Embedded Files
Filipino nationalists used guerrilla warfare in attempting to fight off superior U.S. forces. Some U.S. commanders responded by employing the same tactics used a few years earlier against Native Americans in the West. Twenty-six of the thirty generals who served in the Philippines also fought in the “Indian Wars.” In areas where nationalists were supported by local populations, U.S. troops burned villages and forcibly relocated any survivors. One American commander infamously ordered his troops to kill anyone over the age of ten. Although there has been no official death toll, many thousands of people were killed from direct combat, disease, and famine. The second phase of this Philippine-American War unofficially extended the war another ten years and involved several resistance groups on the southern islands of the Philippines.
The Treaty of Paris ultimately brought about the Philippine-American
War because the request for Filipinos to be represented at the talks of the treaty was rejected. Felipe Agoncillo, a Filipino diplomat, appealed to the goverments for what he called the “Filipinos’ undisputed right to intervene in all that might affect their future life.”3 His requests were ignored, and this angered Filipino revolutionaries, Apolinario Mabini and General Antonio Luna. With the announcement of the signing of the treaty, they began preparing their country for war.
"Waiting for the Word to Advance"
"I cannot for the life of me comprehend how we got into that mess."
-Mark Twain, October 6, 1900
Felipe Agoncillo
Excerpt from "Take up the White Man's Burden" By Rudyard Kipling (1899)
Take up the White Man's burden-Send forth the best ye breed-
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild-
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
"Artilliary Fire Destruction at Pasig" Photo courtesy of ES 322 Picasa Album
Section Contents
For further reading:
San Juan, Epifanio. "One Hundred Years of Producing and Reproducing the 'Filipino.'" Amerasia Journal 24.2 (1998): 1-33. The Forbidden Book.
Welch, Richard. Response to Imperialism: The United States and the Philippine-American War, 1899-1902. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979.
Philippine American War: http://philippineamericanwar.webs.com/treatyofparis.htm
Miller, Stuart Creighton. "Benevolent Assimilation": the American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899-1903. New Haven: Yale UP, 1982. Google Books.
3 "Felipe E. Agoncillo." Web. 02 June 2010. <http://www.nhi.gov.ph/downloads/fihgov0005.pdf>.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse