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Who colonized Philippines?

Southeast Asia — the powers that ruled Philippines, the dates, and what independence did and did not change.

In short

Who colonized Philippines?

Spain, then the United States. Spain ruled from 1565 to 1898; the United States bought the islands for $20 million and fought a war of conquest against the Philippine Republic until formal independence in 1946.

The Philippines declared independence from Spain in 1898 and was immediately sold to the United States, which then spent three years suppressing the republic it refused to recognise.

Reference

Who ruled Philippines, and when

before 1565
Sultanates and barangay polities
1565–1898
Spanish East Indies
1898–1946
United States
1942–1945
Japanese occupation

At a glance

Key facts

Colonising powers
Spain, United States, Japan (1942–45 occupation)
Independence
4 July 1946
Price
$20 million paid by the US to Spain for a country
War dead
Estimates of Filipino deaths 1899–1902 range from 200,000 to over 600,000
Duration
333 years of Spanish rule, 48 of American

Chronology

Key dates

  1. 1565

    Spanish colonisation begins under Legazpi.

  2. 1896

    Philippine Revolution against Spain.

  3. 1898

    Treaty of Paris: Spain sells the islands to the US for $20m.

  4. 1899–1902

    Philippine–American War; Balangiga and the Samar campaign.

  5. 1935

    Commonwealth status.

  6. 1946

    Independence.

Context

What the record shows

The Samar campaign of 1901–02, ordered after the Balangiga attack, produced the instruction to turn the interior into a howling wilderness.

Questions

Frequently asked

Who colonised the Philippines?
Spain from 1565 to 1898, then the United States from 1898 to 1946, with Japanese occupation from 1942 to 1945.
Why did the US take the Philippines?
It acquired the islands from Spain in the 1898 Treaty of Paris for $20 million and fought the Philippine–American War to impose control against the existing republic.
When did the Philippines gain independence?
4 July 1946 from the United States, though independence from Spain had been declared on 12 June 1898.

Read on

Related in the archive

References

Sources — colonial Philippines

  1. [1]Bartolomé de las Casas, Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (Seville, 1552).
  2. [2]Noble David Cook, Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650 (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
  3. [3]Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America (Monthly Review Press, 1971; English 1973).
  4. [4]Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost (Houghton Mifflin, 1998).
  5. [5]Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa (Random House, 1991).
  6. [6]Shashi Tharoor, Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India (Hurst, 2017).
  7. [7]Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya (Henry Holt, 2005).
  8. [8]Alfred W. McCoy, Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State (Wisconsin, 2009).
  9. [9]Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019).
  10. [10]Jürgen Zimmerer, "The birth of the Ostland out of the spirit of colonialism", Patterns of Prejudice 39:2 (2005), on the German South-West Africa → Holocaust lineage.
  11. [11]Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1972).
  12. [12]Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I (1867), Chapter 31 ("Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist").

All works cited in good faith for documentary, educational and critical use. Errors and omissions: contact the archive.