Philippines

From barangays and spice-trade sultanates to Asia's first republic and the home of People Power.

The Philippines is an archipelago of more than seven thousand islands whose history runs from Austronesian seafarers and the autonomous barangays of the datus, through the Indianised polities and the Islamic sultanates of Sulu and Maguindanao, into three and a half centuries of Spanish rule begun by Legazpi in 1565 and bound to the world by the Manila-Acapulco galleon trade. A national awakening led by Jose Rizal and the Katipunan of Andres Bonifacio erupted in revolution in 1896, and on 12 June 1898 Emilio Aguinaldo proclaimed independence, only for Spain to cede the islands to the United States. After a brutal Philippine-American War, an American colonial period and the Japanese occupation, the Republic of the Philippines won full independence on 4 July 1946. The young democracy endured the Marcos dictatorship and martial law until the peaceful People Power Revolution of 1986 restored it, and the modern republic endures to 2026.