The Philippines Was Sold for $20 Million

[00:00:00]Something doesn't add up here.

[00:00:02]>> [music] >> A country fights for freedom for 300 years, wins, and still gets sold. The Philippines had been under Spanish rule for centuries. By the late 1800s, Filipino revolutionaries were close, really close to independence. Then suddenly, a new player enters the story, [music] the United States. In 1898, during the Spanish-American War, Admiral George Dewey sails into Manila Bay and destroys the Spanish fleet [music] in just 7 hours. Game over for Spain.

[00:00:36]America tells Filipino leader Emilio Aguinaldo, "We're here to help you win your freedom." [music] So, he believes them. Filipino fighters join US troops. Together, they defeat Spain. Victory, right? Not exactly.

[00:00:51]>> [music] >> December 1898, Spain signs the Treaty of Paris, and just like that, the Philippines is sold to the United [music] States for $20 million.

[00:01:02]Sold, like property. No Filipinos in the room, no say, [music] no freedom.

[00:01:09]By early 1899, the truth becomes impossible to ignore. America isn't leaving. They're replacing Spain. War erupts, [music] and what follows isn't liberation, it's something far darker.

[00:01:24]US General Jacob H. Smith gives a chilling order.

[00:01:27]>> [music] >> Kill and burn. The more you kill, the better.

[00:01:31]Entire villages are wiped out, civilians shot, >> [music] >> prisoners tortured with what soldiers called the water cure. Between 200,000 [music] and 1 million Filipinos die, most of them civilians.

[00:01:45]Writer Mark Twain puts it bluntly, [music] "We have pacified some thousands and buried them."

[00:01:51]But back home, President Theodore Roosevelt calls it a triumph of civilization.

[00:01:57]Let that sink in.

[00:01:59]The war ends in 1902. America controls the Philippines for nearly 50 years.

[00:02:05]Independence doesn't come until 1946 after another war, another occupation, and after the US no longer needs the islands. So here's the part that really hits. In 1898, America promised freedom.

[00:02:20]What it delivered was conquest, bloodshed, and called it civilization.