If one were to mention the term "Philippine War" or "Philippine-American War" to the average American, most likely one would be met with a blank stare of incomprehension.  No, this is not caused by the person drinking too much beer.  But rather, nobody has ever heard of the Philippine War.  It is not taught in history classes either at the high school or college level.  Neither does the news media make any mention of it.  This is truly America's forgotten war.

And if I were to tell the average Filipino-American couple that they owe their relationship to the foreign policy of the McKinley administration of a century ago, they would likewise stare at me with blank incomprehension.  Nevertheless, these are the facts and it is the attempt of this excellent book to educate us in these matters.

"The Philippine War, 1899-1902" documents the American conquest of the Philippines which took place subsequent to the Spanish-American War.  The book focuses almost exclusively on the military campaign and there is very little discussion on the domestic politics of this war.  It goes into great depth on the various military activities taking place on the various islands.

Chapter 1 begins with the United States already at war with Spain.  No coverage is given to the reasons behind the war (i.e., the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine, etc.).  On May 1, 1898 Commodore George Dewey attacked the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay and in one fell swoop annihilated it.  The Spanish suffered 161 men killed versus 9 men wounded for the Americans.  It is not clear what plan President McKinley had in mind when he ordered the attack on the Spanish fleet.  Did he foresee that the United States would take over
Spain's role as colonizer of the Philippines?  Or did he merely want to capture Manila and use it as a bargaining chip in any future peace negotiations?  To this day his motives are not clear since he never wrote anything down and never confided his intentions to anyone.

A few days later the Army Chief of Staff, General Nelson Miles recommended that a 5,000-man expeditionary force be sent to occupy Manila.  The force was to be known as the 8th Corps and its commander was to be General Wesley Merritt.  Merritt sent a message to President McKinley inquiring whether his orders were to occupy the entire country or just the capital.  McKinley prevaricated and did not answer the question directly.  This would later cause much confusion in the ranks.  Merritt argued that more troops would be needed even to capture Manila and so the troop strength was increased to 12,000.  But much to the dismay of Merritt, most the 12,000-man force was to be composed of state militias (what we would today call the National Guard).

The first contingent of the 8th Corp, almost 2,400 men strong, left the port of San Francisco on May 25, 1898.  The voyage for the enlisted men was no joy ride.  The men and their supplies were crammed into a narrow space with bunks stacked four high.  The ships rolled and heaved and many of the men got sea sick so that soon the floors were covered with vomit.  The fresh meat spoiled after only one week at sea so that for the rest of the voyage the men subsisted on canned bacon and hardtack bread.  Finally, on June 30, 1898
after more than a month at sea the ships arrived off Manila and anchored at Cavite.

At the time the first American troops arrived in the Philippines the Spanish Army was having its own problems.  The Spanish Army numbered only 18,000 troops but of these only 2,000 were Spaniards, the rest being Filipinos.  They had been fighting a Filipino insurgency movement known as the Katipunan since the summer of 1896.  Originally founded by Andres Bonifacio in the Manila area, the Katipunan was now led by Emilio Aguinaldo from Cavite province.  Bonifacio had suffered a string of military defeats whereas Aguinaldo had had great military success against the Spanish.  In the spring of 1897 the Aguinaldo faction of the Katipunan arrested Bonifacio, tried him, and executed him.

Later that year (1897) the tide of war turned against Aguinaldo so that he was forced into signing a peace treaty with the Spanish on December 14, 1897 which led to his exile in Hong Kong.  Spring of 1898 found Aguinaldo in Singapore where he had several meetings with the American Consul E. Spencer Pratt.  Aguinaldo would later claim that Pratt promised that the United States would recognize Philippine independence in exchange for Filipino help in defeating the Spanish.  Pratt would, of course, tell a different story and since there was nothing put into writing, Aguinaldo's story is somewhat suspect.

On May 19, 1898 Aguinaldo met with Dewey and again Aguinaldo would later claim that Dewey confirmed the deal worked out with Pratt.  Dewey, of course, would later deny this.  Whatever the agreement, the result was that the United States put 2,000 rifles into the hands of the Katipunan so that they could continue the war against the Spanish.  So in the summer of 1898 the United States and the Katipunan were allies.  Neither party was willing to look beyond the fall of the Spanish power to the inevitable conflict of interest which lay ahead.

On June 12, 1898 Aguinaldo proclaimed the independence of the Philippines and on June 23, 1898 he announced the formation of a Revolutionary Government with himself as the President.  The author is quick to point out that Aguinaldo's revolution was far different from the American revolution of 1776.  Aguinaldo came from the group of rich landowners known as the "principales".  In the government which Aguinaldo established voting was restricted only to the principale class.  Thus, the vast majority of Filipinos were disenfranchised.  This was one reason for the ultimate failure of the revolution.

By July 1898 the entire American 8th Corps had arrived and was now ready to tackle the Spanish.  There was just one little problem.  By that time the Spanish with about 13,000 soldiers were being besieged in Manila by an equal force of Filipinos led by Aguinaldo.  The Americans managed to convince their allies the Filipinos to allow them a narrow front on the city so that they could attack it.

On August 13, 1898 the First Battle of Manila took place.  But the Spanish had little stomach to fight, being besieged by both Americans and Filipinos.  The Spanish commander had prearranged with the American commander, that the Spanish garrison would put up enough resistance to satisfy Spanish honor and then call it quits.  As part of the agreement the Americans promised to keep Aguinaldo's forces out of the city.  The Spanish feared that if Aguinaldo's forces entered the city there would be a blood bath.  So the Americans
entered Manila with comparative ease.  The Spanish power which had existed for centuries in the Philippines was now abruptly over.

When Aguinaldo learned that the Americans and Spanish had conspired behind his back, he was furious.  He was even more furious to learn that his troops were being denied access to the capital.  If Aguinaldo had ordered his forces to attack the Spanish before August 13 he might well have captured the city before the Americans, which might well have changed the entire dynamics of the peace conference.  It was only the first of Aguinaldo's many mistakes.

With the capture of Manila, most American troops and officers assumed that the war was over.  They couldn't have been more wrong.  Merritt promptly sought a transfer and was granted it.  He was replaced by General Elwell Otis.  As part of the peace treaty ending the Spanish-American War, Spain ceded control of the entire Philippines to the United States.  One war was ending.  Another was beginning.  McKinley ordered Otis to extend United States control over the entire Philippines.  The mission of the United States military was one of "benevolent assimilation".  Of course, this was nothing more than an American euphemism for
colonization.  The thousands of Filipino soldiers who had taken up arms for the Katipunan had other ideas.

The next six months were a period of increasing tension between the American occupiers and the Filipino forces.  Aguinaldo had established his capital at Malolos, a town situated about twenty miles northwest of Manila.  His forces were arrayed around the suburbs of Manila so that the Americans were essentially besieged inside the capital.  Aguinaldo appointed General Antonio Luna to lead his forces, now formally called the Army of Liberation.  Luna sought to mold his army into one capable of fighting a European-style ground war.  This was to have disastrous consequences for the Filipino side.

Tensions came to a head on the night of February 4, 1899.  An American patrol encountered a Filipino patrol on the perimeter of the American-held territory and shooting broke out.  Both sides would later claim that the other side fired first.  Whatever the case, the Americans misinterpreted the incident as a full-fledged Filipino attack on their positions, and so they launched a counter-attack the next morning.  What ensued is known as the Second Battle of Manila.  With support from Navy gunships the American infantry charged the Filipino lines both to the north and the south of Manila.

What resulted was a complete Filipino rout.  Defensive positions that it had taken the Filipinos months to construct were overrun in a few hours.  The Army of Liberation suffered an estimated 4,000 casualties (700 of them deaths) versus 238 casualties for the Americans (44 of them deaths).  In terms of casualties this would be the single biggest battle of the entire war.  The Army of Liberation retreated northward towards its capital at Malolos.

What had gone wrong for the Filipino side?  While there are perhaps many culprits the author focuses on the lack of coordination of the various units and the lack of training of the Filipino troops.  Although many Filipino soldiers individually fought very bravely, there was a complete lack of coordination.  So that one Filipino unit did not support other Filipino units either on offense or defense.  Thus, they were picked apart one by one.  Also, the Americans noticed that Filipino soldiers would fire from very close range and miss their targets.  Because of the extreme shortage of ammunition Luna could not afford to waste it on target practice for his troops, something they were in extreme need of.

On March 25, 1899 Otis launched a new campaign designed to capture Aguinaldo's capital of Malolos.  If the Americans were lucky they might even capture the Katipunan government intact and thus bring the war to a speedy conclusion.  The Americans entered Malolos four days later but they found it abandoned and burning.  Luna had ordered a scorched earth policy be adopted.  All towns that were about to fall into American hands would be put to the torch.  During the next several months this pattern would be repeated.  Aguinaldo would shift his capital north along with his army, but as soon as the Americans were about to enter the town he would burn it and go onto the next town.  By May the Army of Liberation had retreated all the way to Pampanga province without having defeated the Americans in a single battle.

Meanwhile, the Americans were running into difficulties trying to establish their authority in other parts of the Philippines.  For example, an American ship anchored off the town of Iloilo on the island of Panay on December 28, 1898.  The town was under the control of the revolutionary leader Martin Delgado.  The Americans attempted to negotiate their entry into the city but they were rebuffed.  On February 11, 1899 the Americans shelled the city and landed infantry.  But by that time Delgado had already torched the city and retreated to the hinterland.

In theory the revolutionaries in the Visayas were subordinate to the Malolos government, and they were supposed to collect taxes and forward them to the Malolos government.  In practice, they were virtually autonomous even among themselves.  For example, the island of Negros had two different revolutionary governments, one on the west coast and one on the east coast.  And the two governments didn't get along.  At first the Americans believed that strong resistance to American rule only existed among the Tagalog ethnic group and that the peoples of the Visayas would welcome American rule.  They were soon to find out just how wrong this notion was.  Some of the most savage fighting of the war took place in the Visayas.

Ironically, one of the hotbeds of violence in the Philippines today was comparatively easy for the American conquerors.  That is the island of Mindanao.  During the summer of 1899 the Sultan of Sulu signed a treaty acknowledging American sovereignty over Mindanao.  The Filipino revolutionaries were Christians and hence the enemies of the Sultan, and so he chose to ally himself with a powerful force, the Americans.

In October of 1899 Otis devised a plan to crush the Army of Liberation once and for all.  Three army divisions would encircle Aguinaldo's forces and destroy them.  The first would advance northwestward into Pangasinan province.  The second would advance northeastward into Nueva Ecija province.  And the third would land at Lingayen Gulf closing the back door for Aguinaldo's escape.  And the Americans came close to catching Aguinaldo himself, but he once again managed to elude them and escape into Isabela province on the northeast coast of Luzon.  However, the Army of Liberation was severely mauled.  So much so that on November 13, 1899 Aguinaldo ordered that the Army of Liberation be dispersed into smaller, more flexible units.  The conventional war was ending.  The guerilla war was beginning.

The Filipino guerilla movement was much trickier for the Americans to deal with.  The guerillas were able to attack when it suited them.  At other times they were able to stash their weapons and blend in with the general population.  At the beginning of 1900 the Americans made another mistake by assuming that the war was over just because the Army of Liberation had been defeated conventionally.  They busied themselves about the task of organizing civilian government and rebuilding the Philippines.

Otis was replaced by General Arthur MacArthur (father of Douglas MacArthur).  During the first half of 1900 MacArthur concentrated on setting up civilian government in the various towns.  Many tasks which we today don't associate with the military, were now the job of the Army.  Roads were built.  Schools were built.  Sanitation systems were built.  Local police units were established.  With all of these activities going on the military lost sight of its main objective, the defeat of the rebels.

The revolutionaries were able to set up shadow governments in many of the towns.  The penalty for any Filipinos caught collaborating with the Americans was death.  Soon the Filipinos living in the towns realized that the American occupiers could not protect them from the revolutionaries.  During 1900 more and more American patrols came under attack.  The situation was rapidly spinning out of control.  In December 1900 MacArthur ordered harsher measures against the guerillas.  This came to be known as pacification.

The author is quick to point out that pacification policy varied widely from place to place.  One of the most extreme examples of pacification took place on the island of Samar.  On September 28, 1901 a group of rebels attacked the American garrison in the town of Balangiga on the south coast.  Forty-eight Americans were killed in one of the worst disasters of the war for the American side.  Brigadier General Jacob Smith was put in command of the American forces on Samar and he vowed to make the interior of Samar "a howling wilderness".  He issued orders to treat all Filipino males above the age of ten found outside American controlled territory as hostile combatants.

What followed was the most shameful campaign of the war.  A unit of Marines was unleashed on the unhappy inhabitants of the island and they managed to burn more than two hundred houses in a three month period.  Filipinos were summarily executed for merely being suspected of being guerilla sympathizers.  Suspected guerillas were tortured into confessing.  All in all, it was a shameful record by the U.S. military.  Although some of the worst offenders were eventually court-martialed, the Samar campaign severely tarnished the Army's reputation.

The year 1901 also saw one of the most daring feats of the war.  On March 23, a small American-led detachment of Filipino scouts broke into Aguinaldo's camp in Palanan, Isabela province and captured the leader.  Aguinaldo was subsequently taken to Manila where he issued a statement calling for all revolutionary forces to surrender.  This did much to take the wind out of the revolutionaries' sails.  By the next year 1902 the guerilla movement was essentially dead.

The guerilla movement had lost the support of the people in the towns, from whom it extorted recruits and taxes.  The campaign of terror which the guerillas instituted against American collaborators backfired by driving these people fully into the American camp for their own safety.  By 1901 the guerillas were no longer welcome in the towns.  Instead, the townspeople would lead patrols of American soldiers right to the guerilla hideouts.  The guerillas had become the hunted, not the hunters.  On July 4, 1902 the American governor William Taft (who would later become President) declared the Philippine War over.

Overall, I enjoyed this book immensely and I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in American history or the history of the Philippines.  If I do have a complaint, it's that there are not enough maps in this book.  As a reader of military history I enjoy maps with arrows showing which units went which way.  This book suffers in that department.  But overall, I found the author to be very knowledgeable and he doesn't appear to have any particular political axe to grind.  So I give it four stars.