The Philippine–American War
The United States fights the new Philippine Republic to take control of the islands; the war kills over 4,200 American and some 20,000 Filipino soldiers, and as many as 200,000 Filipino civilians die from violence, famine and disease.
- The Philippine-American War, 1899–1902 — Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State
- The Philippine War, 1899–1902 — Brian McAllister Linn, University Press of Kansas (2000)
- The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines — Paul A. Kramer, University of North Carolina Press (2006)
- In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines — Stanley Karnow, Random House (1989)
- History of the Filipino People — Teodoro A. Agoncillo, Garotech (1990)
- The Philippines: A Past Revisited — Renato Constantino, Tala Publishing (1975)
On the night of 4 February 1899, an American sentry fired on Filipino soldiers in Manila and fighting broke out along the lines around the city. Two days later the US Senate narrowly ratified the Treaty of Paris annexing the islands. The young republic, which had expected recognition, found itself at war with the United States.
- In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines — Stanley Karnow, Random House (1989)
- History of the Filipino People — Teodoro A. Agoncillo, Garotech (1990)
The war
Aguinaldo’s army fought conventionally at first and was beaten; from late 1899 it turned to guerrilla war across Luzon and the Visayas. American commanders answered with escalating measures: burning villages and crops, concentrating rural populations into guarded zones, and torture, notably the “water cure”, which became a scandal in US Senate hearings in 1902.
- The Philippine War, 1899–1902 — Brian McAllister Linn, University Press of Kansas (2000)
- The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines — Paul A. Kramer, University of North Carolina Press (2006)
In September 1901, townspeople and guerrillas at Balangiga, on Samar, surprised a US infantry company and killed most of its men. In reprisal General Jacob Smith ordered Samar turned into a “howling wilderness” and the killing of all males capable of bearing arms, which he set at ten years old. American soldiers took the church bells of Balangiga as trophies; they were returned only in 2018.
- The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines — Paul A. Kramer, University of North Carolina Press (2006)
- In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines — Stanley Karnow, Random House (1989)
The cost
President Theodore Roosevelt declared the war over on 4 July 1902, but resistance continued for years, and in the Muslim south US forces fought until 1913. At Bud Dajo on Jolo in 1906, troops killed hundreds of Tausug men, women and children who had taken refuge in a volcanic crater.
- The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines — Paul A. Kramer, University of North Carolina Press (2006)
- State and Society in the Philippines — Patricio N. Abinales and Donna J. Amoroso, Rowman & Littlefield (2017)
- The Philippine-American War, 1899–1902 — Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State
- The Philippines: A Past Revisited — Renato Constantino, Tala Publishing (1975)
The war has long been called America’s “forgotten war”. In the Philippines it is better remembered, but even there it is overshadowed by the Spanish and Japanese periods, and by the warm ties of the century that followed.
- The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines — Paul A. Kramer, University of North Carolina Press (2006)
- In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines — Stanley Karnow, Random House (1989)
It was a war of conquest against a sovereign republic that had already won its independence from Spain. US forces burned villages, tortured prisoners and herded civilians into concentration zones, and the "benevolent" colonial rule that followed rested on that violence.
- The Philippines: A Past Revisited — Renato Constantino, Tala Publishing (1975)
- History of the Filipino People — Teodoro A. Agoncillo, Garotech (1990)
- The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines — Paul A. Kramer, University of North Carolina Press (2006)
President McKinley described US policy as "benevolent assimilation": the Filipinos were not ready for self-government, and the United States would educate and uplift them. Resistance was an "insurrection" by a faction, not a war between nations.
- In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines — Stanley Karnow, Random House (1989)
- The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines — Paul A. Kramer, University of North Carolina Press (2006)
Historians now treat it as a full war of colonial conquest, marked by racialised violence on the American side. Some military historians, such as Brian Linn, stress that the conflict varied greatly from region to region and that US tactics combined harsh reprisals with schools and local collaboration.
- The Philippine War, 1899–1902 — Brian McAllister Linn, University Press of Kansas (2000)
- The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines — Paul A. Kramer, University of North Carolina Press (2006)
- The Philippine-American War, 1899–1902 — Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State
Why it matters today
Many Filipinos learn little about this war, which American textbooks long called the "Philippine Insurrection". Yet it explains a lot: why the friendship with America is real but complicated, why the return of the Bells of Balangiga by the United States in 2018 was a national event, and why some Filipinos insist the US was a conqueror, not a liberator.
It was America's first major overseas colonial war, with a counter-insurgency, torture ("water cure") and reprisals that anticipated later wars. It is little remembered in the United States today.