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PoD- 1822- On entering Mexico City, or the eve of victory, Iturbide and his supporters in the Army of Three Guarantees specify that the Plan of Iguala applies to New Spain/Mexico and all its administrative dependencies and sends this pronunciamento to all these areas. Since OTL’s Mexican Empire initially held sway over everything between Oregon & Panama as the inheritance of New Spain, the main difference is that the Mexican Empire claims the Philippines & the rest of the Spanish East Indies from its inception. The Mexican Empire also claims Cuba & Puerto Rico, but the pronunciamento has no net effect there because loyal Spanish troops and fleets operated in strength in the Caribbean.
In the Pacific however, the Mexican Empire is able to make its declaration stick. Up until this moment, the Philippines et al have all been under an intermediate layer of administration under Mexico city, rather than directly controlled from Madrid. More importantly, the Philippines commercial, postal and demographic connections were much closer to Mexico than to Spain, which rarely made use of Indian ocean shipping routes and had no territorial possessions on that ocean. I am not certain if
Iturbide & co remember to include the Philippines because of its usefulness in trading ties to the orient, and the desire to deny any Pacific bases for any reconquista attempt by Madrid. Spanish naval officials on the Pacific coast of Mexico are simply appointed to the Mexican Imperial Navy at the equivalent rank or better. The news takes a few months to reach Manila. Filipino Criollos in Mexico at the time who favor Iturbide’s plan go back to Manila and Guam with the pronunciamento from Mexico City.
The local criollos and other elites on the island go along with these decrees after a degree of debating, fighting and manuevering. At the beginning, they expect and want to be ruled by a Bourbon, just like the Iturbide movement inMexico.
So, the Philippines is broken from Spain 76 years early, and becomes a de facto extension of Latin America. The Mexican Empire and the Mexican republic have little real capacity to defend or closely administer the Spanish East Indies, but neither is Spain very well poised to reconquer the territory. Also, I would presume Britain would tend to look as favorably on independence of the Spanish East Indies as it did on the independence of Spanish America.
The Philippines and rest of the Spanish East Indies are a state within first, the Mexican Empire and then the Mexican Republic. They will be remote districts that tend to make little impact on the Mexican center. Initially, European-descended Criollos will be dominant in the state and church. Post-independence though, Philippine history will diverge as the islands end up more responsive and attuned to political changes in Mexico rather than Spain.
The Philippines will likely become an independent republic before too long passes. Probably, they will break away during the 1830s, when Texas, the Rio Grande and other regions were breaking away. The centrifugal forces that caused those revolts and led to the breakaway of Central America suggest that
even Fliipino Criollos will not find rule from Mexico City compellingly appealing over the long-term. And Mexico will have little capacity or priority to invest in compelling the Philippines and Indies to remain united with Mexico, given their difficulties closer to home.
By 1836 or so, the Philippines and Micronesia are a formally independent unit administered from Manila. Manila’s writ cover the southern half of Luzon, the Visayas, eastern Palawan and northern Mindanao within the archipelago. Other areas are controlled by the Sulu Sultanate, local tribes in the north, and local Datus in Mindanao. In Micronesia, only Guam, and possibly Saipan, are actively administered in any sense by Manila. The rest of Micronesia is sparsely populated and under pre-European style governance mostly. Guam, Saipan and Micronesia would have independence for the taking, but probably don’t bother to take it on a permanent basis.
So from 1836 we have a novel situation. The Philippines are a post-colonial society at a time when most of Asia and Africa is pre-colonial. Parts of the territory Manila formally administers will be little effected by the colonial legacy. However, there will be a central government centered on Manila. It will likely be a Republic, but even if Manila has its own Emperor, it will be under European derived instutions, taking their cues more from the models of Iturbide and Napoleon rather than the Emperors of Asian states.
Manila will continue extensive trade relations with China and Mexico, and become open to British and Dutch trade. Particularly before treaty ports in China proliferate, the Philippines will be an important trade entrepot.
Domestic distrubances over the racial caste system, class interests, political ambition and ideology and numerous ungoverned spaces will be a much bigger threat to any Manila regime for most decades of the 19th century than any external threat. Borders with independent Malay states will probably be vague, disputed and undefined.
The Dutch and British may interve to batter down any trade restrictions a Manila regime tries to impose, but territorial aggradizement in the tropics was not the European style in the 1830s and 1850s. Likewise, Confucian based states like China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam were not pursuing overseas expansion either.
Since the Philippines will be interested in European and American commercial and cultural links, the west will not need to fight or threaten for access in the Philippines in the same way it did in China and Japan. The Philippines will have limited, but interesting relations with its neighbors, the Dutch East Indies, Malay states, Vietnam, China, Japan, Siam and maybe Korea. Filipinos will interact only under such terms as those states allow, knowing they cannot force them to act otherwise.
As in OTL, the French probably begin colonizing southern Vietnam in the 1850s. They may hire many mercenaries for their expeditions from the Philippines.
However, even as high-colonialism becomes popular from the 1880s, the Philippines will likely remain uncolonized precisely because it is a majority Christian country, with many European derived institutions and is easier to deal with on a commercial basis than other regional states. As we get to the turn of the century any debt and trade troubles will lead to American and European threats of gunboat diplomacy against Manila.
However, by that point the Philippines will have fifty years experience of independent statehood, and will accordingly probably have survival skills and legitimacy in western eyes on par with governments in the Caribbean. It will certainly have full diplomatic and commercial relations with the US and Europe before China, Japan or Korea do.
My knowledge of the Philippines is limited, but I can say in broad strokes that over the 19th century power will ultimately diffuse a bit beyond the small numbers of Spanish-descended Criollos. The islands will remain independent. However, I can’t guess at the details of politics, what the borders are in the Sulu sea, if there are any additional secessions that stick, how often there is dictatorial versus parliamentary rule and how much of its priviledge and property the Catholic Church can maintain through 1900. I’d appreciate any thoughts on that.
Also, I haven’t ventured a guess as to how prosperous and developed the islands will be by 1900 and then later in the 20th century. They could do better, the same or somewhat worse than OTL. I’d like your thoughts on how they would do and why, and what their mid-twentieth century level of military capability is likely to be, especially relative to neighboring states and powers.
In a variant on this theme, we could suppose the Philippines remain under Mexico city through the 1840s. That extends Mexicos interest in Pacific trade and naval affairs much further and could result in a larger and more formidable Mexican navy operating on the Mexican coast up through California. Mexico still is not made more likely to hold its northern territories coveted by the US. The US probably would not take any Central or West Pacific territories from Mexico as spoils of war, primarily because of lack of ambition and racial fears, but if the US does, more thinly populated northern and eastern territories like the Marshalls and Marianas are more likely to be annexed than the Philippines itself.
Once the American and European expat culture really increases in Hawaii starts to develop in mid-19th century, it may link up with independent Philippines and Micronesia in a way that did not occur in OTL. Conceivably we could have a period where a white-run Hawaiian Republic contests portions of Micronesia with a Criollo & Mestizo run Philippine Republic, with each side being able to exercise its power more effectively based on proximity, though its not terribly likely as both will have major domestic concern
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