US POLICIES ON THE PHILIPPINE INDEPENDENCE

US POLICIES ON 
THE PHILIPPINE INDEPENDENCE





PHILIPPINE GOVERNOR GENERAL HOWARD TAFT
During his time in the Philippines Taft followed a number of what he believed to be pragmatic short-term policies to bring about Filipino support for U.S. rule and end the ongoing resistance from Filipino independence activists- this policy is often termed the “policy of attraction”. This policy involved three key themes. Firstly, Taft would encourage limited Filipino participation in government, mostly at lower provincial levels and later, and more controversially, including three Filipinos on the U.S. controlled governing Commission. Second, Taft saw to it that advocacy of independence was legally hampered with short-term sedition laws stunting the ability of any pro-independence movement. And finally, Taft showed significant bias in political support and patronage of the Filipino Federal Party, a party that opposed independence and even initially supported statehood


Taft was called before a Senate investigative committee headed by Massachusetts pro-imperial senator, Henry Cabot Lodge. The committee was set up primarily to investigate allegations of war crimes in the Philippine-American conflict. However, in his testimony before the Senate 

 Taft also gave a fairly full picture of his ideas on what the future would hold for the anomalous relationship between the Philippine Islands and the United States. Firstly, Taft stated, a government had to be established under American guidance, ‘under which the Filipinos shall gradually improve their knowledge of what is individual liberty and what is a constitutional government, and subsequently the time will come when the United States and the Filipino people together can agree upon what their relations shall be.’

Taft genuinely thought the Philippines might one day become a state of the union, which was in the platform of his favoured Federal Party, or whether he simply left this matter unresolved so as to allow the Federal Party not to look foolish, is difficult to ascertain. What seems likely is that Taft, more than anything else, was keen to keep the end deliberately unclear, and therefore what one must then understand is why Taft would choose to do this. By leaving the ultimate fate of the islands unclear Taft aimed to: dampen hopes for a definite date for independence, strengthen the hopes of the minority who sought eventual statehood

After Taft left the Philippines at the end of 1903 to become Roosevelt’s new Secretary of War he maintained close ties to Philippine policy as the Bureau of Insular Affairs, which dealt with the administration of the Philippines, was within the Department of War. Although no longer directly in control of Philippine affairs on a day-to-day basis, the new Secretary of War stuck to his previous line of thought, telling the World Magazine in 1904 that: ‘THE GREAT MISTAKE THAT COULD BE MADE AT THIS TIME WOULD BE TO GIVE THE FILIPINOS THEIR INDEPENDENCE, OR EVEN TO MENTION A TIME WHEN WE ARE LIKELY TO GIVE THEM THEIR INDEPENDENCE. I DON’T HESITATE TO SAY THAT TO HINT THAT WITHIN SO MANY YEARS OR AT THE END OF SUCH-ANDSUCH A PERIOD THEY WOULD BECOME INDEPENDENT, WOULD BE A TERRIBLE MISTAKE,’


Roosevelt wrote Taft that he wished ‘our people were prepared permanently…to assume the control of the Philippine Islands for the good of the Filipinos…[but] I gravely question whether this is the case….’9 If this were not enough evidence that Roosevelt was starting to have second thoughts, he continued, ‘I think we shall have to be prepared for giving the islands independence of a more or less complete type much sooner than I think advisable.’10 However, regardless of Roosevelt’s impending sense that independence was an issue that was almost inevitably approaching sooner rather than later, Taft continued to speak for retention of the islands throughout the following years when he rose to the presidency as Roosevelt’s heir. 

U S Democrats were closely linked to the policy of Philippine independence, which had been associated with their party platform since annexation of the islands over a decade before. The most important piece of proposed legislation during this period was the Jones Bill, which aimed to provide a guarantee of independence, and in it earliest forms a date for independence within the coming decade. From this time onwards Taft became the most high-profile spokesperson of what became seen as a “retentionist” campaign against Democratic Party plans for such a promise of independence. 
Taft’s policy towards Philippine independence is its consistency in the face of adversity

Colonial Rule, Property Rights and Economic   Development in the Philippines

1912  Republican platform, “We accepted the responsibility of the Islands as a duty to civilization and the Filipino people

 The UNITED STATES OF AMERICAcould not therefore abandon the Philippines at an acceptable political cost unless they could demonstrate that a stable self‐sufficient government had in fact been

The U.S. implemented several land reforms during its occupation of the Philippines. Using data from the censuses of 1903 and 1918, we consider the im‐ pact of two important changes: the redistribution of the friar lands formerly be‐ longing to the Catholic Church, and the implementation of a formal land titling program. We find that the land reforms had the unintended consequence of in‐ creasing the incidence of squatting; however, the friar lands program was suc‐ cessful in reducing land inequality. In addition, we also investigate the impact of these reforms on the doubling of Philippine rice productivity and the decision to switch to commercial crops between 1903 and 1918. 

U.S. colonial rule in the Philippines as a test case of the hypothesis that ex‐ ternally‐imposed institutional reforms are extremely difficult to implement.  Specifi‐ cally, we examine the impact of two major reforms to property rights undertaken by the American colonial administrators. The first was the purchase of the “friar lands” from the Catholic Church and their subsequent redistribution to Filipino peasants.   The sec‐ ond is the implementation the Torrens system of land registration throughout the Phil‐ ippines. The Torrens system involved conducting detailed cadastral surveys and issu‐ ing formal written titles to the landholders. We should note that several developing countries have undertaken large‐scale land titling programs in  years,

The U.S. made very large and prolonged efforts to reform Philippine property rights institutions.  The political economy of the American occupation gave the U.S. admini‐ stration two reasons to follow through on the reforms.  First, widespread anti‐imperial sentiment in the U.S. required Washington to show tangible signs of progress (albeit at minimal cost to the American taxpayer) in order to retain domestic support.  Republi‐ cans put considerable effort into implementing the “policy of attraction.” 4  The policy of attraction involved reforms of property rights, law enforcement, taxation, public educa‐ tion, and infrastructure designed to demonstrate that U.S. rule benefited the Filipinos.

the United States routinely kept a squadron of vessels in the western Pacific.  War plans drawn up in 1897 called for the Asiatic Squadron





The U.S.’s main interest in the Philippines was the retention of Manila or Subic Bay as a base for the Asiatic Squadron.  President McKinley initially intended only to take a sovereign base


PHILIPPINE ECONOMY
The U.S. eliminated most tariffs on Philippine products in 1909, and brought the is‐ lands fully within the country’s tariff wall.  As a result, the amount of land devoted to cash crop production grew faster than the amount of land devoted to rice.  (See Table 5.)    In 1903 more than half of the cultivated land in the Philippines grew rice, but this frac‐ tion declined to around 40% by 1918.  Note, however, that the large increase in culti‐ vated area (see Table 1) means that the absolute area devoted to rice still increased over this time period.  The other major crops during this period were corn, hemp and sugar‐ cane. The decline in the share of area devoted to rice was matched by a corresponding increase in the proportional area devoted to corn and sugar, while the area devoted to hemp declined.







Rice yields al‐ most doubled from 13 kilograms per hectare (kg/h) to 24 kg/h over this period.   in 1903, irrigation, formal credit, and the growth in cultivated land.   Puzzlingly, titling variables appear to have very little to do with the increase in rice production. 

under  the United States  Philippine exports increased to abnormal levels. Buoyed by record exports ---which led to growth in the domestic economy and consequently, public revenues (from internal sources and customs)--- the Philippine national government led by American Governor General Francis Burton Harrison (1913-1920) and in cooperation with top Filipino leaders undertook an economic development program that was anchored on massive public investment. Conversely, the economy and by extension, public revenues, floundered after the end of World War I in November 1918 as exports to the United States spiraled downwards due to post-war American policy of “economic normalcy”


Harrison’s replacement from the rival Republican Party, former US Army chief Major General Leonard Wood, in 1921 had as his administrative priority the undoing of Harrison’s economic development program beginning with the sale of public corporations either acquired or created during Harrison’s administration. Wood’s “reform” agenda was a result of his personal neo-liberal ideals and his political party’s conservative administrative agenda in the Philippines. The reversal in policy was vehemently opposed by influential Filipino leaders in government for political and economic reasons. Politically, the Filipino politicians hinged part of their campaign for Philippine independence on the success of the said economic development program in compliance with the American-imposed “stable government” requirement for self-rule. These leaders also believed that the adverse economic conditions prevailing in 1921 was just temporary, and that recovery was inevitable; thus, there was no need to abandon the economic development agenda forged during Harrison’s administration.

The colossal conflict between Governor Wood and Filipino leaders reached its climax in 1923 when all the Filipino members of Wood’s cabinet resigned their positions in protest of the chief executive’s perceived obstinacy. In the end, Wood viewed his role as Governor General not as caretaker of a Philippine state that would eventually be independent in the foreseeable future (as Harrison had), rather as an administrator whose main function was to provide stable leadership during the country’s recovery from a crisis situation through his stewardship of a conservative, neo-liberal economic agenda. The Filipino leaders were critical of Wood for failing to grasp what they thought was the true nature of the governorship: a temporary custodian who should not get in the way of Philippine independence, including its foundational economic development agenda the infallibility of which was only temporarily side-tracked, and not truly discredited

Ninety percent of total Philippine exports in 1917 came from four products: abaca or Manila hemp (49 percent of the total); coconut oil (21 percent); sugar (13 percent) and tobacco (7 percent). Manila hemp was, on average, sold about 80 pesos higher per 1,000 kilos in the United States market in 1917 (Annual Report of the Governor General of the Philippine Islands,