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The first known human inhabitants in the Philippines were the ancestors of the people known today as Negritos or Aeta. Believed to have descended from Australo-Melanesian, these group are dark complexioned with curly hair brown hair. They are distinctively small and of short stature.
These Negritos and Aeta are believed to have migrated to the Philippines some 30,000 years ago from Borneo, Sumatra, and Malaya. The Malayans followed in successive waves.
On October 14, 1943, a "Philippine Republic" was established with Jose P. Laurel as president. Meanwhile, President Quezon, who escaped to the United States when the country fell, set up a government-in-exile in Washington. He died on August 1944. Vice President Sergio Osmena became president and returned to the Philippines with the first liberation forces on October 20, 1944 at Leyte. The Philippine government was established at Tacloban, Leyte on October 23, 1944. On July 5, 1945, McArthur announced the liberation of the Philippines. On January 1946, Osmena's leadership was challenged and Manuel Roxas became the president.
Ferdinand E. Marcos succeded to the presidency after defeating Macapagal in 1965. In 1973, Marcos replaced the constitution. A plebiscite gave Marcos the right to remain in office beyond the expiration of his term. Throughout the 1970s poverty and governmental corruption increased and Imelda Marcos, Ferdinand's wife, became more influential.
Martial law remained in force until 1981, when Marcos was reelected, amid accusations of electoral fraud. On August 31, 1983, opposition leader Benigno Aquino was assassinated at Manila Airport, which incited a new, more powerful wave of anti-Marcos dissent. Marcos's domestic and international support eroded and he fled the country on February 25, 1986, eventually obtaining asylum in the United States.
Corazon Aquino was declared the winner and became the new president. The government faced coup attempts, economic difficulties and the pressure to rid the Philippines of the U.S. military presence. In 1992, the U.S. bases were evacuated and Aquino declined to run for reelection and was succeeded by her former army chief of staff, Fidel Ramos. He was in office until Joseph Marcelo Estrada was elected president in 1998; however, in late 2000, he was charged with accepting millions of dollars in payoffs from illegal gambling operations and was impeached by the house of representatives on charges of graft and the supreme court stripped him of the presidency and Vice President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was sworn in as his successor.
Macapagal-Arroyo was elected president in her own right in May 2004, but on June 2005, she was beset by a vote-rigging charge based on a tape of a conversation she had with an election official. She denied the allegations while acknowledging that she had been recorded and apologizing for what she called a lapse in judgment.
Spanish Control
By 1571, another explorer, Miguel Lopez de Legaspi arrived and established the Spanish city of Manila on the site of a Moro town he had conquered the year before. By the end of the 16th century, Manila had become a leading commercial center of East Asia, carrying a flourishing trade with China, India, and the East Indies.
With Commodore George Dewey supplying Aguinaldo with arms, the Filipinos took the entire island of Luzon, except for the city of Manila. The Filipinos had also declared their independence and established a republic under the first democratic constitution ever known in Asia. In 1898, however, Spain transferred the treaty to the United States, closing the Spanish-American war but crushing the Filipinos' dream for independence.
In 1921, the Republicans regained power and the trend bringing the Pilipinos into the government was reversed. However, the advent of the Great Depression in the United States in the 1930s adn the first aggressive moves by Japan in Asia in 1931, the U.S. sentiment shifted toward the granting of immediate independence to the Philippines.
The Hare-Hawes-Cutting Act, passed by Congress in 1932, provided for complete independence of the islands in 1945 but Manuel L. Quezon, the leader of the dominant Nationalist party opposed it because of its threat of American tariffs against Philippine products and the provisions of leaving naval bases in U.S. hands. On March 1935, the legislature ratified the bill and Manuel L. Quezon was elected the first president in September 1935 and was inaugurated on November 15, 1935, the Commonwealth of the Philippines was formally established.
History of the Philippines - Wikipedia
An Online Guide about the Philippine History
Philippine History Site - Office of Multicultural Student Services University of Hawaii.
American-Philippine Relations - University of Michigan
The History of the Republic of the Philippines