Philippines

The Philippine archipelago has been inhabited for tens of thousands of years, with archaeological evidence pointing to early Negrito populations and successive Austronesian migrations from around 3000 BCE that introduced agriculture, pottery, and seafaring traditions. By the first millennium CE, coastal and riverine communities were embedded in maritime trade networks linking the islands to China, the Indianised polities of Southeast Asia, and the Malay world. From roughly the tenth century onward, organised polities emerged, including the Tagalog kingdoms of Tondo and Maynila on Luzon, the Visayan rajahnates of Cebu and Butuan, and, in the south, the Islamic sultanates of Sulu (founded in the fifteenth century) and Maguindanao, which spread Islam through Mindanao and adjacent islands.

Spanish contact began with Ferdinand Magellan's expedition in 1521, and sustained colonisation followed Miguel Lopez de Legazpi's arrival in 1565. Manila, founded in 1571, became the seat of a colonial government that ruled the islands as part of the Spanish Empire for more than three centuries, governed initially through the Viceroyalty of New Spain in Mexico. Catholicism was widely established, the Manila galleon trade linked Asia to the Americas, and the islands were named for King Philip II. Spanish authority was repeatedly contested by indigenous revolts, by Moro polities in the south that were never fully subjugated, and by brief British occupation of Manila from 1762 to 1764. A reformist propaganda movement led by figures such as Jose Rizal in the late nineteenth century gave way to the Philippine Revolution of 1896 and the proclamation of independence at Kawit on 12 June 1898.

The Treaty of Paris of 1898 transferred sovereignty from Spain to the United States, triggering the Philippine American War, which lasted into the early 1900s. American rule introduced a public school system, English as a lingua franca, and gradual self government, leading to the Commonwealth of the Philippines in 1935 under President Manuel Quezon. Japanese forces occupied the country from 1942 to 1945, and full independence was recognised on 4 July 1946. The early republic faced the Hukbalahap insurgency and rebuilding from wartime devastation, and in 1965 Ferdinand Marcos was elected president. Marcos declared martial law in 1972, ruling by decree until the People Power Revolution of February 1986 peacefully removed him from office and installed Corazon Aquino.

A new constitution promulgated in 1987 restored a presidential republic with a bicameral Congress and an independent judiciary. The closure of the United States bases at Clark and Subic in 1991 and 1992 marked a post Cold War recalibration of foreign policy, while the country pursued integration through ASEAN, of which it had been a founding member in 1967. Successive administrations under Fidel Ramos, Joseph Estrada, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, and Benigno Aquino III navigated economic liberalisation, recurrent insurgencies by communist and Moro groups, and natural disasters. A 2014 peace agreement led to the establishment of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao in 2019. Rodrigo Duterte served from 2016 to 2022, after which Ferdinand Marcos Jr. won the presidency in 2022.

The Philippines today is a unitary presidential constitutional republic, with executive authority vested in a directly elected president, legislative power held by the Senate and House of Representatives, and a judiciary headed by the Supreme Court.