2019 Year 12 IB Extended Essays

Although the war weary Philippine populace was growing more willing to tolerate or accept American domination, the American military was struggling to suppress the Philippine insurrection. The Americans were becoming increasingly overextended by the Moro rebellion in the southern Philippines and the Boxer Rebellion in China and were now hoping to end the insurrection in one stroke. During daring raid involving dozens of Filipino defectors Aguinaldo was captured. With Aguinaldo in captivity, the guerilla war going nowhere and war weariness afflicting all parties, Aguinaldo surrendered in 1901. Thousands of insurrectionists put down their bolo knives and gave up the fight. In July 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt declared the insurrection over. Low intensity fighting and the Moro rebellion would drag on until 1913. (Boot, 2002) The First Philippine Republic may have been destroyed, but the dream of independence survived. With the aid of some Filipino elites (including former insurrectionists), the USA placed the Philippines under a civilian government. The Americans were required to recruit Filipinos into their army and administration in order to maintain their control. The Americans would prove to be kinder and more diligent administrators than the Spanish. (Silbey D. J., 2007) The Revolution and Insurrection created the pan-Filipino cultural identity which exists today. The Insurrection had essentially forged the many smaller ‘tribal’ identities into a Filipino one. The Americans further cultivated Filipino nationalism by creating an education system that increased the literacy rate by 30%, enabling all Filipino groups to communicate through English. (Boot, 2002) Competent American policies and the incorporation of local Filipinos in the American administration caused a wave of pro- American sentiment and also provided the Filipinos with institutions and pathways from which they could grew more autonomous and eventually independent. The legacy of the guerillas survived into the Second World War, where the Filipinos fought a guerilla campaign against the Japanese during WWII with the intention of restoring American rule. In this campaign, the Filipinos implemented the same tactics and strategies which had caused great strain on the Spanish and American forces during the Revolution and Insurrection. The energetic resistance against Japan led to the USA granting the Philippines independence in 1946, and the Second Republic maintained friendly relations with the USA. A somewhat darker result of the ‘Guerilla Legacy’ is the Moro independence movement. Though the movement has been mostly benign and non-violent since 1913, in the current day, some Moros are fighting an insurrection. In 2017, a group of militants aligned with the Islamic State organisation captured the city of Marawi in southern Philippines. Other terrorist organisations and guerilla militants have been operating in the archipelago. (Beech & Gutierrez, 2019) Although there is no direct link between these groups and the guerillas of the previous century, an indirect legacy of guerilla warfare may have effect these new groups.