state. This led to a brief war, in which the U.S. was successful. The Philippines became an unofficial territory of the United States, a status which it maintained until 1946. One element of the treaty that ended the Spanish-American War in 1898 was a $20 million payment from the United States to Spain in exchange for the Philippines. This began the American colonial period, which lasted until the archipelago was granted its independence after the Second World War. The Filipinos had initially seen the Americans as aiding them in their independence from Spain, but the Americans did not see things this way. For them, it was an opportunity, as President William McKinley put it, to uplift and civilize and Christianize them. In August 1898, the Americans established a military government at Manila. With this self-created authority, they set up local governments including schools and courts with the American model. While this was being set up by the Americans, the Philippine Revolutionary Government, which had formed during the Spanish-American War, held elections to seat an assembly whose purpose was to write a constitution for their new state. This founding document was adopted and set to go into effect on the 21st of January 1899, creating the First Philippine Republic. On the 4th of January, however, the United States issued a proclamation stating that the Spanish, having ceded the Philippines to them, meant that the American military rule was to go into effect over the whole archipelago immediately. This undermined the new government, and its president, Emilio Aguinaldo, issued a response that reaffirmed the independence of the Philippines and asserted their right to defend themselves. Open warfare began on the 4th of February 1899 with an American assault on San Juan. Aguinaldo's government issued a declaration of war against the United States on the 2nd of June 1899. The Filipinos were not equipped for traditional warfare against a modern state. Most of them did not even have guns, but were working with bows, arrows, and spears. After a few months of this, they shifted to guerrilla tactics, with the idea of inflicting constant losses rather than trying to overtake them entirely. This prompted an American shift to methods for fighting an internal rebellion, which included the use of camps to collect civilians with the idea of segregating them, ostensibly to protect them from the guerrillas. They also had camps for prisoners of war, which were not well supplied. Disease ran rampant in these camps, forcing more Filipino deaths than the warfare itself. The insurgency continued through the next year, prompting a declaration of martial law by General Arthur MacArthur on the 20th of December 1900. At the same time, an American commission headed by future President William Howard Taft began designing and enacting a government. Positions in local governments and the newly developed civil service were used, to some effect, to persuade resistance leaders away from their anti-American efforts. Hostilities were greatly reduced when President Aguinaldo was captured in March 1901. On the 19th of April, he officially surrendered and swore allegiance to the United States. He called on his people to lay down their weapons, but some local leaders, like Miguel Malvar and Vincent Lupin, continued the fighting until April 1902. Isolated pockets of resistance carried on intermittently until 1913. This war cost more in people and materials for the United States than the Spanish-American War. The Filipinos lost at least 200,000 civilians from diseases like cholera and dysentery, as well as famine. The U.S. had implemented a scorched earth policy in the places they hoped to root out the guerrilla troops, and were not shy about using extreme methods to get information from prisoners. The Philippine fighters also used brutal tactics against the Americans they captured. After the war, the Philippines were put under a type of territorial government, administered by and answerable to the United States, called the Insular Government. This administration's purpose was to shepherd the Philippines into independence. Elections were held for an assembly in 1907, which served as a lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the U.S. appointed Philippine Commission serving as the upper house. The assembly passed resolutions annually, calling for Philippine independence. In 1916, the Philippine Autonomy Act, also known as the Jones Law, was put into effect. It replaced the Philippine Commission in their legislature with an elected Senate, and stated unequivocally that the American policy was for Philippine independence, though without a time frame for when it would happen. Any activities around independence were put on hold during World War I. After the war, however, a Philippine delegation came to the U.S. to present their case directly in Washington. President Woodrow Wilson was sufficiently impressed to state that they were ready for independence in his farewell address in 1921, but his successors apparently disagreed. President Warren Harding sent a delegation to investigate, and it returned that they were not ready for independence, though that was widely disputed. It was not until January 1933 that the United States government allowed for a timeline for Philippine independence. This was established by the Philippine Independence Act of 1934, which gave guidelines for the writing of a constitution and establishing a commonwealth. Under this act, the Philippines would become independent on the 4th of July, following the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the commonwealth. The new Philippine Constitution went into effect on the 15th of November, 1935, meaning the country was to be released from U.S. oversight on the 4th of July, 1946. The new government set to work with ambitious plans, many of which were left unfulfilled due to the Great Depression and the uncertainty surrounding the local political and military circumstances due to Japan's recent alliance with Germany and its ongoing invasion from China. The concerns about Japan were well-founded, as the Empire's attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor on the 7th of December, 1941 was accompanied by an attack on the Philippines. This brought the Philippines into the war, with their army being integrated into the U.S. Army forces far east. The American military in the archipelago was under the control of the General Douglas MacArthur, the son of Arthur MacArthur, who had been the military governor of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War. In order to prevent its destruction, the city of Manila was declared open and it was taken by the Japanese on the 2nd of January, 1942. Smuggled out with General MacArthur and his staff and family, the Philippine President and Vice President Manuel L. Quezon and Sergio Osmeña set up a government-in-exile in Washington D.C. The Japanese set up a puppet government called the Philippine Executive Commission, whose purpose was to oversee the transition of the Philippines to an independent state. Some Filipinos saw more potential in actually gaining independence via the Japanese than via the Americans, but most were pushing back against either in favor of genuine independence. In the initial Japanese invasion, poor preparation meant the American planes were destroyed on the ground, meaning they were not available to protect the U.S. Army and naval forces from Japanese attack. The American and Filipino soldiers were forced to retreat south as far as they could go, stopping at Corregidor Island and surrendering there. This prompted one of the most infamous events of the war, the Bhutan Death March. Because of this, they had no means to transfer the 75,000 men to a camp 65 miles or 105 kilometers north other than via a march. This was done with little thought to the prisoners' needs, including food, shelter, or medical care. Because the Japanese didn't believe in surrender, they saw no value in the men and treated them accordingly. The numbers vary widely, but it is estimated that approximately 600 Americans and as many as 15,000 Filipinos did not reach the camp. This would later be avenged by American paratroopers and special forces units who rescued the prisoners and retook Corregidor in February 1945. The Japanese did everything they could to dehumanize the Filipinos, making for a particularly brutal occupation. Forced labor was common, including forcing women, children, and some men into slavery as comfort women for the Japanese soldiers. The actions of the occupiers prompted a fierce backlash in the form of an underground resistance movement. This resistance was organized as isolated guerrilla cells scattered throughout the archipelago. By the end of the war, nearly 300,000 Filipinos were directly involved in guerrilla activities, with an unknown number supporting them. In October 1944, the Americans returned to the Philippines under General MacArthur. In the intervening years, the Philippine guerrillas had destroyed a great deal of the Japanese control and were able to provide intelligence and work alongside the Americans. This was after a protracted argument between the Army and Navy about whether the archipelago needed to be liberated by the Americans at all, due to his own and his father's involvement with the Philippines, MacArthur felt a personal need to assure the Commonwealth's liberation. The major push to retake the islands was the Battle of Leyte Gulf on the 23rd to 26th of October 1944, which is still known as the largest naval battle in history. The main Allied fleet, consisting of the heavy American aircraft carriers, fast battleships, and most modern escorts, was commanded by Admiral William Halsey. They were on the eastern side of the Philippine Islands, where they saw Japanese carriers coming from Japan with the apparent intent of attacking the invasion fleet. As soon as they were seen, they turned back, with the Americans racing behind them, away from the Philippines. At the same time, a fleet of Japanese battleships and heavy cruisers, under the leadership of Admiral Kurita Takeo, came from the Dutch East Indies toward the American invasion fleet on the western side of the islands. This was the primary Japanese strike group, not the fleet after which Halsey chased. They ran into a line of American submarines, which attacked, damaging and sinking some of the ships. They called for help, prompting American planes to be launched from nearby aircraft carriers. The Japanese super-battleship Musashi was sunk, after which the Japanese turned around. The Americans thought they were retreating, but they turned back around as soon as the American attacks stopped. They attacked the American destroyers and aircraft carriers, who fought back so fiercely, some sacrificing themselves, that Kurita thought the entire American fleet was in front of him. He turned around again, not realizing he was in a better position. On the same night, a third Japanese group encountered the older American ships at the Surigao Strait, which had been placed to provide bombardment to support the invasion. Using their radar, they were able to destroy most of the Japanese ships before they were aware Americans were in the strait. Because some of these were ships from Pearl Harbor, which had been restored, this is thought of as avenging that attack. This was the last battleship versus battleship engagement in history. The Americans took Manila back beginning on the 3rd of February, 1945, conducting an exhausting street-by-street battle that lasted until the 3rd of March. Some of the heaviest fighting actually happened in the baseball stadium, where the Japanese used the dugouts like bunkers. The civilian population of Manila got caught in the middle of the battle and was prevented from leaving by the Japanese, meaning tens of thousands were killed. Fighting continued in the islands until the Japanese surrender on the 2nd of September, 1945. Just a few months later, on the 15th of November, 1945, the Philippine Commonwealth celebrated its 10th anniversary. Preparations began for official independence, which was granted with much ceremony on the 4th of July, 1946. The post-war history of the Philippines has been a balance between having successfully achieved independence and subsequent struggle with internal conflict. Liberated from Japanese occupation by the United States in the summer of 1945, the Republic of the Philippines was born on the 4th of July, 1946. The first decades of the new state were a mixture of economic and social reform and introduction of the Philippines onto the world stage. The growing pains of the new republic were felt even before independence. Philippine President Manuel Quezon died in 1944, still running his government in exile from the US. He was succeeded by his Vice President, Sergio Azmeña. Azmeña was not very well known by his countrymen, and his political party had fallen out of favor during the Japanese occupation. The first set of presidential elections for the new republic was held in April, 1946, before they were officially independent, so there would be no lame-duck period should the presidency change hands. Azmeña's opponent was Manuel Roxas, a populist who was vocally supported by General Douglas MacArthur. Roxas sought to rebuild his nation from not only the bitter years of the Japanese occupation, but he also wanted to mend the nearly four centuries of foreign domination his people had endured. Roxas wanted to bring the Philippines into the United Nations and open the archipelago to the world. He also understood that, like so many countries around the globe, after the Second World War, the rebuilding of his country relied on massive loans from the United States. His administration insured those funds by signing 99-year lease agreements with the Americans on major military bases that had already been established. These loans also tied the Philippine and American economies tightly together. Roxas' presidency was cut short on the 15th of April, 1948, when he suffered a fatal heart attack while giving a speech at Clark Air Base. His vice-president, Elpidio Quirino, immediately succeeded to the presidency. Quirino oversaw many of the social reforms his predecessor had pledged to implement. This included health insurance, an old-age pension system, unemployment insurance, state relief, and open labor opportunities that had not previously existed. Quirino also created agencies to help offer aid and loans to Filipinos who had been previously cut out of economic assistance. The next election was set for the year after he took office, at which point he ran for a full term of his own. His opponent was Jose Laurel, who had been president under the Japanese occupation and was considered by many to be a collaborator. The election was seen as corrupt at the time, and is considered so by many historians. But there is disagreement as to whether this truly affected the outcome, as Laurel did not take any major steps to dispute it. Quirino's presidency also saw the emergence of a communist party that opposed him and his government, openly calling for its overthrow. By the 1953 election, the U.S. was supporting his opponent, Ramon Magsaysay, who won easily. The administration of Ramon Magsaysay has been held up as an example of honest and non-corrupt governing, to the point that his single term in office has been called the Golden Years by many Filipinos. Magsaysay championed his people on the world stage, reinforcing the concept of the Philippines as a bulwark against the spread of communism both at home and abroad. In 1954, he led the foundation of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, also known as the Manila Pact, which proclaimed the Philippines as an international partner in the fight against communism. Magsaysay sent members of the Philippine Army to help United Nations forces protect South Korea. He also briefly forced communist groups at home to go into exile and cease their political agitation. Magsaysay did not have the opportunity to complete the reforms he designed. He was killed in a plane crash on the 17th of March, 1957. Vice President Carlos P. Garcia succeeded him, and then served a full term of his own. Garcia was succeeded by his Vice President, Diostado Macapagal, after losing to him in the 1961 elections. Macapagal's administration is best known for enacting land reforms around the tenancy of farmers, and for changing the date on which Philippine independence is celebrated, from the 4th of July to the 12th of June, changing the recognition away from the end of the occupation by the US to the end of Spanish colonial period. In 1898, he lost the 1965 election to Ferdinand Marcos, the best known modern leader of the Philippines, and not for positive reasons. Ferdinand Marcos held control over the Philippines between 1965 and 1986. Marcos began as a president elected on promises of economic and social reforms, and ended in a brutal dictatorship. A military attempt to bring part of Borneo under Philippine rule prompted a massacre of Muslims in southern parts of the archipelago, a terrible occasion that was made worse by the Marcos administration's suppression of journalism around the events. Despite this, he was incredibly popular, and won a second term in 1969. His second term saw a great deal of unrest, beginning with massive financial problems directly related to his unrestrained spending during his campaign. Demonstrations that turned violent, rumors of a planned coup d'etat and an attack during a campaign rally, allowed Marcos to suspend the writ of habeas corpus and enact martial law in 1972. His political opponents were forbidden from expressing themselves, even in a peaceful manner. They were either arrested or sent into exile, generally without any sort of actual trial to prove their guilt. Martial law would remain in effect until 1981. This second term coincided with a constitutional convention, planned for 1970, during which revisions would be made to the 1935 constitution. Marcos used this to his advantage, arranging changes to the government that allowed him to remain in power after the provisions of the earlier constitution would have required that he step down. He changed the actual nature of the government by shifting it from a presidential system to a parliamentary one. People no longer directly voted for a president. The party with the largest number of seats in congress nominated their candidate. By 1973, the new constitution was in place, and no one could effectively oust Marcos. His new administration was composed of nepotists who enacted his policies while enriching themselves. Marcos also assured the support of the military with a steady supply of money. Marcos claimed that he needed to enact these policies to ensure that the new society he was creating would thrive. He vowed to eliminate corruption, ease economic strain on his fellow citizens, and make the Philippines a stronger international player. Despite this, the Philippine economy shrunk steadily as trade relations dwindled, causing millions to go hungry and not a small number of deaths. In the face of these elements, it is hardly surprising that the Marcos administration relied on blunt force to stay in power. Those deemed a threat to the regime were arrested and held without trial, and only released if they were scared into submission. Records show 3,257 extrajudicial executions were conducted, along with 35,000 documented incidents of torture. International pressure mounted for Marcos to cease his human rights violations and restore civil rights throughout the Philippines. Martial law was officially lifted in January 1981, but Marcos retained all of the power he'd held during that time. Elections held in June of that year put Marcos into another six-year term, but pressure from increasing opposition outside the Philippines, especially from the United States, combined with shock over the poorly covered-up assassination of Marcos' primary opposition, Senator Benigno Ninoy Aquino Jr., forced a snap election on the 7th of February, 1986. Marcos was up against Corazon Aquino, the wife of the assassinated leader. Each side declared their candidate the winner, though it is evident that Aquino actually did get more votes. The dispute prompted weeks of civil unrest and an attempted coup, culminating in two inaugurations, Marcos at his palace and Aquino at a social club. Shortly after his ceremony, however, Marcos and his family were evacuated from the capital in a U.S. Army helicopter, eventually ending up in Hawaii, where Ferdinand Marcos would die three years later. Imelda eventually returned to the Philippines and still lives there as of this writing. Corazon Aquino was elected as the next president of the Philippines and immediately formed a revolutionary government to normalize the situation left by Marcos and provided for a transitional freedom constitution. This new constitution effectively crippled the powers of the president. They could no longer unilaterally declare martial law, proposed the creation of autonomous regions in the Cotilleras and Muslim Mindanao to stabilize the Philippine Islands and hopefully prevent civil war, and restored the presidential form of government and the bicameral Congress. She also did not renew treaties that would have allowed the United States to maintain control over various military bases that they'd held since the Second World War. Unfortunately, Aquino's administration was plagued by infighting as well as a devastating natural disaster. Different groups sought varied agendas and this slowed economic and social reform to a crawl. Her work toward fixing the economy after the kleptocratic Marcos regime was somewhat undone by the eruption of Mount Pinatubo on the 2nd of April 1991 when the volcano started erupting. A tremendous explosion on the 12th of July 1991 buried Clark Air Base, rendering it unusable for recovery. A staggering $100 million in damage, at least 840 deaths were reported and over 200,000 were left homeless. Aquino was succeeded by Fidel Ramos, who negotiated with various armed opposition groups and managed to bring many of them to a peaceful reconciliation. However, his successor, Joseph Estrada, conducted military operations to put down one of these insurgent groups, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Estrada did not finish his term in office, but resigned after being impeached over bribes from illegal gambling operations. The two most recent presidents of the nation have been controversial. Rodrigo Duterte began his presidency in 2016 with a platform of increased infrastructure spending, tax reform, increased enforcement of anti-drug laws, and other general improvements. He was and is generally approved of by the people of the Philippines, but his methods, which included briefly implementing martial law and outright executions of criminals, are widely questioned. This and his attempts to reorient Philippine policy away from the US and toward China and Russia caused pushback from much of the rest of the world. His successor, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., better known as Bongbong, came to power in 2022. His administration has been marked by the socio-economic issues of recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns, as well as attempts to shift away from some of the more criticized of Duterte's programs. The first decades of the 21st century have been a time of international unease for the Philippines, as the republic sought to either reinforce old alliances or establish new foreign ties. In the early 2000s, the Chinese government sought to form closer economic and political ties, but these failed to materialize, in part because China has steadily pushed for territorial expansion and ownership of all regions and resources in the South China Sea. The rich fishing grounds, newly discovered underwater deposits of oil, and command of the waterways around Taiwan make this region an important part of the Chinese government's future goals. No matter what the future holds, the Philippines will be an important part of politics in the Pacific and the rest of the world.