El Justo
Deity
The purpose of this thread is to bring to light America's first true venture onto the world stage to other like-minded history buffs who like to explore lesser-known instances in history and also to shed some light on this topic as it is indeed never quite explained well enough in our history texts
i hope to post excerpts from this large document that i actually wrote as an undergrad thesis. i spent a little more than 13 months researching it. i flicked through the old school microfiesh at the Natl Archives in DC, searched through numerous first-hand military records, translated captured Filipino administrative papers from Spanish to English, and even received loner books directly from the Philippines. iow, lots and lots of primary resources. my profs were giddy when they read my bibliography
i have ommited the footnote sections from this portion but i will post them in the future when it is non-redundant.
anyway, below is the introduction from a prospectus i had drafted early on...(w/ pics linked in)
The American-Philippine War is a misunderstood entity. The history books have recorded the conflict as a sustained insurrection between an emerging international power and a fractured group of peoples seeking independence. There is, however, a larger picture that needs to be examined and that is to attempt to determine the causes of the breakdown that occurred between the Filipinos and the Americans.
this was a famous image in late 1898 b/c it is reported that President McKinley could not even locate the Philippine Islands on a map
The American-Philippine War was a war between the armed forces of the United States and the Philippines from 1899-1913. The majority of the fighting occurred during the years 1899-1902. The conflict is also known as The Philippine Insurrection though in recent years, it has become more commonly referred to as the American-Philippine War. Escalations between the two began in February of 1898 after the U.S. had purchased the Philippines from Spain at the conclusion of the Spanish-American War. The Filipinos, under Emilio Aguinaldo, had declared their formal independence from Spain in June of 1898. By August of that year, 11,000 additional American troops arrived to occupy the archipelago . This sets the stage for what most historians believe to be the first shots of the conflict when on February 4, 1899, an American soldier fired upon a Filipino soldier who was attempting to cross the bridge leading into the American occupied section of San Juan del Monte. The McKinley Administration declared that the incident was a product of a local insurgency and vowed to crush the opposition; an opposition that led by Emilio Aguinaldo.
Emilio Aguinaldo as a young man. he came from a wealthy land owning family in the town of Kawit which is south east of Manila. the Spanish feared him and he proved to be quite elusive to the Americans.
The raw data suggests that the United States lost 4,234 men and that another 2,818 were wounded in action during the American-Philippine War . Filipino casualty figures vary some but one source indicated that 20,000 military casualties occurred while an estimated 1,000,000 civilians lost their lives during the conflict . Zimmermann notes that at the highpoint of the conflict, three quarters of the entire American military was deployed in the Philippines . The numbers are staggering indeed yet one must ask them self: why had it come to this? Where did it all go wrong?
painting by F. Reeves titled "I Would Rather Die at the Front" - it is a colourful depiction of Colonel J Franklin Bell's 36th Volunteer Infantry. it is interesting to note that the Volunteer army of the US at this time was nearly on par w/ the regular army. this was the case in the Philippines as well as in Cuba during the Spanish American War.
---TO BE CONT'D---
i hope to post excerpts from this large document that i actually wrote as an undergrad thesis. i spent a little more than 13 months researching it. i flicked through the old school microfiesh at the Natl Archives in DC, searched through numerous first-hand military records, translated captured Filipino administrative papers from Spanish to English, and even received loner books directly from the Philippines. iow, lots and lots of primary resources. my profs were giddy when they read my bibliography
i have ommited the footnote sections from this portion but i will post them in the future when it is non-redundant.
anyway, below is the introduction from a prospectus i had drafted early on...(w/ pics linked in)
The American-Philippine War is a misunderstood entity. The history books have recorded the conflict as a sustained insurrection between an emerging international power and a fractured group of peoples seeking independence. There is, however, a larger picture that needs to be examined and that is to attempt to determine the causes of the breakdown that occurred between the Filipinos and the Americans.
this was a famous image in late 1898 b/c it is reported that President McKinley could not even locate the Philippine Islands on a map
The American-Philippine War was a war between the armed forces of the United States and the Philippines from 1899-1913. The majority of the fighting occurred during the years 1899-1902. The conflict is also known as The Philippine Insurrection though in recent years, it has become more commonly referred to as the American-Philippine War. Escalations between the two began in February of 1898 after the U.S. had purchased the Philippines from Spain at the conclusion of the Spanish-American War. The Filipinos, under Emilio Aguinaldo, had declared their formal independence from Spain in June of 1898. By August of that year, 11,000 additional American troops arrived to occupy the archipelago . This sets the stage for what most historians believe to be the first shots of the conflict when on February 4, 1899, an American soldier fired upon a Filipino soldier who was attempting to cross the bridge leading into the American occupied section of San Juan del Monte. The McKinley Administration declared that the incident was a product of a local insurgency and vowed to crush the opposition; an opposition that led by Emilio Aguinaldo.
Emilio Aguinaldo as a young man. he came from a wealthy land owning family in the town of Kawit which is south east of Manila. the Spanish feared him and he proved to be quite elusive to the Americans.
The raw data suggests that the United States lost 4,234 men and that another 2,818 were wounded in action during the American-Philippine War . Filipino casualty figures vary some but one source indicated that 20,000 military casualties occurred while an estimated 1,000,000 civilians lost their lives during the conflict . Zimmermann notes that at the highpoint of the conflict, three quarters of the entire American military was deployed in the Philippines . The numbers are staggering indeed yet one must ask them self: why had it come to this? Where did it all go wrong?
painting by F. Reeves titled "I Would Rather Die at the Front" - it is a colourful depiction of Colonel J Franklin Bell's 36th Volunteer Infantry. it is interesting to note that the Volunteer army of the US at this time was nearly on par w/ the regular army. this was the case in the Philippines as well as in Cuba during the Spanish American War.
---TO BE CONT'D---