PHILIPPINE ISLANDS 



4634 



PHILIPPINE ISLANDS 



the coast they met with no serious opposition 

 pt from the Moros. Spanish friars went 

 boldly into the interior, learned the native dia- 

 lects and converted the only large body of 

 Asiatics that has ever become Christian. 



Undisturbed in the next three centuries ex- 

 cept by the British occupation of Manila from 

 1762 to 1764, the Spanish established their gov- 

 ernment over most of the people, though they 

 never penetrated the interior of the larger 

 islands nor subdued the Moros. The friars 

 dominated all. The typical Filipino village of 

 about the year 1900 contained a well-built stone 

 church, the comfortable residence of the cacique, 

 or village dictator, and several hundred pov- 

 erty-marked huts. Some of the natives were 

 taught to read Spanish, but few of them were 

 permitted to learn to write. Furthermore, there 

 was a strict censorship over all printed matter 

 coming from Europe, nothing with a modern 

 tendency being permitted. Devotional tracts. 

 but not the Bible, were translated into native 

 tongues, and Filipinos were permitted to be- 

 come priests but not friars, for the friar orders 

 controlled rich lands. At the University of 

 Santo Tomas, founded in 1619, nineteenth-cen- 

 tury students of physics were permitted to look 

 at but not to handle the generously-provided 

 and up-to-date apparatus, and studies such as 

 economics were forbidden as works of the devil. 



The Awakening. Under such circumstances 

 it is not surprising that the revolt, when it 

 came, was directed not against the Spanish gov- 

 ernment or the Church, but against the friars 

 and the oppressive and extorting caciques. Jose 

 Rizal, a Filipino with Chinese and Spanish 

 blood, who had received the degree of M.D. in 

 Madrid and Ph. D. in Berlin, published in 1886 

 a novel called Noli me tangere (Do not touch 

 me), exposing the unfaithful representatives of 

 the Church and their allies, the caciques. Forced 

 to flee to Europe, he later returned and organ- 

 ized a reform party, was banished at the friars' 

 demand, and finally brought from Spain and 

 executed in 1896. The Americans have made 

 the anniversary of his death the national holi- 

 day of the Philippines. 



The suppression of Rizal's reform movement 

 caused the formation of a secret society, the 

 Katipunan. After several hundred of its mem- 

 bers had been banished or imprisoned, open 

 revolt came in 1896. Led by Emilio Aguinaldo, 

 a Filipino of one-fourth Chinese blood, the 

 revolutionists successfully fought the few Span- 

 ish troops until, in December, 1897, the govern- 

 ment paid Aguinaldo and his aids to leave the 



country, and promised to limit the power of 

 the friars. 



The Americans Arrive. All but the young 

 people of the United States remember May 1. 

 1898, when the news came that Admiral I )e\vey 

 had sunk the Spanish fleet at C'avite in Manila 

 Bay. Where were the Philippines? What were 

 they? Few knew, and most of those who did 



HOMI-: 01-' XATIVK OF Till-] INTERIOR 



had acquired the knowledge within the week. 

 Then came the treaty of peace and the cession 

 of these unfamiliar islands to the United States 

 for $20,000,000. Many Americans bitterly op- 

 posed the acquisition of this empire on the 

 other side of the world, ajid anti-imperialism 

 became a leading issue in the Presidential cam- 

 paign which followed. 



The first task of the new owners of the islands 

 was military. Aguinaldo had returned, and 

 with the approval of Admiral Dewey he and 

 other insurgents had taken most of Luzon from 

 the Spanish troops. He then claimed that the 

 Americans had promised him to withdraw and 

 leave the islands independent, and for two 

 years he carried on a guerilla war against them. 

 After his remarkable pursuit and capture by 

 Funston, March 23, 1901, American rule was 

 rapidly extended. 



A New Way to Colonize. When the '' Yan- 

 kees" commenced their work in the Philippines, 

 the English, Dutch and other experienced Far 

 Eastern colonizers looked with great intt 

 upon the American attempt to handle an en- 

 tirely new problem. Six months before the fall 

 of Aguinaldo a civil commission of five, headed 

 by Judge (afterwards President) Taft, and in- 

 cluding two professors, a general and a former 

 chief-justice of Samoa, had assumed the gov- 

 ernment of Manila, and as rapidly as possible 

 was given control over the rest of the territory. 



Never before has education been introduced 

 with such wholesale rnethods as in this new era 

 of the Philippines. One of the commission's 

 first acts was to import a thousand American 

 school teachers, and in districts yet hostile the 



