The Philippines, not American territory

Control of the Philippines is wrested from Spain. Great Britain, France, Germany, or Japan invade and conquer the Philippines, making it their colony. McKinley, not being able to fully decide what to be done with the Philippines, allows the aggressor to keep their new gain. I know, it leans closer to the ASB side but, I researched the subject and saw that these four nations mouth-watered over the Philippines and were hoping to have it.
 
Control of the Philippines is wrested from Spain. Great Britain, France, Germany, or Japan invade and conquer the Philippines, making it their colony. McKinley, not being able to fully decide what to be done with the Philippines, allows the aggressor to keep their new gain. I know, it leans closer to the ASB side but, I researched the subject and saw that these four nations mouth-watered over the Philippines and were hoping to have it.

This scenario is only in the imagination of American policy makers in 1898 to justify US invasion. It's not like philippines is easy pickings even for great powers.

The only nations that would have reward greater than cost are usa and germany since they lack ports near China. The next case would be how much resource and manpower germany would be willing to take the philippines since we know how usa did it in otl.

For GB, Japan and France, philippines has little to no value in 1898 to them with too high a cost to take.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
The Japanese could have done so

Certainly Filipino history would have been very different if the IJN had shown up off Manila Bay in 1897 or 1898, rather than where they were...

"Remember the Matsushima!"

The Japanese were hardly averse to imperializing in Asia at this point; if anything, given the lack of entanglements with the other great powers of the day, the Phillippines offers a simpler (if not easier) location for straightforward territorial aggrandizement for Japan than the Asian mainland.

If they cloak it in some early Co-Prosperity Sphere type of rhetoric, they are likely to find some allies among the Filipinos and avoid much outside scrutiny while the "civilizing" goes on...

Does the above justify US intervention? No, but it was a brutal era...

Best,
 
The Philippines would have suffered a Mexican Revolution-type civil war had the Americans never took over the entire archipelago and let the likes of Aguinaldo to establish a government. This has been discussed for many times here in the forum that the Philippines would be a candidate for balkanization for a while had the Americans never took over the entire archipelago. Aside from the Americans, only the Germans had the aspiration to take over the Philippine archipelago and later if in case WWI occurs as in OTL, the archipelago will turn into a Japanese colony.
 
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