Oct 23rd, 2003, 11:27 AM
Well, this isn't a question so easily answered as the "forty year" theory would have you believe. The US first began influencing the Philippines when it was trying to break into Chinese markets and sell them western goods. To that aim, the US began acquiring land to forge a trade route between the US and the Orient, going through nations like Hawaii, Guam and the Philippines. At that time, 1894/96, it was a Spanish territory, but in the aftermatch of the Spanish American War, it became a United States commonwealth until 1946. . .The Philippine Organic Act of 1902 extended the protections of the United States Bill of Rights to Filipinos and established a national bi-cameral legislature, so American stewardship was not without their own internal approval.
In anycase, eventually the US was forced to make the decision of making countries under its wings states, or let them be independant. In the case of Hawaii, it became a state. The Philippines were left to their own devices and quickly became a democratic Republic. It wasn't until 1965, when Marcos concentrated enough power to set himself up a dictator, that they left their democratic tendancies behind, but they promptly returned to a democratic styling after his 1986 removal from office.
Oh, and just to quell the complaints of economic imperialism, the Orient Chain was as lucretive for the Philippines as it was for the United States. Of all the nations in that chain, most notably in the Philippines, where hemp, hardwood forests, copper and coal lay untapped and unrealized. The deficit that had existed in the Philippines in 1896 was wiped out within four years, replaced instead by a surplus of trade. In the year 1896, the Philippines alone exported $4,308,000 worth in goods, while importing only $94,000.
EDIT: For anyone who truly cares, you could find all that and more in "The Conquest of the Philippines by Moorefield Story and Marcial P.Lichuaco." That along with Barbarian Virtue will give an awesome and indepth disclosure of the US and her relationship with the So Pacific.
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