During conflicts in the Philippines, bundok could quickly become contested area, unpredictable and difficult to navigate for both invaders and defenders. In any military conflict, topography and environment shape war, but importantly, the experience of war also shapes our perceptions of the environment. While American forces acclimated to prairies might still feel in control along the edges of an island, they found they were less safe as they proceeded inland, up into the dense forests and rugged terrain of an island’s mountains. Many American troops in the Philippines had begun their combat careers in the so-called Indian Wars, domestic suppression of tribal insurgencies on the wide-open prairie lands of the Great Plains.
The American military’s attempts to take possession was quickly met with violent resistance from a populace ready to throw off three centuries of colonial rule.
In the 1898 treaty ending the Spanish-American War, Spain ceded the Philippines to the United States despite the fact that the islands had declared their independence the previous year. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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