American History Tellers

On February 4th, 1899, war broke out between the United States and the Philippines. The two nations had begun as allies against Spain the previous year, during the Spanish-American War. The Spanish had occupied the Philippines for three centuries, and the U.S. arrived promising to drive out the European colonial power. But after the Spanish left, the Americans stayed, in defiance of widespread calls for Philippine independence...

In 1898, America’s victory over Spanish forces in the Philippines suddenly thrust the United States onto the global stage. It also drew the country into a more complicated conflict with the very people it claimed to be liberating. As the U.S. expanded its occupation of the Philippines, American soldiers drove Filipino rebels deeper into the countryside. Some rebels began to question the leadership of Emilio Aguinaldo, the face of the Philippine independence movement...

In March 1901, American forces launched a daring raid to capture the Filipino revolutionary leader Emilio Aguinaldo. Head of U.S. Philippine forces, General Arthur MacArthur, hoped that his surrender would finally break the resistance and bring the war to an end. But fighting soon expanded to remote areas of the country. Frustrated with the stubborn resistance, America’s military leaders turned to increasingly harsher measures to crush the enemy. But accounts of atrocities by U.S...

With the war officially over, William Howard Taft took over authority as the Governor of the Philippines. Taft was a deep believer in the U.S. policy of “benevolent assimilation” and turned to schooling and political attraction to draw Filipinos to his mission. But he continued to struggle with pockets of armed resistance and challenges to American rule, including a series of “seditious” plays that hit Manila’s thriving theater scene...

The Philippine-American War marked the emergence of America as a global power. But what has been the legacy of the war in the country in which it was fought? How did the war set the stage for Philippine independence, and pave the way for generations of Filipino immigration to the U.S.? In this episode, Lindsay speaks with Dr. Vicente Rafael, a historian whose work focuses on the colonial and post-colonial Philippines and the country’s relationship with the United States...