History of the Philippines (1521–1898)
The history of the Philippines from 1521 to 1898, also known as the Spanish colonial period, was a period during which Spain controlled the Philippine islands as the Captaincy General of the Philippines, initially under New Spain until Mexican independence in 1821, which gave Madrid direct control over the area. It was also known as Spanish East Indies to the colonialists. It started with the arrival in 1521 of European explorer Ferdinand Magellan sailing for Spain, which heralded the period when the Philippines was a colony of the Spanish Empire, and ended with the outbreak of the Philippine Revolution in 1898, which marked the beginning of the American colonial era of Philippine history.
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Manila
Rizal was executed and the La Liga Filipina dissolved. The 1896 Philippine revolution was triggered when the Spanish discovered the anti-colonial secret organisation Katipunan, and ended Spanish rule. The United States took the Philippines from Spain in the 1898 Spanish–American War; this developed into fighting between the Philippine revolutionaries and the U.S. in the 1899–1902 Philippine–American War, followed by victory for the U.S. and disestablishment of the Roman Catholic Church as the state church of the Philippines. In the period after the war, Philippine churches were restored in the Art-Deco architectural motif. There was a looming threat of apostasy and schism with the rise of anti-clerical Philippine Freemasonry and the establishment of the Philippine Independent Church due to Filipino anger against Spanish ecclesiastical corruption. In response, the Vatican supported Philippine independence and applied a policy of reinforcing orthodoxy which resulted in the majority of the Filipinos remaining faithful to the Roman Catholic Church.