WI Phillipines modernize in a way similar to Japan?

Do any of you guys think that there would be a way to have the Phillipines rapidly modernize to the pointo of being more advanced than Japan by World War II?

The POD would need to be after the US chooses to release their hold on the territory after liberating it in the Spanish-American War. This could probably lead to a whole other thread in 'after 1900'.

Once we figure out how this could occur, what do you guys think the implications could be in history?

Thanks for your participation!
 
Highly doubt that. Its more thru the efforts of the Spanish and the Americans that that entire archipelago is a nation state today. Aguinaldo and his followers probably have very little political capital outside their home districts or local areas. The islands will never be as industrially capable as the Japanese Home Islands and aren't even close today. Without the US its likely that the recently independent Filipinos will become economically and then militarily dominated by another power - those most likely being Germany, Japan and the US.
 
Not really. The Tokugawa period left Japan an extremely centralized and stable government with an extensive bureaucracy, and increasingly productive agriculture led to a swollen urban population and a growing merchant class... These factors made Japan an ideal candidate for modernisation, and unlike China, Japan avoided entanglement with Europeans until it had the means to hold them at arm's length.

The Philippines had none of these advantages, unfortunately. For a start they never had a chance to avoid economic domination by Europeans. Second: the economic infrastructure was appallingly bad... Third: In social terms the islands were typical of a European colony; an inertial mass of tribal groups overlaid by a thin veneer of creole elites. Not a good environment for modern state formation.
 
I think that the best chance that the Philippines can get is getting independent by the same time that latin america did... a caudillesque banana republic in east asia. Another idea is to make the Philippines still connected with Mexico after the independence (The islands were part of the New Spain Vice Kingdom)... By the way, I think that the time of the spanish-american war is a little bit late to 'pull the meiji'.
 
I think that the best chance that the Philippines can get is getting independent by the same time that latin america did... a caudillesque banana republic in east asia. Another idea is to make the Philippines still connected with Mexico after the independence (The islands were part of the New Spain Vice Kingdom)... By the way, I think that the time of the spanish-american war is a little bit late to 'pull the meiji'.
Philippines was not completely colonized those in the cordillera of Luzon and majority of mindanao was not colonized....

I think it would be better avoid the spanish colonization or stop the colonization completely and have luzon empire fully islamize to a sultanate and prosper and make a union with the Maguindanao Sultanate then pull a Hideyoshi....

The resulting country will have Kapampangan as the official language
 
Top