Philippine History

The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines is an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. In the western Pacific Ocean, Philippines consists of 7,641 islands which are broadly categorized in three main geographical divisions from north to south: Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. The Philippines is bounded by the South China Sea to the west, the Philippine Sea to the east, and the Celebes Sea to the southwest. It shares maritime borders with Taiwan to the north, Japan to the northeast, Palau to the east and southeast, Indonesia to the south, Malaysia to the southwest, Vietnam to the west, and China to the northwest. It is the world's thirteenth-most-populous country, with diverse ethnicities and cultures. The country's Capital is Manila, and its largest city is Quezon City both are within Metro Manila. The Negritos are the archipelago's earliest inhabitants, were followed by waves of Austronesian peoples. The adoption of Animism, Hinduism and Islam established island-kingdoms known as kedatuan, rajahnates, and sultanates. The arrival of Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese explorer leading a fleet for Spain, marked the beginning of Spanish colonization. In 1543, Spanish explorer Ruy López de Villalobos named the archipelago Las Islas Filipinas in honor of Philip II of Spain. Spanish settlement through Mexico, beginning in 1565, led to the Philippines becoming ruled by the Spanish Empire for 333years. The Spaniards introduce the Catholicism and became the dominant religion in the most of the Country especially Luzon and Visayas archipelago. While the capital of the Philippines, Manila became the western hub of trans-Pacific trade. The Philippine Revolution began in 1896, which became intertwine with the 1898 Spanish–American War. Spain hand over the territory to the United States, and Filipino revolutionaries declared the First Philippine Republic. The ensuing Philippine–American War ended with the United States controlling the territory until the Japanese invasion of the islands during World War II. After liberation, the Philippines became independent in 1946. The unitary sovereign state has had a deafening experience with democracy, which included the overthrow of a decades-long dictatorship in a nonviolent revolution.