Philippine-American War (1899-1902): US Conquest of the Islands

The Philippine-American War was a conflict between the United States and the First Philippine Republic from 4 February 1899 to 4 July 1902, when the US formally declared it over. It began when Filipinos who had fought for independence from Spain found that the United States intended to keep the islands as a colony. A conventional war soon gave way to a bitter guerrilla struggle marked by atrocities on both sides and enormous civilian suffering, and the conquest provoked a fierce debate in the United States about empire.

Background: from ally to enemy

In 1896 Filipinos rose against Spanish rule in the Philippine Revolution. When the Spanish-American War broke out in 1898, the US Navy destroyed the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay and brought the revolutionary leader Emilio Aguinaldo back from exile. Aguinaldo declared independence on 12 June 1898, and his forces took control of much of Luzon, besieging the Spanish in Manila.

But on 13 August 1898 American troops took Manila in a battle arranged with the Spanish and kept Filipino forces out of the city. On 10 December the Treaty of Paris transferred the islands to the United States for 20 million dollars. President William McKinley proclaimed a policy of “benevolent assimilation” on 21 December, describing American rule as protective tutelage. Filipino leaders regarded it as a new colonialism.

On 23 January 1899 the First Philippine Republic was inaugurated at Malolos, with Aguinaldo as president and a written constitution. Two armies now faced each other around Manila along an uneasy line.

The war begins

On the night of 4 February 1899 an American sentry, Private William Grayson, fired on Filipino soldiers near San Juan Bridge in the Santa Mesa district of Manila. Fighting spread along the lines, and in the Battle of Manila on 4 and 5 February the better-armed Americans drove the Filipinos back with heavy losses. Two days later, on 6 February, the US Senate ratified the Treaty of Paris by 57 votes to 27, just one more than the required two-thirds.

The conventional phase

During 1899 the US Army, under General Elwell Otis and later General Arthur MacArthur, advanced north through central Luzon. It took Malolos on 31 March 1899. The ablest Filipino commander, General Antonio Luna, tried to build a disciplined army, but he was assassinated by soldiers loyal to Aguinaldo at Cabanatuan on 5 June 1899, a heavy blow to the republic.

The Filipino army could not match American firepower in open battle. In November 1899 Aguinaldo’s government dissolved its regular forces into guerrilla units. During his retreat into the mountains, the young general Gregorio del Pilar was killed fighting a rearguard action at Tirad Pass on 2 December 1899.

The guerrilla war

From late 1899 the war became a struggle of ambushes, raids and reprisals across the archipelago. Guerrillas relied on support from villages, and many local officials served the Americans by day and the resistance by night. The US responded with a mix of attraction and coercion: schools, roads and local elections on the one hand, and on the other the burning of villages, the destruction of food supplies and harsh treatment of suspects.

Torture was used during interrogations, especially the “water cure”, in which water was forced into a prisoner’s body. These practices were exposed in letters from soldiers and in hearings of the US Senate Committee on the Philippines in 1902.

Aguinaldo was captured at Palanan, Isabela, on 23 March 1901, by Brigadier General Frederick Funston, whose party included Filipino Macabebe scouts disguised as reinforcements. On 1 April he swore allegiance to the United States and later urged his followers to lay down their arms. In July 1901 William Howard Taft became the first civil governor.

Balangiga, Samar and Batangas

On 28 September 1901, in the town of Balangiga on Samar, townspeople and guerrillas attacked Company C of the US 9th Infantry at breakfast, killing 48 of its 74 men. In reprisal, General Jacob H. Smith ordered his troops to turn the interior of Samar into a “howling wilderness” and reportedly to kill all males over the age of ten capable of bearing arms. Smith was court-martialled in 1902 and forced into retirement.

In Batangas and neighbouring provinces, General J. Franklin Bell forced the rural population into protected zones from December 1901, destroying crops and livestock outside them. Disease and hunger killed many thousands. The last major guerrilla leader on Luzon, General Miguel Malvar, surrendered on 16 April 1902.

The anti-imperialist debate

The war divided American opinion. The American Anti-Imperialist League, founded in 1898, included the writer Mark Twain, the industrialist Andrew Carnegie, the philosopher William James and former President Grover Cleveland. Its members argued that ruling a people without their consent betrayed the principles of the Declaration of Independence.

Supporters of annexation spoke of economic opportunity in Asia, strategic needs and a duty to “civilise”. Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The White Man’s Burden”, published in February 1899, was addressed to the United States as it took on the Philippines. In the 1900 presidential election McKinley defeated the anti-imperialist William Jennings Bryan, and the result was widely read as approval of the government’s Philippine policy. Racial attitudes ran through the debate on both sides: some opponents of annexation objected less to conquest than to bringing millions of non-white people under the American flag, while some African American soldiers and newspapers questioned fighting a war against another people of colour.

Resistance after 1902

Roosevelt’s proclamation did not end the fighting everywhere. The Philippine Constabulary, a police force of Filipinos under American officers, took over much of the work of suppressing what the colonial government now classed as banditry. The Sedition Act of 1901 and the Brigandage Act of 1902 made advocating independence or joining armed bands serious crimes, and displaying the revolutionary flag was banned from 1907 until 1919.

In Luzon, Macario Sakay proclaimed a Tagalog Republic and fought on until he surrendered in 1906 under a promise of amnesty; he was hanged in 1907. In the Muslim south, where the Moro peoples had never accepted Spanish rule, the US Army fought a separate series of campaigns, including the killing of several hundred Moro men, women and children at Bud Dajo on Jolo in March 1906. The last major battle, at Bud Bagsak, took place in June 1913.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1898, 12 June: Aguinaldo declares Philippine independence.
• 1898, 10 December: Treaty of Paris cedes the Philippines to the United States.
• 1899, 23 January: The First Philippine Republic is inaugurated at Malolos.
• 1899, 4 February: Fighting breaks out in Manila.
• 1899, November: Filipino forces switch to guerrilla warfare.
• 1901, 23 March: Aguinaldo is captured at Palanan.
• 1901, 28 September: The Balangiga attack on Samar.
• 1902, 16 April: Miguel Malvar surrenders.
• 1902, 4 July: President Theodore Roosevelt declares the war over.

Why it matters

The war made the Philippines an American colony and the United States an imperial power in Asia. American rule brought public schools and an elected assembly from 1907, but it rested on a conquest that cost many Filipino lives. The islands gained independence in 1946, and the war remains central to how Filipinos remember their struggle for nationhood.