May 1 - Dewey destroyed Spanish fleet at Manila
May 19 - Emilio Aguinaldo returned - exile since Katipunan revolt 1892-6 that ended with the execution of rebel leader Jose Rizal and a Spanish payment of $400,000 to Aguinaldo to go to Hong Kong
June 12 - Aguinaldo declared the Philippine Republic and proclaimed himself the president
Aug. 12 - armistice ended 4-month war with Spain - Wake Island had been occupied July 4, Hawaii annexed July 7, Cuba occupied after the destruction of Cervera's fleet July 3 and the fall of Santiago July 16, Puerto Rico July 25 - according to the terms of the armistice, Spain to give up Cuba, cede Puerto Rico and Guam, and US to occupy Manila
Aug. 14 - Gen. Wesley Merritt reoccupied Manila following bombardment by Dewey and assault by Army, but Aguinaldo controlled most of the country outside Manila
Sept. -Philippine assembly ratified Malolos constitution
Oct. 1 - Paris Peace conference began - McKinley at first instructed William Day to not annex all Philippine, only Luzon, Guam, Puerto Rico - was unsure of public opinion
Oct. - "the evolution of McKinley's thought is fascinating" during October - "duty, destiny, Dewey" - growing support for annexation: trade, China market, moral obligation to be new guardians, missonary zeal (Mrs. McKinley devote Methodist) fear of Germany (5 ships of Adm. von Diederiche close by)
Oct. 24 - McKinley came to a decision during the night - woke up and heard the "voice of God" - there was "nothing left for us to do but to take them all, to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and Christianize them" - he then went back to bed and slept soundly
Oct. 28 - McKinley cabled new instructions to Paris delegation: "the cession must be of the whole archipelago or none"
Dec. 6 - Vest Resolution (by George Vest, Democrat from Missouri) to prevent any acquisition of territory "to be held and governed permanently as colonies"debated for next 2 months, supported by Sen. George Frisbie Hoar, Republican from Mass.
Dec. 10 - John Hay signed peace treaty in Paris - Spain paid $20m for thePhilippine, ceded Puerto Rico and Guam andPhilippine to US, gave up Cuba (US did not assume $400m debt of Cuba)
1899
Army put in charge of "pacification" - new Devision of Insular Affairs created in War Dept. under Major John J. Pershing (became Bureau of Insular Affairs 1902 and moved to Interior Dept 1939)
Jan. - Gen. Elwell Otis became military governor of Philippines after Merritt - failed to negotiate settlement with Aguinaldo
Feb. 4 -Philippine revolt began, according to the official report of Secretary of War Elihu Root, when "an army of Tagalogs, a tribe inhabiting the central part of Luzon, under the leadership of Aguinaldo, a Chinese half-breed, attacked, in vastly superior numbers, our little army in the possession of Manila, and after a desperate and bloody fight was repulsed in every direction." (but Otis had provoked war by mobilizing the army and navy and ordered sentries to fire on any Filipinos in the Santa Mesa above the trenches around Manila)
Feb. 6 - Senate vote to ratify treaty 57-27 (2/3 plus 1) with only 2 Republicans opposed: George Hoar of Mass., Eugene Hale of Maine
Feb. 17 - national Anti-Imperialist League established to oppose annexation of Philippine, growing out of the New England League (Nov. 19, 1898), with delegates from 30 states - Edward Atkinson declared he was mailing anti-imperialist pamphlets to soldiers in the Philippines, and the government seized them in San Francisco - the League attracted support from businessmen such as Andrew Carnegie, from elite aristocrats such as Moorfield Storey, from organized labor such as Samuel Gompers, from southern racists such as "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman, and from professors such as John Burgess of Columbia, and from German-Americans such as Sen. Carl Schurz. But it did not get support from Sen. Hoar, Speaker "Czar" Thomas Reed, progressive Woodrow Wilson, missionaries such as the Lake Mohonk Conference of Friends of the Indians. Christopher Lasch argued that the anti-imperialist movement "did not foreshadow the liberalism of the Good Neighbor. It was in fact no more liberal than that of the expansionists."
Mar. - Army Provost Arthur MacArthur began reforms in Manila including public health program, smallpox vaccination, weekly inspection of prostitutes, schools opened - civilian commissioners arrived to carry out McKinley policy of "benevolent assimilation" - Army began to move out of Manila, courts re-opened, food distributed, schools built (greatest success) - the army forced Filipinos to work, but Funston complained "A Filipino is chronically tired. He is born tired; he stays tired and he dies tired." Instead, Chinese were often pressed into labor gangs with no pay.
Mar. 31 - US captured Malolos
June 10 - Gen. Henry Lawton, hero of Civil War and Geronimo and El Caney, led attack on Cavite, claimed victory but Filipinos fled, to return later after Americans were gone - Otis began to lose state volunteers from his 30,000 man army; new troops were recruited to replace them, including black regiments and the black Ninth Cavalry. Lawton persuaded Elihu Root to create the Philippine Scouts out of volunteers from the village of Macabebe, a decision widely favored by imperialists who believed these would become American"sepoys" to help manage the empire by pitting native peoples against each other (but only about 5000 scouts were recruited) - Lawton was killed Dec. 18 by Gen. Lucerio Geronimo during his successful Luzon campaign.
Nov. - Philippine revolt became guerilla war
1900
May 2 - Gen. Arthur MacArthur replaced Otis as military governor (until July 1901), and William Howard Taft arrived as civil governor of "our little brown brothers" (until 1904) - anthropologist David Prescott Barrows established the Bureau of Non-Christian Tribes
June - MacArthur proclaimed 90-day amnesty and offered $30 per rifle
Nov. - William McKinley defeated William Jennings Bryan in the presidential election. Bryan was hurt by Aguinaldo's endorsement of the Democratic party. Albert Beveridge, the freshman senator from Indiana, emerged during the campaign as the "golden orator" of Republican imperialism, debating Sen. Hoar, using his tour of the Philippines to claim direct knowledge of the war, holding out a golden nugget from the islands to prove its potential wealth: "I was there."
1901
Feb. - Supreme Court ruled in the Insular Cases that colonies were constitutional but that constitutional rights need not apply to colonial peoples.
Mar. 23 - Fred Funston captured Aguinaldo at his Palanan camp with the help of Macabebe scouts, and was promoted to brigadier general - Aguinaldo swore allegiance to the US and asked his followers to surrender, but resistance remained strong in Batangas on Luzon under Gen. Malvar and in Samar under Gen. Vincente Lukban
Sep. 26 - 59 soldiers of Company C are killed at Balangiga in Samar- in retaliation, 250 natives were killed and the town burned - became a major issue in the press
Dec. 7 - Gen. J. Franklin Bell began concentration camp policy in Batangas - everything outside the "dead lines" was destroyed, similar to the reconcentrado policy of Gen. Weyler in Cuba
1902
Jan. - Sen. Hoar began Congressional investigation into the conduct of the war by the standing Committee on the Philippines headed by Henry Cabot Lodge, including anti-imperialists Charles Culbertson of Texas and Thomas Patterson of Colorado and Eugene Hale of Maine as well as imperialists Lodge, Beveridge and Redfield Proctor of Vermont. Taft testified for a month, and admitted use of the "so-called water cure." General Hughes admitted to burning civilian houses. Soldiers who had written letters home testified about atrocities.
Jan. 11 - Major Littleton Waller campaign on Samar, used water cure, executed civilians at Lanang - was court-martialled March 17 and although acquitted, he branded in the press as the "Butcher of Samar"
April - Corp. Richard T. O'Brien testified in the Lodge Committee that Capt. Fred McDonald, the "Beast of La Nog," committed atrocities. Methodist Bishop James M. Thoburn testified that Americans were doing God's will in the Philippines
June 28 - the Lodge Committee adjourned
July 4 - President Roosevelt declared the war was ended
1903
Dec. 23 - Taft negotiations with Pope Leo XIII - bought friar lands for $7.2m and resold to Filipinos, most to absentee landlords
1907 - Manuel Quezon and Sergio Osmena control the assembly
1913 - era of free trade until 1941
1917 - Jones Act promised independence as "soon as a stable government" emerged
1921 - Woods-Forbes mission recommended no independence
1933 - Congress approved independence but rejected by Filipinos led by Quezon
1934 - Tydings-McDuffie Act established Philippine Commonwealth with independence by July 4, 1946
1935 - Manuel Quezon elected 1st president, until his death 1944
1946 - Philippine Rehabilitation Act with $620m US aid to rebuild after war
1948 - Huk movement emerged; the Hukbalahap had opposed conservative landowners in war that had collaborated with Japanese, became communist movement in 1949 with land reofrm as goal, but were defeated in 1955 by President Magsaysay
1957 - Ferdinand Marcos president, became dictator under martial law 1972 until downfall Feb. 24, 1986
1986 - Corazon Aquino president (husband Benigno Aquino assassinated by Marcos 1983 at airport)
1992 - Fidel "Eddie" Ramos president (Protestant and former Defense chief) - 85,000 lost jobs during closure of Subic Bay Naval Station after Philippine Senate rejected 1991 treaty - growing emigration from population of 64m (600,000 seek to join 3m in US)
Clymer, Kenton J. "Humanitarian Imperialism: David Prescott Barrows and the White Man's Burden in the Philippines," American Historical Review, Nov. 1976, 495-517.
Gates, John M. Schoolbooks and Krags; the United States Army in the Philippines, 1898-1902. Westport, Conn., Greenwood Press, 1973. 315 p. UCSD DS679 .G38
Lasch, Christopher. "The Anti-Imperialists, the Philippines, and the Inequality of Man," Journal of Southern History, 1958, 319-31.
Miller, Stuart C. "Benevolent Assimilation": the American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899-1903. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982. 340 p. Copley 959.903 M651b
Williams, Walter L. "United States Indian Policy and the Debate over Philippine Annexation: Implications for the Origins of American Imperialism," Journal of American History, Mar. 1980, 810-831.