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PHILIPPINES. The Republic of
the Philippines is the only predominantly Christian nation
in Asia and has a unique heritage of Malay, Spanish, and
American cultures. Ruled by Spain for nearly 330 years until
1898, its cultural characteristics are today in some ways
more like those of the nations of Latin America than those
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Philippine
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Philippine
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Philippine
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Philippine
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- Independence |
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Southeast Asia, the ten-nation geographic region to which it
belongs. |
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Spanish language, however, is spoken by less than 1 percent of
the population, in spite of Spain's long colonial rule. On the
other hand, the Spanish heritage is visible in other features of
national life. For example, about 85 percent of the population
is Roman Catholic; there is a predominance of Spanish
place-names and family names, and the patterns of land tenancy
and ownership can be traced to the Spanish period. |
American colonial influence prevailed from about 1901 until the
late 1940s. Major legacies of that period are an American-style
educational system and, with it, the teaching of English, which
today is spoken as a second language by about two fifths of the
population. Along with Pilipino, a language derived from Tagalog,
English is one of the two official languages.
The Philippines achieved full political independence in 1946,
following four years of occupation by Japanese armed forces
during World War II. The period since independence has been
marked by repeated crises political upheavals, including peasant
insurrections, student demonstrations, Communist insurgencies,
and Muslim rebellions; and natural disasters, including
typhoons, floods, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions. High
birthrates, combined with high population densities in some
areas, are evidence that overpopulation is a significant problem
in the country. This is a common feature in many less developed
countries.
Although there has been some economic improvement since World
War II, the Philippines has not made as much progress as other
Asian nations notably Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore.
The persistence of political, environmental, and population
problems make it difficult to raise the general level of
prosperity. Another long-term problem has been the nation's
overdependence on income from exporting such primary commodities
as sugar, timber, copper, gold, and coconuts. Nations that
supply such raw materials are often at the mercy of world market
prices, over which they have no control. The Philippines'
overdependence on raw material exports has diminished somewhat
during recent years, but some of the newer economic activities,
such as garment manufacturing, create only low-skill and
low-wage jobs that have not greatly raised the standard of
living for a majority of the people.
The Philippines is one of the five founding members of the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), an economic
common market that was formed on August 8, 1967. The other
founding members were Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and
Singapore. These are all generally free-market economies that
are closely tied to the United States, Japan, and the nations of
Western Europe by political alliances and trade and aid
relations. The Islamic sultanate of Brunei joined ASEAN in 1984.
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