WI:Balkanization or Partitioning the Philippines, is it possible for the superpowers to balkanize the philippines or at least partition it.
WI:Balkanization or Partitioning the Philippines, is it possible for the superpowers to balkanize the philippines or at least partition it.
There was debate amongst the Americans as to how much of the Philippines should be annexed after the Spanish-American War. Interestingly, everybody was leaning to just annexing Luzon and some nearby islands until one of McKinley's friends had a conversation with him and convinced him of the necessity of grabbing the whole archipelago.
That gives you Americans - Luzon and adjacent, Spanish - remainder.
In OTL, the Germans wanted an island in the Sulu Archipelago for a naval base, and they almost traded one of their recently-purchased (from Spain) atolls in exchange for Tawi-Tawi. If they offer hard cash to the Spanish in the aftermath of the alt-Spanish-American War where Spain keeps mostly everything but Luzon, you get
Americans - Luzon (and adjacent islands)
Germans - Tawi-Tawi (and possibly more of the Sulu islands)
Spanish - Everything else
That's three separate countries in fairly quick succession:
1914: UK (from Singapore) or France (from Saigon) or Japan (from Formosa, less likely) grabs Tawi-Tawi from small German colonial contingent, administered as separate League of Nations mandate.
1945-ish: US grants independence to Luzon.
1950's - 1970's: UK or France grants independence to its Mandate in the Sulus.
By 1975: Spain grants independence to everything else.
Yes it is possible depends when the POD happens. We could see a balkanized Philippines had Americans decides not to colonize the Philippines and the Spaniards leave the country for good in 1899 (one year delay than in OTL).
WI:Balkanization or Partitioning the Philippines, is it possible for the superpowers to balkanize the philippines or at least partition it.