The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912Blount, James H. (James Henderson)
History
The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912
Blount, James H. (James Henderson)
Philippines -- History -- 1898-1946; Philippines -- Politics and government -- 1898-1935
If to the three provinces above named you add the province of Samar,
later of dark and bloody fame, you have a fourth province as to which
not only had there been no "civil" government organized on paper, but
no claim yet made by any one that we had ever conquered it. We had been
so busy in Luzon and elsewhere that we had not yet had time to bother
very much with Samar. The area of Samar is 5276 square miles, and its
population 266,237. (See the census tables already cited.) In their
report dated October 15, 1901, [377] you find the Commission admitting
that "the insurrection still continues in Batangas, Samar, Cebu" and
"parts of" Laguna and Tayabas provinces. Now the euphemistic limitation
implied in the words "parts of" is quite negligible, for any serious
purpose, since our troops kept the insurgents rather constantly on the
move, and the population in all the "parts of" any province that was
still holding out backed up the combatants morally and materially,
with information as to our movements, supplies, etc., whenever
the insurgent detachments, in the course of their peregrinations,
happened to pass through those "parts." So, to make a recapitulation
presenting the political situation admitted by the Commission to exist
a little over three months after the inauguration of civil government,
we have the insurrection still in progress as follows:
Province Area (sq. m.) Population
Batangas 1,201 257,715
Cebu 1,939 653,727
Bohol 1,511 269,223
Laguna 629 148,606
Tayabas 5,993 153,065
Samar 5,276 266,237
------ ---------
Total 16,549 1,748,573
According to his own official statements, it thus appears that on
October 15th, after Governor Taft set up his "civil" government on
the Fourth of July, throughout one-fifth of the territory and among
one-fourth of the population insurrection was rampant. The total
area of the archipelago, if Mohammedan Mindanao be excepted (for the
reason that the Moros never had anything to do with the Filipinos
and their insurrection against us), is about 80,000 square miles,
having a total population of 7,000,000. So that, to restate the
case, one-fifth of the house was still on fire, and one-fourth of
the inmates were trying their best to keep the fire from being put out.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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