page_title: Filipino nationalism
section_title: Insular Government
hierarchical_section_title: Filipino nationalism / The Insular Government and the Commonwealth era (1901–1941) / Insular Government
caption_attribution_description: English: William Howard Taft, with Governor-General James E. Smith, Addressing the audience while reading a proclamation from president Theodore Roosevelt establishing the Philippine Assembly.
context_page_description: Filipino nationalism refers to the awakening and support towards a political identity associated with modern Philippines leading to a wide-ranging campaign for political, social, and economic freedom in the Philippines. This gradually emerged out of various political and armed movements throughout most of the Spanish East Indies—albeit has long been fragmented and inconsistent with contemporary definitions of such nationalism—as a consequence of more than three centuries of Spanish rule. These movements are characterized by the upsurge of anti-colonialist sentiments and ideals which peaked in the late 19th century led mostly by the ilustrado or landed, educated elites, whether peninsulares, insulares, or native. This served as the backbone of the first nationalist revolution in Asia, the Philippine Revolution of 1896. The modern concept would later be fully actualized upon the inception of a Philippine state with its contemporary borders after being granted independence by the United States by the 1946 Treaty of Manila.
context_section_description: The 1902 Philippine Organic Act was a constitution for the Insular Government, as the U.S. civil administration was known. This was a form of territorial government that reported to the Bureau of Insular Affairs. The act provided for a governor general appointed by the U.S. president and an elected lower house. It also disestablished the Catholic Church as the state religion.
  Two years after completion and publication of a census, a general election was conducted for the choice of delegates to a popular assembly. An elected Philippine Assembly was convened in 1907 as the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the Philippine Commission as the upper house. Every year from 1907 the Philippine Assembly and later the Philippine Legislature passed resolutions expressing the Filipino desire for independence.
  Philippine nationalists led by Manuel Quezón and Sergio Osmeña enthusiastically endorsed the draft Jones Bill of 1912, which provided for Philippine independence after eight years, but later changed their views, opting for a bill which focused less on time than on the conditions of independence. The nationalists demanded complete and absolute independence to be guaranteed by the United States, since they feared that too-rapid independence from American rule without such guarantees might cause the Philippines to fall into Japanese hands. The Jones bill was rewritten and passed Congress in 1916 with a later date of independence.
  The law, officially the Philippine Autonomy Act but popularly known as the Jones Law, served as the new organic act (or constitution) for the Philippines. Its preamble stated that the eventual independence of the Philippines would be American policy, subject to the establishment of a stable government. The law maintained the Governor General of the Philippines, appointed by the President of the United States, but established a bicameral Philippine Legislature to replace the elected Philippine Assembly (lower house); it replaced the appointive Philippine Commission (upper house) with an elected senate.
  The Filipinos suspended their independence campaign during the First World War and supported the United States against Germany. After the war they resumed their independence efforts. The Philippine legislature funded an independence mission to the U.S. in 1919. The mission departed Manila on February 28 and met in the U.S. with and presented their case to Secretary of War Newton D. Baker. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, in his 1921 farewell message to Congress, certified that the Filipino people had performed the condition imposed on them as a prerequisite to independence, declaring that, this having been done, the duty of the U.S. is to grant Philippine independence.
  After the first independence mission, public funding of such missions was ruled illegal. Subsequent independence missions in 1922, 1923, 1930, 1931 1932, and two missions in 1933 were funded by voluntary contributions. Numerous independence bills were submitted to the U.S. Congress, which passed the Hare–Hawes–Cutting Bill on December 30, 1932. U.S. President Herbert Hoover vetoed the bill on January 13, 1933. Congress overrode the veto on January 17, and the Hare–Hawes–Cutting Act became U.S. law. The law promised Philippine independence after 10 years, but reserved several military and naval bases for the United States, as well as imposing tariffs and quotas on Philippine exports.  The law also required the Philippine Senate to ratify the law. Quezon urged the Philippine Senate to reject the bill, which it did. Quezon himself led the twelfth independence mission to Washington to secure a better independence act. The result was the Tydings–McDuffie Act of 1934 which was very similar to the Hare–Hawes–Cutting Act except in minor details.  The Tydings–McDuffie Act was ratified by the Philippine Senate. The law provided for the granting of Philippine independence by 1946.
caption: William Howard Taft addressing the audience at the First Philippine Assembly in the Manila Grand Opera House
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