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You will find in history books the Filipino-American War of 1899–1902 but they fail to mention the genocide carried out by the United States of America on the people of the Philippines.
The History books that were written by the victors claim somewhere between 200,000 to 300,000 died in that period, which is still a large number considering the population of the Philippines at the time was no more than 9 million. But the number of 200,000 to 300,000 dead just can not be correct.
A People’s History of the United States (1980) cites 300,000 Filipinos killed in Batangas alone, that alone proves the figures wrong, William Pomeroy’s American Neocolonialism (1970) cites 600,000 Filipinos dead in Luzon alone by 1902. This is backed up by General Bell himself, who said “we estimated that we killed one-sixth of the population of the main island of Luzon — some 600,000 people.”
E. Ahmed’s wrote “The Theory and Fallacies of Counter-Insurgency,” The Nation, August 2, 1971.“the bloodiest colonial war (in proportion to population) ever fought by a white power in Asia; it cost the lives of 3,000,000 Filipinos.”
Filipina historian the late Luzviminda Francisco carried out a thorough investigation of the Philippines Genocide and documented it, she arrived at the figure of 1.4 million Filipinos dead. The End of An Illusion (London, 1973).
However, this only covered the period from 1899 to 1905. It does not cover the first two decades of U.S. colonial rule a time when the killing might have slowed but was still happening to keep the people in order, it also does not include the thousands of Filipino Muslims (Moros) that were brutally killed.
People often ask why do Census figures not show a drop in population for that period?
There could be a few reasons for this. One of the reasons is to doubt this is because even today population figures for the Philippines are not correct as so many people live off the radar. The methodologies used by the Spanish and the Americans were also very different.
You also have to ask if the U.S census figures showed a drop of 1.4 million or more would they publish this for the world to see?
I suspect however the U.S figures were no more than a guess based on the Spanish figures, as it was at a time of war and would have been almost impossible to collect the numbers. Or maybe the U.S did give the task of collecting the numbers but rather than going out into hostile communities that would put them in danger they made them up using the Spanish census as a guide.
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