Divided Philippines

Here's a thought.

The US in the Spanish-American War primarily focused on the island of Luzon, and the rebellion that the US supported mainly controlled Luzon and Mindoro by the end of the Spanish-American War.

Here, the US keeps Luzon and Mindoro. The Spanish proceed to sell the remainder of the islands to Germany in 1899, but the United States gets a bit testy about the idea. The result is a brokering in which the Federal State of the Visayas is recognized as an independent country (and convenient buffer state), the eastern Visayas and Busuanga come under American control, and the Germans gain Mindanao and Palawan.

American Luzon and East Visayas becomes independent as the Tagalog Republic, the Federal State of the Visayas is jealous of its sovereignty and thus opts against becoming part of any wider federation, and Mindanao (whether it be German, Japanese, American, or British come decolonization time) becomes independent as well (whether or not it includes Palawan, I am not sure).

One interesting knock-on effect would be that there wouldn't be the sizable migration of people from Luzon and Visayas to Mindanao TTL.

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Driftless

Donor
The Visaya's are a different combination of dialects than Luzon, with a somewhat smaller population base, so there may be some bumpy ground there. I'm not sure what dialects were common for Palawan in that era.
 
The Visaya's are a different combination of dialects than Luzon, with a somewhat smaller population base, so there may be some bumpy ground there. I'm not sure what dialects were common for Palawan in that era.

A lot of Visayans today seriously or half-seriously consider Luzon/Manilla folks to be somewhat imperial in the Philippines. I had a Visayan professor who said that when somebody asks a Visayan a question in Tagalog, they're going to answer in English on principal. If there's an independent (West/Central) Visayan State, perhaps Manilla will think it's very very important to assimilate the population there. Eastern Visayas today has about 4.5 million people (compared to ~55 in Luzon). Western-Central Visayas have about 15 million.

Palawan today is about half tagalog-speaking, but I wonder how much Tagalog being the standard indigenous language used by the government influenced this.



In 1900 Mindanao was pretty sparsely populated. American companies brought in a lot of Japanese contract workers actually in order to deal with labor shortages. There were 18,000 Japanese in Davao (which caused the city to be referred to as Little Japan) by WW2 and today there are estimate to be as many as 200,000 Japanese Mestizos in Japan.

In the 1920s the colonial government encouraged a lot of Visayan and Luzonian immigration to deal with what was perceived as overpopulation in the rest of the philippines and population scarcity in Mindanao as well.

I wonder how the Germans (and whatever colonists may come after, if at all) would deal with this. In Samoa they brought quite a bit of Chinese coolies. Perhaps there'd be a significant movement of Shandong Chinese to Mindanao TTL as well as Japanese?

Mindanao would be mostly muslim, buddhist, and shinto (with far fewer catholics from Luzon and visayas moving in) whereas Palawan would be Catholic. There could be tensions there perhaps.
 

Driftless

Donor
I wonder if any tensions between Americans/Filipinos in this universe would be improved by choosing a different Military Governor other than Gen Elwell Otis. In others places and times, he'd been a war criminal.

By comparisson, who might the German's pick as local headman? The Moros on Mindanao historically weren't always assimilated well by the succeeding Spanish/American/Philippine governments. Imperial Germany, while running their colonies efficiently, weren't above genocide themselves

Those two colonial evolutions could either go much better, or even more destructive, depending on who's in charge locally (IMO).
 
Also, how much of a naval base might the Germans develop on Mindanao? Davao probably?

Davao or Zamboanga. They might use an island in the Sulu Archipelago alternatively.


Would the Germans use a local headman? I'd think Samoa and New Guinea would be the models to look at OTL for how they'd run the place. Perhaps the Sultan of Sulu?
 

Driftless

Donor
Davao or Zamboanga. They might use an island in the Sulu Archipelago alternatively.


Would the Germans use a local headman? I'd think Samoa and New Guinea would be the models to look at OTL for how they'd run the place. Perhaps the Sultan of Sulu?

With a permanent military base, I'd think they'd also have a local military governor, maybe a naval officer?
 
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