THE PHILIPPINES: THE UNITED STATES’ FIRST COLONY

UNITED STATES IN THE PHILIPPINES

American flags decorate a classroom in the northeastern province of Isabela; Display of the Philippine flag had been outlawed a few years earlier

The Philippines became a territory of the United States by the Treaty of Paris (1898), the agreement ended the Spanish-American War (1898), which marked a determined U.S. interest in participating more fully in international affairs. The Philippines was the United States’ first colony. On July 4, 1901, a U.S.-backed government was established in Manila with the future U.S. president Howard Taft as the first civilian U.S. governor of the Philippines. The 325-pound walrus of a man posed for a picture on the back of a water buffalo and promised to help "our little brown brothers."

After the Spanish-American War, the United States purchased the Philippines from Spain for $20 million under the Treaty of Paris. Although American authority replaced Spanish colonial rule, Filipino nationalists continued their struggle for independence under Emilio Aguinaldo until his capture in 1901, when he pledged allegiance to the United States. Over time, American administration integrated the Philippines into the U.S. economic system, shaping it into a supplier of raw materials and a market for manufactured goods from the mainland. Politically, however, U.S. control of the islands remained controversial at home. The extent and character of American governance shifted depending on which political party held power and on how the United States assessed its strategic and economic interests in the Pacific. [Source: Worldmark Encyclopedia of Nations, Thomson Gale, 2007]

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 ( See Education). 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.

Books: “In Their Image”, a Pulitzer-prize-winning book about the United States and the Philippines relationship by Stanley Karnow; “Sitting in Darkness: American in the Philippines”by David Howard Bain.

Beginning of U.S. Rule in the Philippines

William Howard Taft, First US civilian governor of the Philippines and 27th US President, in 1908

At first, the United States military took charge of governing the Philippines. In the summer of 1901, however, authority was transferred to William Howard Taft, who became the territory’s first civilian governor. Taft quickly declared that the United States intended to prepare the Filipinos for eventual independence, and he allowed a significant degree of local self-government during his administration. He organized the Philippine Commission to function as a legislative body and launched a public education program. In the early stages, American soldiers served as teachers until professionally trained educators arrived from the United States. [Source: Dictionary of American History, Gale Group Inc., 2003]

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. [Source: Library of Congress *]

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 with Sultan Jamalul Kiram II at the Philippine Commission in Jolo, Sulu (March 27, 1901)

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. *

Economic and Social Developments Under the Americans in the Philippines

Under American rule, infrastructure projects expanded, including the construction of roads, sanitation systems, and schools. Cholera, dysentery, typhoid, and smallpox repeatedly devastated the population, claiming thousands of lives. During wartime, these diseases spread on an even more alarming scale. In response, American authorities enforced systematic public sanitation measures, laying the foundation for what would become the country’s modern public health system. At the same time, a public school system was organized, and volunteer teachers from the United States arrived to instruct students in reading, writing, and arithmetic. English was established as the language of instruction, shaping a new generation’s education and outlook. [Source: “Culture Shock!: Philippines” by Alfredo Roces and Grace Roces, Marshall Cavendish International, 2010]

American-style journalism also took root, encouraging ideas about freedom of the press. Gradually, a political structure was introduced, with many emerging Filipino leaders selected and mentored by American administrators. Within less than four decades, a generation had grown up fluent in English and increasingly influenced by American culture. By the 1920s, Filipino authors were writing short stories in English, and during World War II, Carlos P. Romulo earned a Pulitzer Prize, marking a milestone in the development of Philippine literature in English.

Bontoc Igorots in automobile,” 1904

Greater attention was also directed toward strengthening commerce, trade, and agriculture. The Taft Commission, appointed in 1900, viewed economic development, along with education and the establishment of representative institutions, as one of the three pillars of the United States program of tutelage. Its members had ambitious plans to build railroads and highways, improve harbor facilities, open greater markets for Philippine goods through the lowering or elimination of tariffs, and stimulate foreign investment in mining, forestry, and cash-crop cultivation. In 1901 some 93 percent of the islands' total land area was public land, and it was hoped that a portion of this area could be sold to American investors. [Source: Library of Congress *]

Those plans were frustrated, however, by powerful agricultural interests in the United States Congress who feared competition from Philippine sugar, coconut oil, tobacco, and other exports. Although Taft argued for more liberal terms, the United States Congress, in the 1902 Land Act, set a limit of 16 hectares of Philippine public land to be sold or leased to American individuals and 1,024 hectares to American corporations. This act and tight financial markets in the United States discouraged the development of large-scale, foreign-owned plantations such as were being established in British Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, and French Indochina. The Taft Commission argued that tariff relief was essential if the islands were to be developed. In August 1909, Congress passed the Payne Aldrich Tariff Act, which provided for free entry to the United States of all Philippine products except rice, sugar, and tobacco. Rice imports were subjected to regular tariffs, and quotas were established for sugar and tobacco.

Over time the Philippine economy became based on export crops. Large landowners became rich and Filipinos became dependant on the U.S. as a buyer of their goods and a provider of aid. In 1913 the Underwood Tariff Act removed all restrictions on trade between the U.S. and the Philippines. The principal result of these acts was to make the islands increasingly dependent on American markets; between 1914 and 1920, the portion of Philippine exports going to the United States rose from 50 to 70 percent. By 1939 it had reached 85 percent, and 65 percent of imports came from the United States. *

Philippines Trade and Exports Under the U.S.

The U.S. take over of the Philippines after 1898 changed the specifics of existing trade patterns but did not fundamentally transform their structure. Coconut products rose to prominence among the colony’s chief exports, as increasing global demand for lauric oils helped offset declining markets for abaca and cigar tobacco. After 1909, new tariff policies redirected a much larger share of Philippine imports and exports toward the United States. Between 1931 and 1940, more than 75 percent of the Philippines’ total trade was conducted with the American market. Preferential entry into the protected U.S. economy ensured that nearly all Philippine sugar was shipped there. The United States also remained the primary destination for abaca and copra (dried coconut meat), while replacing Britain as the chief supplier of imported goods. [Source: Norman G. Owen, History of World Trade Since 1450, Thomson Gale, 2006]

"Making a phonograph record. Group of Lubuagan men singing,” 1908.

As a result, the Philippine economy became more closely tied than ever to the West, especially to the United States. Historian Daniel Doeppers calculated a 90 percent correlation between U.S. gross national product and the total value of Philippine exports from 1905 to 1938. The islands also benefited from policy decisions made in Washington, D.C., including continued access for Philippine sugar to the U.S. market during the 1930s and rebates to Manila of coconut excise taxes collected in America. At the same time, U.S. control over Philippine trade policy prevented the establishment of protective tariffs that might have encouraged the growth of local industries.

By the 1930s, Japan had become a significant investor in the Philippines and the second-largest source of imports, particularly textiles. During World War II, Japan’s proposed “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” sought to reorient Asian trade away from Western powers. Severing Western economic ties proved relatively easy, but limited shipping capacity and wartime pressures on Japan’s industry severely restricted trade between Southeast Asia and its new colonial ruler. Although Japanese authorities requisitioned rice for their troops and compelled some Filipinos to cultivate cotton for military uniforms, the war’s most profound economic impact was widespread physical destruction and a temporary return to subsistence production rather than a revival of regional trade.

Life in American-Occupied Philippines

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 Catholic 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]

Women in the southern province of Bukidnon appear in Western dresse to greet an American party led Dean Worcester

The American period however cut down an entire generation of Filipino ilustrados (Spanish-era intellectuals) in their prime. The American-trained, English-speaking generation did not communicate so much with the earlier Spanish-era intellectuals. A serious generation gap was created. Fathers begot children who no longer knew or cared about the armed struggle. Filipino writers in Spanish had amassed a cultural legacy over centuries that they could not pass on to the next generation. The Ilustrado generation faded away, retreating into the shadows of colonial houses. Their ideas and manners were ignored and forgotten by an exuberant generation in love with America that could neither read nor speak Spanish. [Source: “Culture Shock!: Philippines” by Alfredo Roces and Grace Roces, Marshall Cavendish International, 2010]

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 staton.

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.

Impact of American Rule on Muslim Mindanao

Although the Jones Act did not transfer responsibility for the Moro regions (reorganized in 1914 under the Department of Mindanao and Sulu) from the American governor to the Filipino-controlled legislature, Muslims perceived the rapid Filipinization of the civil service and United States commitment to eventual independence as serious threats. In the view of the Moros, an independent Philippines would be dominated by Christians, their traditional enemies. United States policy from 1903 had been to break down the historical autonomy of the Muslim territories.

Immigration of Christian settlers from Luzon and the Visayan Islands to the relatively unsettled regions of Mindanao was encouraged, and the new arrivals began supplanting the Moros in their own homeland. Large areas of the island were opened to economic exploitation. There was no legal recognition of Muslim customs and institutions. In March 1935, Muslim datu petitioned United States president Franklin D. Roosevelt, asking that "the American people should not release us until we are educated and become powerful because we are like a calf who, once abandoned by its mother, would be devoured by a merciless lion." Any suggestion of special status for or continued United States rule over the Moro regions, however, was vehemently opposed by Christian Filipino leaders who, when the Commonwealth of the Philippines was established, gained virtually complete control over government institutions. *

Unequal Wealth Distribution and Exploitation of the Landless Poor Continues Under American Rule

The limited nature of United States intervention in the economy and the Nacionalista Party's elite dominance of the Philippine political system ensured that the status quo in landlord and tenant relationships would be maintained, even if certain of its traditional aspects changed. A government attempt to establish homesteads modeled on those of the American West in 1903 did little to alter landholding arrangements. Although different regions of the archipelago had their own specific arrangements and different proportions of tenants and small proprietors, the kasama (sharecropper) system, was the most prevalent, particularly in the rice-growing areas of Central Luzon and the Visayan Islands. [Source: Library of Congress *]

Under this arrangement, the landowners supplied the seed and cash necessary to tide cultivators over during the planting season, whereas the cultivators provided tools and work animals and were responsible for one-half the expense of crop production. Usually, owner and sharecropper each took one-half of the harvest, although only after the former deducted a portion for expenses. Terms might be more liberal in frontier areas where owners needed to attract cultivators to clear the land. Sometimes land tenancy arrangements were three tiered. An original owner would lease land to an inquilino, who would then sublet it to kasamas. In the words of historian David R. Sturtevant: "Thrice removed from their proprietario, affected taos [peasants] received ever-diminishing shares from the picked-over remains of harvests." *

Cultivators customarily were deep in debt, for they were dependent on advances made by the landowner or inquilino and had to pay steep interest rates. Principal and interest accumulated rapidly, becoming an impossible burden. It was estimated in 1924 that the average tenant family would have to labor uninterruptedly for 163 years to pay off debts and acquire title to the land they worked. The kasama system created a class of peons or serfs; children inherited the debts of their fathers, and over the generations families were tied in bondage to their estates. Contracts usually were unwritten, and landowners could change conditions to their own advantage. *

Two factors led to a worsening of the cultivators' position. One was the rapid increase in the national population (from 7.6 million in 1905 to 16 million in 1939) brought about through improvements in public health, which put added pressure on the land, lowered the standard of living, and created a labor surplus. Closely tied to the population increase was the erosion of traditional patron-client ties. The landlord-tenant relationship was becoming more impersonal. The landlord's interest in the tenants' welfare was waning. Landlords ceased providing important services and used profits from the sale of cash crops to support their urban life-styles or to invest in other kinds of enterprises. Cultivators accused landowners of being shameless and forgetting the principle of utang na loob, demanding services from tenants without pay and giving nothing in return. *

As the area under cultivation increased from 1.3 million hectares in 1903 to 4 million hectares in 1935 — stimulated by United States demand for cash crops and by the growing population — tenancy also increased. In 1918 there were roughly 2 million farms, of which 1.5 million were operated by their owners; by 1939 these figures had declined to 1.6 million and 800,000, respectively, as individual proprietors became tenants or migrant laborers. Disparities in the distribution of wealth grew. By 1939 the wealthiest 10 percent of the population received 40 percent of the islands' income. The elite and the cultivators were separated culturally and geographically, as well as economically; as new urban centers rose, often with an Americanized culture, the elite left the countryside to become absentee landlords, leaving estate management in the hands of frequently abusive overseers. The Philippine Constabulary played a central role in suppressing antilandlord resistance. *

Resistance Movements in American-Occupied Philippines

The tradition of rural revolt, often with messianic overtones, continued under United States rule. Colorum sects, derived from the old Cofradía de San José, had spread throughout the Christian regions of the archipelago and by the early 1920s competed with the Roman Catholic establishment and the missionaries of Gregorio Aglipay's Independent Philippine Church (Iglesia Filipina Independiente). A colorum-led revolt broke out in northeastern Mindanao early in 1924, sparked by a sect leader's predictions of an imminent judgment day. In 1925 Florencio Entrencherado, a shopkeeper on the island of Panay, proclaimed himself Florencio I, Emperor of the Philippines, somewhat paradoxically running for the office of provincial governor of Iloilo that same year on a platform of tax reduction, measures against Chinese and Japanese merchants, and immediate independence. Although he lost the election, the campaign made him a prominent figure in the western Visayan Islands and won him the sympathies of the poor living in the sugar provinces of Panay and Negros. Claiming semidivine attributes (that he could control the elements and that his charisma had been granted him by the Holy Spirit and the spirits of Father Burgos and Rizal), Florencio had a following of some 10,000 peasants on Negros and Panay by late 1926. In May 1927, his supporters, heeding his call that "the hour will come when the poor will be ordered to kill all the rich," launched an abortive insurrection. [Source: Library of Congress *]

Tensions were highest in Central Luzon, where tenancy was most widespread and population pressures were the greatest. The 1931 Tayug insurrection north of Manila was connected with a colorum sect and had religious overtones, but traditionally messianic movements gradually gave way to secular, and at times revolutionary, ones. One of the first of these movements was the Association of the Worthy Kabola (Kapisanan Makabola Makasinag), a secret society that by 1925 had some 12,000 followers, largely in Nueva Ecija Province. Its leader, Pedro Kabola, called for liberation of the Philippines and promised the aid of the Japanese. The Tangulang (Kapatiran Tangulang Malayang Mamamayang — Association for an Offensive for Our Future Freedom) movement founded in 1931 was both urban and rural based and had as many as 40,000 followers. *

The most important movement, however, was that of the Sakdalistas. Founded in 1933 by Benigno Ramos, a former Nacionalista Party member and associate of Quezon who broke with him over the issue of collaboration, the Sakdal Party (sakdal means to accuse) ran candidates in the 1934 election on a platform of complete independence by the end of 1935, redistribution of land, and an end to caciquism. Sakdalistas were elected to a number of seats in the legislature and to provincial posts, and by early 1935 the party may have had as many as 200,000 members. Because of poor harvests and frustrations with the government's lack of response to peasant demands, Sakdalistas took up arms and seized government buildings in a number of locations on May 2-3, 1935. The insurrection, suppressed by the Philippine Constabulary, resulted in approximately 100 dead and Benigno Ramos fled into exile to Japan. *

Through the 1930s, tenant movements in Central Luzon became more active, articulate, and better organized. In 1938 the Socialist Party joined in a united front with the Communist Party of the Philippines (Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas — PKP), which was prominent in supporting the demands of tenants for better contracts and working conditions. As the depression wore on and prices for cash crops collapsed, tenant strikes and violent confrontations with landlords, their overseers, and the Philippine Constabulary escalated. *

In response to deteriorating conditions, commonwealth president Quezon launched the "Social Justice" program, which included regulation of rents but achieved only meager results. There were insufficient funds to carry out the program, and implementation was sabotaged on the local level by landlords and municipal officials. In 1939 and 1940, thousands of cultivators were evicted by landlords because they insisted on enforcement of the 1933 Rice Share Tenancy Act, which guaranteed larger shares for tenants. *

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons, MIT Visualizing Culture

Text Sources: Library of Congress, Philippines Department of Tourism, Philippines government websites, Encyclopedia.com, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Wikipedia, “Encyclopedia of World Cultures Volume 5: East/Southeast Asia:” edited by Paul Hockings, 1993, UNESCO, National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) the official government agency for culture in the Philippines), Lonely Planet Guides, The Guardian, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Time, The Conversation, BBC, CNN, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Google AI, and various websites, books and other publications.

Last updated February 2026