Philippine-American War

The Philippine-American War broke out on 4 February 1899, only months after the United States acquired the Philippines from Spain in the Treaty of Paris that ended the Spanish-American War, when the newly proclaimed First Philippine Republic, led by President Emilio Aguinaldo, rejected American sovereignty over the islands its independence movement had already declared in June 1898. American forces under generals including Elwell Otis and Arthur MacArthur Jr. gradually overwhelmed the poorly equipped Filipino army, and after Aguinaldo's capture in 1901 the war was officially declared over on 4 July 1902, though Moro resistance in the southern Philippines continued in some areas until 1913. The conflict is estimated to have killed some 200,000 to 250,000 Filipino civilians, overwhelmingly from famine and disease rather than direct combat, and it provoked significant anti-imperialist opposition within the United States even as the islands remained an American territory until the creation of the self-governing Commonwealth of the Philippines in 1934 and full independence in 1946. The war marked the United States' first sustained experience of overseas colonial counterinsurgency and left a lasting imprint on Philippine language, religion and society.