Why weren't the Philippines offered statehood by the US after they became a US possession??

interesting.

so why wasn't the philippines offered statehood after WW2?

it kinda makes sense to me to have a concrete foothold on asia, especially with the soviet union north of japan and china north of the philippines. wouldn't it be easier for the US Army to have a readily available (and expendable) population to for possible conflicts in Asia, as Korea and Vietnam happened?

would a Philippine state make more sense now, with tension in the South China Sea? Duterte isn't exactly a reliable US ally.

The Philippines as one state would have been the most populous of all US states. If it were broken up into smaller state, well that's even worse, as they each get 2 seats in congress.

It wasn't until the liberation of the philippines that the US became actually popular in the philippines. Beforehand, a lot of former figures in the independence movement looked at intervention by Japan favourably, actively collaborating in the new japanese-run administration. The US was still very much an occupying power.

Could you specify what these institutions were that were lacking

>2 seats in congress
2 seats each in the Senate, it would have been a hell of a lot more in the House.

Whoops, sorry, meant to say senate. I owe you a beer, friend.

The problem is that when Puerto Rico was prospering 20 years ago they overwhelming voted against statehood.
Lo and behold, in 2012 with their debt crisis looming they voted in favor of it.
At this point accepting them as a state would let them get a much more favorable bailout/debt package, something unpalatable to the rest of the country.

In particular they lacked an established judiciary system, lawyers, judged, courts and legal code (other than the piecemeal colonial system left by the Spanish which hardly extended out from Manila) They had no constitution. National ties between the different islands were exceedingly weak or even non-existent. There was little or no foundation of democratic tradition.

The commission feared that without a foreign power the islands would devolve immediately in civil war as local strongmen vied for control of the country.

>They had no constitution
but they did.
>National ties between the different islands were exceedingly weak or even non-existent
Even in the current period of independence, this is still kind of true.
>There was little or no foundation of democratic tradition
aw who starts their democracy with such

>They had no constitution. National ties between the different islands were exceedingly weak or even non-existent. There was little or no foundation of democratic tradition.

but filipinos are the most powerful people on earth.

Please don't remind me of that image
it's an even greater national shame than aguinaldo

>but they did
It was never fully implemented nor did it encompass representation from the whole of the islands

i'm actually chinkyflip balakbayan myself, but you have to get over it.

Well it's a bit hard to implement a constitution throughout a country when a good chunk of it is under american occupation innit
And again, today it's still pretty true that the islands farther away from Luzon get the shaft as far as representation goes. But that's anywhere with an over-important capital, isn't it?

I can get over Luna's assassination but I can't get over that image

Is it just me, or is federalism an absolute necessity for an archipelago nation.

I do believe that considerations other than expanding American power in the pacific were what ultimately convinced McKinley to take control of the islands. If he had been advised by the special commission he made for the purpose of sussing out the situation that the Philippines were ready & able to carry out the responsibility of self rule I think he would have gladly washed his hands of the whole situation. All the information available to him seemed to suggest that the islands were utterly lost to Spanish control & granting recognition to the revolutionary government would have resulted in a bad deal for the majority of the Philippine people or even left them at the mercy of the harsher colonial masters of Japan & Germany who were very interested in the islands.

Depends what you consider "necessity".
I mean, as far as democratic principles go, that's an emphatic yes. The dominance of Manila and its assurance in the structure of the current constitution is pretty undemocratic.
But well, folks outside simply don't matter enough for folks to care about. Most major economic activity in the philippines takes place in not simply Luzon, but metro manilla itself. And in any case, the appeal of Manila is such that neither the Spanish, the Americans, nor an independent Philippines much cared to de-center it.
One could have hoped that folks would abandon it after the 80's when it got a lot slummier, but then the important folks built themselves exclusive enclaves within the city, instead of just trying out that provincial air.

The Roosevelt administration had been transitioning the Philippines towards independence. This process was delayed by the Japanese invasion but completed in 1946.

>& granting recognition to the revolutionary government would have resulted in a bad deal for the majority of the Philippine people
How so
>or even left them at the mercy of the harsher colonial masters of Japan & Germany who were very interested in the islands
lol and how exactly did the US prevent the "harsher colonial masters of Japan"
Apart from sending in the cavalry years after they'd be thrown out and the Japanese having had the time to make the philippine-american war really look like benevolent assimilation

>This process was delayed by the Japanese invasion but completed in 1946.

all i'm saying is that the philippines occupies a strategically important set of islands along with natural resources. it would make sense to bring those all under direct US control with no middlemen.

>lol and how exactly did the US prevent the "harsher colonial masters of Japan"

by being white, god-fearing christians of course

No real need. Okinawa was under U.S. military administration for decades and the U.S. could always count on the rest of Japan as well as Taiwan if it came down to it. Hell, Okinawa is still under de facto U.S. suzerainty.

>How so
It almost assuredly would have meant civil war as the revolutionary government tried to enforce its control over the whole of the Philippines. It also would have meant the disorganized islands would have been a prime target for annexation by Japan or Germany. The Philippines were not like the 13 colonies with strong functioning local governments with a relatively strong cultural & ethnic connection to one another where forming a government was going to be as simple as ratifying a constitution. Ethnic, religious & geographical divisions meant the revolutionary government was only representing a portion of the Philippines and the commission concluded Aguinaldo was no George Washington.

>lol and how exactly did the US prevent the "harsher colonial masters of Japan"
The record these countries have had in the overall treatment of colonized territories speaks for itself.

>It almost assuredly would have meant civil war as the revolutionary government tried to enforce its control over the whole of the Philippines
Only Mindanao had any capacity to resist any central government promulgated from Luzon, especially a tagalog one.
The fact of the matter is that by this time tagalog dominance even at the barrio level was nearly a fact of life everywhere except mindanao, the only true civil threat to the philippine republic. And in any case, no filipino administration, foreign or otherwise, has yet to find a policy which adequately deals with the mindanao question.

One could perhaps imagine a situation in which these minorities threw off rule by their local patrons, but that would require completely underestimating just how ingrained the patron-client relationship was at this time. In central Luzon during the 20's and 30's only considered rebellion against their local patrons after villages began to starve to death, and even then they presented limited demands involving "change things so we don't starve to death".

>Aguinaldo was no George Washington
Is a george washington a prerequisite to democratic governance?

>The record these countries have had in the overall treatment of colonized territories speaks for itself.
The joke is the bit about Japan eventually getting their hands on the Philippines. Quite easily, I might add.

>Only Mindanao had any capacity to resist any central government promulgated from Luzon, especially a tagalog one.
I don't know if the Philippines could have been a functional & stable self-ruling state had McKinley decided to recognize the revolutionary government but the commission of men who surveyed the situation as it was at the time were doubtful about the success of that endeavor for both internal & external reasons.
>Is a george washington a prerequisite to democratic governance?
More of a statement of being something closer to a factional generalissimo than a disinterested unifying force carrying the mantle for liberal self rule.

I mean, when it's a congress set up by a president whose support in congress rests on those who very much want to see the Philippines annexed, I should think that their conclusion was sort of a given, wasn't it? I mean, I'm not blaming McKinley, a president is beholden to the electors and interests that bring them into office. Heck, the Philippines is no different; in fact, it's probably worse. It's reasonable to argue that the bits in the Malolos Constitution saying that representatives represent the nation moreso than their electorate could have probably been used for some pretty undemocratic stuff.
>More of a statement of being something closer to a factional generalissimo than a disinterested unifying force carrying the mantle for liberal self rule.
Aw there was Mabini for that.
And in any case, do you suppose a Bonifacio government would have been judged any less harshly than the Aguinaldo one was?

Este

>all this buzzworded justification

Why can't you admit
1. Most Americans considered the Flips to be incompetent barbarians.
2. Most Americans saw it as spoils of war and therefore our colony.

>The joke is the bit about Japan eventually getting their hands on the Philippines

Now imagine they'd kept the Philippines for 45 years instead of 2-3.

Aw not so bad
japanese rule circa late Meiji and the Taisho perio would be pretty comfy rule, actually. And it wouldn't have been unpopular, Japan was the first choice for the revolutionaries when they went looking for local allies.

>whose support in congress rests on those who very much want to see the Philippines annexed
From what I remember feelings toward annexing Philippines in America were mostly indifferent, while there was a wing of the republican party with interests in expanding American power in the pacific it was the Hawaiian islands that they mostly cared about. It wasn't an issue McKinley had originally campaigned on (obviously) and most Americans had never even heard of the Philippines until Dewey's victory in Manila. The Philippines were barely even mentioned in the Republican party platform of 1900

From the circumstances surrounding the islands it seems as though McKinley genuinely did want an objective opinion on the capability of self-rule by the islands from the most qualified experts available and then followed through with their recommendation. The commission that was assembled wasn't exactly just busy bodies meant to give him the go-ahead. It was conscientiously bi-partisan and the head of the commission was a University president and not a party stooge.

McKinley didn't make his decision on what 'most Americans' wanted because most Americans couldn't even point to the islands on a map.

>From what I remember feelings toward annexing Philippines in America were mostly indifferent
Depends on who you asked. Joe Average would of course not care, but it was a big thing for congress, whose members were in positions to gain or loss financially, either from access to chinese markets or from filipino cash crops hitting the domestic market.

The imperialist congressmen were a much bigger voice than the anti-imperialists, much better representing the interests of the average american industrialist than, say, Andrew Carnegie. We don't even have to mention the rest, only Carnegie could have afforded the $20 million for the Philippines.

>bipartisan
>includes Dewey AND Otis
That's kinda stacking the deck innit

^o^

>McKinley didn't make his decision on what 'most Americans' wanted because most Americans couldn't even point to the islands on a map.

Except that he clearly did and a lot of voting Americans clearly could.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine–American_War

On a somewhat unrelated note there was something the 1890s called the Blount Report which attacked US expansionism in the Pacific as illegal, unnecessary warmongering, and demographically dangerous. Although the Blount Report was specifically addressing the illegality of taking over Hawaii, many Americans protested the US occupation of the Philippines for the same reasons.

This, Statehood means tribal illiterate retards and semi literate Spanish retards are now the most powerful state in the Union.

Too many people in it, would have changed the demographic makeup of the US too much.