What if America "liberated" the Philippines

A treaty is a possibility. However, the circumstance between the Philippines is different from Cuba right after the Spanish American war. The Philippines can agree to naval/coaling station, give USA commercial advantages or sign a mutual defense treaty. But most likely the philippines would want to keep its right deal foreign relations with other countries.

In Cuba, U.S. Army literally did the work load. USA had complete control regardless if the Cubans wanted the treaty or not. The Cubans were also smaller both in population and natural resources.

In the Philippines, the situation of Cuba doesn't hold true. The Philippines essentially can reject the treaty without the American being able to do anything except fight a war.

A treaty to guarantee mutual defense, a navy base, and commercial advantages sounds like the best bet for this to work. The question now is, what is going to happen next, how will this change history?
 
A treaty to guarantee mutual defense, a navy base, and commercial advantages sounds like the best bet for this to work. The question now is, what is going to happen next, how will this change history?

How this affect indepdence movement in Asia? Will USA use Philippines as proxy to liberate the Asian colonies?

Will Sun Yat Sen go to or ask from the Philippines? If the Philippines do finance Sun Yat Sen, does this make an earlier collapse of imperial China? Will this be the way that USA uses Philippines to proxy in China to have business advantages?

As a Japanese counterweight, would totally depend on how Philippines is led. Since this would be ATL, the rebel leaders in otl that were exiled, killed by the USA would be the ones leading. If I remember that stats correctly, the GDP per capita of the Philippines in 1900 is so close to Japan that it could have gone either way on who would be a better off nation.

Philippines in the long term would be Spanish speaking country rather than English one. You got more than 100k people alive in 1901, you got no disruption of food sources or medicine that accompanied the war. Money and resource that were used for fighting the USA can now be used for economic purposes.
 
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Driftless

Donor
How this affect indepdence movement in Asia? Will USA use Philippines as proxy to liberate the Asian colonies?

Will Sun Yat Sen go to or ask from the Philippines? If the Philippines do finance Sun Yat Sen, does this make an earlier collapse of imperial China? Will this be the way that USA uses Philippines to proxy in China to have business advantages?

As a Japanese counterweight, would totally depend on how Philippines is led. Since this would be ATL, the rebel leaders in otl that were exiled, killed by the USA would be the ones leading. If I remember that stats correctly, the GDP per capita of the Philippines in 1900 is so close to Japan that it could have gone either way on who would be a better off nation.

Philippines in the long term would be Spanish speaking country rather than English one. You got more than 100k people alive in 1901, you got no disruption of food sources or medicine that accompanied the war. Money and resource that were used for fighting the USA can now be used for economic purposes.

ITTL, with Spain removed from direct control, and the US more on the sidelines, what form might the economy have taken(agricultural, industrial, mercantile), and who would be the primary shapers of that development?
 
Certainly the Philippines stood a better chance of being conquered early by the Japanese, or possibly another European power might step in (Germany?).

Without question, this was America's biggest black mark as a colonial power and is not well documented in American history.
 
ITTL, with Spain removed from direct control, and the US more on the sidelines, what form might the economy have taken(agricultural, industrial, mercantile), and who would be the primary shapers of that development?

This would totally depend on who would be the leader/s the next 10-20 years. The leaders would change compared to OTL between 1901-1930s. But I suspect the leaders would be the same in 1930s and 1940s since Quezon was part of Aguinaldo's staff in 1898.

The first 10 years of leadership would be probably be toss up between Aguinaldo, Luna and Mabini.
 
the population of the Philippines in 1914 would be at least several hundred thousand greater

since the Americans killed at least that many suppressing the Filipino nationalists and regional insurgents
(see a pattern here anyone)

...

& the "Water Cure" as a US intelligence interrogation technique was also present during the insurrection ;)
 
I just remembered, Andrew Carnegie offered to "buy Philippine independence" for 20 million dollars. That could be hanging over the treaty, and help move it along. Would he have some interest in helping develop them? Also, remember the mutual defense treaty, which the Philippine government might be in fact happy to sign, guaranteeing them safety, will prevent them from getting attacked. Probably.
 
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