The Road to 1898: On American Empire and the Philippine Revolution

‘1898’ marks the birth of both the American empire and the Filipino nation when the U.S. Navy joined forces with Filipino revolutionists in ending Spain’s rule. The alliance ended when the Americans refused to recognise the Filipino republic and forcibly occupied the islands. Hopkins situates both the ‘coming of age’ of America and the rise of a Filipino nationalist elite against a wider backdrop of imperial rivalries, economic transformations, and stages of globalisation in which the British Empire looms large. The essay builds on Hopkins’s account of Spanish rule leading to the Revolution. In contrast to Cuba, the Philippine interior was left relatively untouched, controlled mainly through the friar-curates who lorded it over the town centres but not their peripheries. Following upon Hopkins’s discussion of the three foundational nationalists–Jose Rizal, Andres Bonifacio, and Emilio Aguinaldo–their differences can be explained by the peculiarities of the Spanish colonial system and how each of them related to their society.