Between Spanish Colonialism and American Imperialism: The First Philippine Republic (1899-1902) was a beacon of hope for many colonized and occupied people in Asia. Indeed, many independence movements were inspired by the Filipino Revolution and anticolonial revolutions would soon spring all across the region in the century that followed. But what exactly happened to Asia’s first democratic constitutional republic? 🔔 Subscribe: http://goo.gl/yDgQmK 🎥 Be my Patron: https://www.patreon.com/kirbynoodle 📚 My books, ebooks, coloring books, merch etc. - https://www.kirbyaraullo.com/shop Related Videos & Playlists: 🇵🇭 Precolonial & Early Philippine History https://bit.ly/EarlyPhilippines 🌏 Demystifying Southeast Asia: https://bit.ly/KnowSoutheastAsia 🏝️ Discovery & Conquest of the Philippines: https://bit.ly/DiscoveringPH Topics/Chapters: 00:00 Intro 02:09 A Short-lived Republic 06:21 Background: Spanish Colonial Rule 08:06 The Philippine Revolution and the Birth of the Republic 09:51 Th

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Unknown to many, there have been many short-lived republics and nation-states in modern history.

One of the shortest, for example, was the Shuliavskaya Republic which lasted a grand total

of only four days in the city of Kiev between the 12th and the 16th of December in 1905.

And in terms of modern-day independent nation-states, this was outdone by the

Sultanate of Zanzibar which ruled the small East African island for just one day.

You know, between the end of the British rule on the 10th of December 1963

and its merger with Tanganyika to become the United Republic of Tanzania the following day.

You know, few of these short-lived republics and nation-states have much by way of history.

But that is not the case with one of Southeast Asia's shortest-lived nation-states,

the First Philippine Republic which between 1898 and 1902 aspired to rule an independent Philippines.

So in today's video, let's learn more and dig deeper about the history

and the legacy of Asia's very first independent constitutional republic.

Welcome back to another history video. It's me Kabeer Arroyo, your friendly Pinoy historian.

And in this channel, if you're new to my channel, I make videos about our people's history,

culture, and everything in between. So if you like learning about the Philippines,

Southeast Asia, and beyond, don't forget to like, share this video, comment down below,

and please, please subscribe. But before we begin today's topic, here's a few reminders.

Today's video is just an introduction to this topic, so check out the links below for a list

of sources and recommended readings. And this video is actually an updated version of an older

video I made about this topic many years ago. So if you would like to support my channel and

my research, please be my patron on Patreon, be a member of my YouTube channel, or get copies of

any of my books, coloring books and ebooks, or any of the merch linked down below. Maraming salamat po.

So what exactly was the first Philippine Republic? I mean, what is it all about? Let's find out.

So the first Philippine Republic was a short-lived republic that was established

in the Philippines following the Filipino Declaration of Independence back in June 1898.

And after many years of fighting for their freedom, the Filipino Revolution was victorious

in liberating the Filipino people from 300 years of Spanish rule. The Filipinos formally

proclaimed their independence on June 12, 1898. And by August, the Filipino revolutionaries

effectively controlled most of their country. By this time, Emilio Aguinaldo ruled by decree

as the first officially recognized president of the republic. And it was practically a

dictatorship until a democratic constitution was put in place. And so elections were held

between the rainy months of June and September in 1898. And the plan was to elect representatives

for seats in the Revolutionary Congress, which was meant to be the country's first

national legislature. And so on September 15, 1898, this congress representing the different

provinces of the Philippines met in the quiet town of Malolos, Bulacan. And the first item on

their agenda was to write a constitution for the independent Philippines. And by September

29, the so-called Malolos Congress ratified the Declaration of Philippine Independence,

reaffirming the proclamation that was made in Cavite back on June 12. And then by January

of 1899, the new constitution was ratified and put into effect. This constitution, also

known as the Malolos Constitution, or more accurately the Constitución Política de 1899,

became the basic law of an independent Philippines. It established a democratic

republic and placed the sovereignty of the islands back to the Filipino people.

It guaranteed the civil liberties of the people and the separation of church and state. It also

included the protection of what we would now call civil human rights against the abuses of

those in power. And as such, the first Philippine Republic was inaugurated with much celebration

and fanfare. After all, it is considered to be the first constitutional republic in Asia.

But don't get me wrong, there have been many other earlier states in Asia that can practically

be considered republics in a broader sense. But in terms of a modern-day constitutional

republic that most of us are familiar with today, the first Philippine Republic is widely

considered by experts to be the very first modern-day democratic constitutional republic

in Asia. So back to 1898, Emilio Guinaldo was quoted expressing his dream for the nation

to live under the democratic regime of the Philippine Republic, free from the yoke of

any foreign domination. However, these hopes and dreams of an independent republic would

soon be challenged. Sadly, merely a month before the constitution was officially ratified,

the Spaniards formally sold the Philippines to the United States on December 10, 1898.

The Americans, who were once the allies of the Filipino people in their fight for independence,

were by now the invaders threatening to take away the very freedom they earned with their

blood. By February of 1899, the Philippine-American War would erupt between the first Philippine

Republic and the United States. The war would prove to be a prolonged agony for the Filipino

people, the ghosts of which still haunt the islands and its people to this day. It was

a bloody war that resulted in a violent occupation of the Philippines and what we would consider

a merciless genocide of its people. Formally, the first Philippine Republic ended towards

the end of 1901, after the capture of Emilio Guinaldo in March of the same year. And by

1902, the United States would officially declare an end to the war, or what they called the

Filipino Insurrection. However, the fight against US imperialism in the Philippines

would continue on for at least another decade. And if you think about it, in many ways, the

struggle continues to this day. But what exactly led to the establishment of Asia's very first

constitutional republic in the Philippines? You know, what was happening in the Philippines?

So the background to the advent of the first Philippine Republic was over 300 years of

Spanish colonial rule across the Philippines. The Spaniards first began colonizing the

archipelago in the late 1500s. But it had been a fraught process. In fact, the major

northern island of Luzon was only brought firmly under Spanish rule by the end of the

17th century. And the island, which dominates the south of the archipelago, aka Mindanao,

proved to be a major challenge. In Sulu and Mindanao, the Muslim sultanates held out and

indeed brought the war to Spain over control of the many islands of the Visayas, aka Central

Philippines. It is also worth mentioning that within the 300 years, the three centuries of

Spanish rule in the Philippines, there were over 200 revolts and anti-colonial uprisings that were

recorded throughout the islands. But eventually, over time, the Spaniards cemented their control

over many parts of their archipelago. But by the 1700s, the colonial community itself,

the Spaniards living in the Philippines, had begun to view themselves as distinct

from the Spaniards in Spain. And this was compounded in the early 19th century

by the many wars of independence across the Spanish empire in the Americas.

So long story short, by the mid-1800s, there was a growing movement amongst native Filipinos,

along with the colonial community of Spanish descent and those of mixed heritage, to try to

establish an independent Philippines, one which could benefit from its own resources rather than

being robbed of its wealth by the colonial power in Madrid. So by the 1890s, a growing number of

independence movements had emerged in the Philippines, most notably the Katipunan,

a revolutionary anti-colonial movement led by Andres Bonifacio and inspired by the writings

of José Rizal. And so in August of 1896, when the Spanish government learned of the existence

of the Katipunan movement, Bonifacio called his fellow Katipuneros to attack the colonial

seat of government in Manila. And the rebellion spread quickly across the archipelago, led by

the followers of the Katipunan, along with the other revolutionary groups that emerged elsewhere.

So by the end of autumn of 1896, the Spanish colonial government in Manila was facing armed

insurrections in most of the provinces it controlled. So by the spring of 1897, the

Katipunan movement and the Philippine Revolution had reached a sufficient point that presidential

elections were held for an independent Philippine government. And the war with the Spaniards

continued on with different parts of the archipelago held by the Filipino revolutionaries

while the areas under Spanish control continued to dwindle. Emilio Aguinaldo served as its first

head of state between 1898 and 1901. Although many would argue that this honor should have

been given to the father of the revolution, Andres Bonifacio. But anyway, following Aguinaldo's

capture and eventual surrender to the Americans, Miguel Malvar would become the unofficial

president of the first republic. And he held this position for several months between 1901 and 1902.

And as mentioned, the Malolos constitution was also promulgated and came into effect on the 22nd

of January 1899, with the Republican Congress, the Malolos Congress, convening in the town of

Malolos in Central Luzon. So how exactly did it fall? Why did the first Philippine Republic

cease to exist within just a few years? On the 15th of February 1898, the USS Maine,

a U.S. Navy ship, was sunk in Havana, Cuba. The incident, which was a byproduct of the Cuban

Revolution against Spanish rule on the Caribbean island, was taken as an excuse by the government

of the United States to declare war on Spain. In one of the most naked acts of imperialism ever

practiced by the U.S., the Spanish-American War was fought for the U.S. to effectively

seize control of Spain's few remaining colonies. Over the next several months,

the United States sent troops to seize control of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.

And thus, just as the Philippine Revolution was developing into an independent Philippines,

the revolution became entangled with the conflict between Spain and the United States. The

revolutionary government in the Philippines now viewed the U.S. as naturally an ally against the

Spaniards. But in the process of accepting American aid, the Filipino revolutionaries

would effectively simply swap one imperial overlord for another. And the Treaty of Paris,

which was signed on December 10 of 1898, brought the Spanish-American War to an end after just

over six months of fighting, in which the Spaniards had been widely and roundly defeated

by the United States. However, rather than ensuring the success of the Philippine Revolution,

the Treaty of Paris effectively ceded the Philippines from Spain to the U.S. Rather

than acquiring independence, the Filipino revolutionaries now face a much more powerful

colonial overlord. For some weeks after the signing of the Treaty of Paris, the revolutionaries

held out some hope that the United States government would grant a large amount of

independence to the archipelago. But it was soon realized that this would not be the case.

And thus, on the 4th of February, 1899, the First Battle of the Philippine-American War

erupted between the First Philippine Republic and the United States. A battle that pitted

15,000 Filipino soldiers against 19,000 American troops. This fierce battle, however,

only lasted till the end of the following day, before the Americans emerged victorious. However,

it was also just the beginning of a much longer war between the Filipinos and the Americans.

The Philippine-American War would drag on for three years, before the revolutionaries were

largely defeated by the American imperial regime. The Philippine-American War was the

first major colonial war that catapulted the United States as a world power. You know,

it became a template for U.S. expansion and imperialism from the Vietnam War to Iraq and

even Afghanistan today. Indeed, the Philippine-American War was oftentimes referred to

as the First Vietnam. It was indeed a bloodier war that immediately followed the much-romanticized

Spanish-American War. And you know, because of the massive number of casualties and the

atrocities that followed the war, the Philippine-American War is also considered a genocide.

Now, the exact number of casualties has been debated in the past century. But according to

the official numbers, 4,200 American soldiers and more than 20,000 Filipino fighters were killed in

combat. But the violence was not confined within the limits of the battlefields. You know, despite

the conservative claims that only 200,000 Filipino civilians lost their lives during the war,

the total number of victims, you know, this is far bigger. In fact, multiple sources, historians,

even U.S. military officials and oral traditions acknowledge that by 1902, on the island of Luzon

alone, about 600,000 Filipino people were killed in the slaughter. And this alone is three times

the conservative number recognized by the United States. Now, Filipino historians also believe that

at the very least, the number of civilian casualties in the Philippines actually reached

1.4 million people. And given that at the beginning of the war, only about 9 million people lived in

the Philippines, if we think about it, 1.4 million Filipinos killed was about one-sixth of the total

population of the archipelago. And on paper, the war may have officially ended in 1902. But the

merciless violence and the conflict continued on for almost two decades. And within these decades

of darkness and violence, scholars also believe that up to 3 million Filipinos lost their lives

as a result of America's imperial ambitions in the Philippines. Three million people! That is

about a third of the archipelago's population before the war. But sadly, most people today

have forgotten about this. Most Filipinos are not even aware of this bloodshed. In the end,

you know, officially on paper, the conflict was somewhat brought to an end when the United States

made some concessions through the Philippine Organic Act of 1902, through which a Philippine

assembly was created, granting the archipelago a limited, a very limited amount of self-determination.

And with this, one might say that the first Philippine Republic came to an end as the

revolutionaries of 1896 laid down their arms in 1902. But as mentioned earlier, the war and the

merciless violence and conflict and genocide continued on for almost two decades. And it was

only on November 15, 1935 that the Commonwealth of the Philippines was inaugurated. And this

basically allowed for a certain degree of self-government while still being a colony of

the United States. So basically, it was like how Puerto Rico is today minus the US citizenship.

And in the end, though direct US rule over the Philippines would prove to be somewhat short-lived

compared to the Spaniards, much like the Spaniards, the United States faced a bloody war against

Muslims in Sulu and Mindanao for decades to come. While the islands were eventually also occupied

by the Japanese during the Second World War, a period that also saw the establishment of the

Second Philippine Republic on October 14, 1943. Now on paper, the Second Republic was supposed

to fulfill the promises of the First Philippine Republic and independent Philippines free from

Western imperialism. However, in reality, the Second Philippine Republic was not truly independent.

It was effectively a puppet state controlled by the imperial government in Tokyo. Now following

the end of World War II, US President Harry S. Truman issued Proclamation 2695 on the 4th of July

1946. And this finally granted independence to the Philippines. And thus, 50 years after the

First Philippine Revolution set in a chain of events that ushered in the establishment of the

First Philippine Republic, the Third Philippine Republic finally and officially achieved independence

for the nation. And today, the world recognizes the Fifth Philippine Republic as an independent

nation-state, with its sovereignty resting upon its diverse multi-ethnic people. However, many

experts and activists today would argue that the Philippines today is not truly independent.

Because historically speaking, the relationship between the Philippines and the United States

has been criticized by many as a form of neo-colonialism, a new form of imperialism

in which the Philippines continues to be subservient to the whims of the superpowers

like China and the United States. And thus, one can say that the promises of the First Philippine

Republic of a genuinely independent Philippines are yet to be fully achieved. Okay, so was the

First Philippine Republic really a failure? I mean, was it an epic fail at creating Asia's

very first modern democratic republic, you know, back in the 1800s? Not exactly. And here's why.

The First Philippine Republic may have only lasted for a few years, but its legacy survives

to this day. It has proven to the world that the people of what is now the Philippines have

always been capable of self-determination. They've always been fit for self-rule. Indeed,

it was evidence of the Filipino people's triumphant victory against three centuries

of colonialism and their determination to fend off foreign domination and imperialism.

And although it was not perfect, I mean, let's be honest. No republic in history has ever been

perfect. Definitely not the Philippines today, nor the United States, and not even ancient Rome

where the word republic comes from. And honestly, we can even make a separate future video just about

the failures and the weaknesses of the First Philippine Republic. So let me know in the

comments if that is something you would like to see on this channel. But yes, although it

was not perfect, the First Philippine Republic had many of the fundamental elements of modern-day

nation-states and present-day democracies. For example, it had a strong executive branch,

a congress to balance it out, an independent judiciary, and its own army. I mean, it even

included the establishment of a public university for the people. And this was back in the 1800s.

But perhaps more importantly, it guaranteed the protection of the rights of the people.

The Monolos Constitution of the First Philippine Republic was a testament to the aspirations and

the capabilities of the Filipino people for democracy, liberty, and justice. Indeed,

it was a beautiful reminder that the diverse multi-ethnic people of the Philippines are

capable of building their own modern democratic nation, capable of their own greatness,

capable of envisioning a free Philippines, and thus laying the foundations for a brighter future

for the Filipino people, for our people. You know, as opposed to being seen as uncivilized

and savages by both the Spanish Empire and the United States. In fact, along with the

Philippine Revolution, the First Philippine Republic was a beacon of hope for many colonized

and occupied people in Asia. Now, unknown to many, many independence movements were inspired

by the Philippine Revolution and the First Philippine Republic. An anti-colonial revolution

would soon spring all across Asia in the century that followed. Indeed, from China to Malaysia,

from India to Indonesia, and many more, the lessons of the Philippine Revolution and the

First Philippine Republic were an inspiration for many in the region across Asia and the Pacific

to fight for their freedom and to establish their own modern and democratic societies.

Now again, this video is just an introduction into this fascinating topic. So if you want to

learn more and dig deeper, make sure to check out my series of videos and my playlist about

the Philippine Revolution and independence. And I also wrote an entire book about these topics

and the solidarity between Filipinos and African Americans in the events surrounding the Philippine

American War. So make sure to check them out, my videos and playlist, and my book in the links

down below. And that is it for me today. So let me know what you think about today's topic in the

comments below. And if you like this video or learn a thing or two, don't forget to like, share

this video, comment down below, and please, please subscribe. But of course, before we go, today's

shout-out goes to Mike Legaspi of New York City, Hello Short from India, Bernie Mac of Cavite,

Aisha from Malaysia, and Bella of Canada. And of course, special thanks and special shout-out to my

patron Brian from San Francisco. You know, this video would not be possible, this channel would

not exist without the love and the support of all my patrons, subscribers, and viewers like you

throughout these years. Kaya naman, maraming maraming salamat po, daghang salamat, dakalpong salamat, at yaman na.

See you next time! Or in Tagalog, kita kits! And in Kapampangan, miki tits! And in Binisaya, kita aita!