Philippines History

History of philippines

There are over 150 different ethnolinguistic groups spread across the over 7,500 islands

that make up the Philippines. Having that many different people

groups contribute to the rich variety of Filipino history. Their history includes

Spanish colonization, American occupation, and the politics of the present era! Yet, despite

rich diversity, the Philippines did not become an official country until 1946.

They are a resilient, peaceful people focused on social harmony,

and they have survived volcanoes, earthquakes, and colonization to make the country what it is today.

Historians are not completely sure when people first arrived on the Philippines islands, but

there were definitely hunter and gatherers there by 40,000 BCE. That is a conservative estimate

amongst historians, but researchers have found evidence of people in the Philippines that most

likely date from 770,000 years ago. Dating bones or artifacts from that long ago can be difficult,

so the dates are often up for debate. Regardless, ancient people clearly occupied the Philippines,

and for a time, the archipelago was connected to the mainland with land bridges,

which helped people travel to both the islands and around the islands.

As the land bridges began to sink beneath the rising waves, ancient people began to find other

ways to move around the Philippines, and new people came to the islands by boat. These new

people brought their boats and marine technology with them, and they were called the Austronesians.

They were an ethnic group that settled on many of the islands in Southeast Asia, and they brought

their stone tools, pottery, agriculture, and language with them to the Philippines.

By 1000 BCE, the Filipinos had established social classes, and their villages were beginning

to develop into independent societies, which were fully developed by the first century CE.

The smallest social unit in the Philippines was called the barangay, and it was a small village.

Barangay started as family units, named after the boats that families would travel in together to

visit other islands in the archipelago, but these family groups began to be led by village chiefs,

who usually maintained power through inheritance, wealth, or physical strength. Each village was

ruled independently by its own village chief, so each village also developed its own culture.

Villages often formed alliances, but their loyalties were never stable or permanent;

it was more like a democracy than an absolute monarchy. This allowed the hundreds of different

languages and cultures to live together in relative harmony in the ancient Philippines.

Philippine barangays were most powerful during the Barangic Phase – a time from

the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries when the barangays experienced a golden

age. The villages ranged in size from about twenty people all the way to small kingdoms.

The villages on the coast engaged in trade with other villages and other countries like China,

and it was typically the coastal villages that were bigger and more culturally structured.

Yet, through all the differences between the separate villages, the Filipinos maintained

a loose hierarchy, and allegiance was more subjective than enforceable. Trade, religion,

and culture were individual to the villages and extremely important to the Filipinos.

But how did the Philippines, with its variety of cultures and peoples, unite into one country?

The barangays did not unite of their own accord into one cohesive country;

instead, the unification of the Philippines began with the Spanish.

The Spanish first arrived in the Philippines in 1521 in search of spices,

and although they claim to have converted 2,000 people to Christianity, they were run off by

other local tribes. The legendary Lapu-Lapu led one of these rebellions, and Lapu-Lapu

is remembered as a Filipino hero today. The Spanish kept an interest in the Philippines,

and in 1571, Manila was under the rule of Spain. The first Spanish settlers in the Philippines

were explorers, government officials, religious missionaries, and soldiers.

Spain intended to take the Philippines peacefully, although the soldiers didn’t always do so when

confronted with resistance. Interestingly, not all of the first settlers came from Spain;

some came from New Spain, which we call “Mexico” today. Although some people from Mexico and Peru

were directly of Spanish descent, some of them came from interracial families.

During the Spanish occupation, there was also a high number of Chinese immigrants,

so there was a lot of diversity in the Philippines, especially at that point in history.

Early in their occupation, the Spanish spent a lot of their time defending the archipelago from

pirates, but they were also focused on conquering the entire archipelago. They never fully conquered

the southern section, which was mostly Muslim, but they tried in the Spanish-Moro Wars, a series

of wars that lasted from the late 1500s to the late 1800s. That’s over 300 years of war, and

the Spanish never fully gained control of those southern islands. The Spanish-Moro Wars highlight

some of the difficulties the Spanish had ruling the Philippines – the disconnected nature of the

archipelago made it difficult for the Spanish to exert their rule across the whole territory.

Some areas felt the Spanish rule strongly, even experiencing situations similar to slavery.

Other areas were removed enough that they didn’t notice the Spanish much at all.

They continued to live according to their cultures without regard to the Spanish authorities

because the Spanish authorities had no easy means to get to

Even considering the wars with the pirates, the southern islands, and the local uprisings,

the Spanish were disappointed to learn that the Philippines could only produce one of their

coveted spices: cinnamon. Other than the fact that Spain was generally interested in conquering

uncharted territory, the Philippines might have been left to their own devices. Historians believe

that if the Spanish had not conquered the archipelago, the Philippines might never have

united into one country. The Spanish were able to take over 150

and unite them into one territory – even if that territory was always a little difficult to govern.

To ease some of that difficulty, the Spanish did not completely abolish the barangays.

Instead, they allowed the local chiefs to maintain some power, even though they were often reduced to

a figurehead, and used the existing hierarchies to build a more centralized colonial government

structure. Some barangays were combined or centralized to ease Spanish governance,

but it wasn’t until the late 1800s that the Spanish tried to radically rearrange them,

forming groups of 50 to 100 families for taxation purposes. By then, the Spanish were

not really interested in the Philippines; as far as they were concerned, the islands didn’t

have much to offer Spain, so Spain did not invest many resources into its development.

Even the attempt to cultivate cinnamon failed due to a lack of Spanish governmental interest – even

though it could have bolstered the exports from the Philippines.

The uprisings for Filipino independence began in 1872, but uneasiness with colonial rule had

been rising for years. It began to surge with the opening of the Suez Canal because more countries

were able to reach the Philippines. The Spanish knew they needed to restructure the territory,

but they attempted to control rebellions with underhanded techniques like assassination.

That wasn’t enough to stop the Filipinos’ desire for freedom,

and the Spanish never had the chance to attempt a government restructure.

Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy was one of the main leaders of the Philippine Revolution,

which officially began in 1896 with American support. The revolution lasted for three years,

and by its end, the Spanish had been removed from power in the Philippines.

Unfortunately, the Philippines were not free to rule themselves. Instead, the United States of

America worked with the Spanish to create the Mock Battle of Manila, in which the American soldiers

took the capital from the Spanish in a great show of theatre. The Filipino soldiers were not invited

to take their own capital for themselves, which angered them so much that it laid the foundations

for the Philippine-American War, which started after the Spanish-American War ended in 1898.

Spain officially gave the Philippines to America after the Spanish-American War,

but it isn’t clear why the United States was so interested in acquiring the Philippines.

The Spanish had not found the archipelago to be very profitable,

so historians believe America was interested in the Philippines for its strategic military

position. The position would prove decisive during the wars of the first half of the 1900s.

After taking the Philippines from the Spanish, the Americans became embroiled in The

Philippine-American War, which lasted for three years. Although the Filipinos were angry that

they had been excluded from taking the capital in 1898, they did not have the weapons or military

skills to defeat the American troops. By 1902, the United States had put down the rebellion and taken

over as the new administrators of the archipelago, running it much as the Spanish had controlled it

just a few years before. The Philippines became an American territory, and although the Filipinos did

begin having general elections in 1907, they were still not free to run their own country.

So, how did the Philippines become its own independent country?

The United States did not take over the Filipino government in the same manner as

previous colonizers – they didn’t decide to just run the country themselves with little input from

the local people. Instead, they set up an interim government designed to teach the Filipino people

how to govern themselves. This law was called the Philippine Organic Act, and it even made the

Filipinos citizens of the Philippines. With the 1907 elections came the first political parties,

and although the Nacionalista Party wanted the Philippines to become independent immediately,

they still maintained good relations with the United States.

The United States set July 4, 1946, as Philippines Independence Day (today,

it is observed on June 12, for the day the people declared independence from Spain).

The Philippines seemed poised to take control of its independence peacefully,

much as it had preferred to take action throughout its history, but another major world event

threatened to destroy its work and leave the Philippines trapped as a colonized territory.

The Philippines became involved in World War II very suddenly when Japan,

hours after bombing Pearl Harbor, launched an invasion of the archipelago in 1941.

The Filipino people had been peaceful people concerned with social harmony, so they were

unprepared for the violent invasion that led to the Japanese occupation during the war.

The American soldiers tried to help the Filipino people defend their country, but the Japanese

attack was too strong. The US troops on the islands surrendered to Japan in 1942.

Still, the Filipinos remained loyal to the United States and its own nation.

The Japanese occupation was greatly reduced by guerilla warfare,

which both Filipino and American soldiers practiced in the archipelago.

The war ended in 1945, and the United States began helping the Filipino people rebuild their home.

They welcomed the American soldiers as fellow comrade in arms, and America helped re-establish

the Filipino democratic government. On July 4, 1946, the Philippines finally declared its

independence peacefully, right on schedule. It had finally achieved the independence

they had been striving for since the Spanish conquistadors first landed on Filipino soil.

There would be other hard times in its history as an independent country, but the Philippines is a

growing independent country today, and it still maintains good relations with the United States.

The people still celebrate their cultures and work to maintain social harmony,

proving that diversity is essential to a strong and peaceful country.

To learn more about the Philippines, check out our book, History of the Philippines: A Captivating

Guide to Philippine History. It's available as an e-book, paperback, and audiobook. Also,

grab your free mythology bundle e-book while it's still available. All links are in the description.

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