W&M ScholarWorks Undergraduate Honors Theses Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 5-2015 Foundations of Empire: The American Military Government in the Philippine-American War, 1899-1902 Luke Frerichs College of William and Mary Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses Part of the Legal Commons, Military History Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Frerichs, Luke, "Foundations of Empire: The American Military Government in the Philippine-American War, 1899-1902" (2015). Undergraduate Honors Theses. Paper 884. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses/884 This Honors Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Undergraduate Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Frerichs 1 The United States in the Philippines The Philippine Islands were the scene of the United States’ lengthiest colonial undertaking. In June 1898, American soldiers under the overall command of Major General Wesley Merritt disembarked in the jungles around the archipelago’s colonial capital of Manila. The soldiers, the majority of whom were National Guardsmen, were ostensibly there to support local Filipino rebels in their war with Spain. The American naval and military expeditions to the islands intended to seize Manila to use as leverage against the Spanish in the pending peace negotiations that would end the Spanish-American War.1 However, instead of a temporary occupation, the American landings marked the beginning of United States rule in the Philippines. In August 1898, the Americans surprised their erstwhile allies against Spain by unilaterally occupying Manila.