Philippine–American War
In 1902, the United States Congress passed the Philippine Organic Act, which provided for the creation of the Philippine Assembly, with members to be elected by Filipino males. (Women did not have suffrage in the US or the Philippines.) This act was superseded by the 1916 Philippine Autonomy Act, which contained the first formal and official declaration of the United States government's commitment to eventually grant independence to the Philippines. The 1934 Philippine Independence Act created the Commonwealth of the Philippines the following year, a limited form of independence, and established a process ending in Philippine independence (originally scheduled for 1944, but interrupted and delayed by World War II). The United States granted independence in 1946, following World War II and the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, through the Treaty of Manila.
Moro people
In 1898 via the treaty of Paris the Philippines was turned over to the United States of America. The Americans took over the Philippines in 1898, despite the ratification of the Philippine Declaration of Independence on September 29, 1898 by the Malolos Congress. Prior to the signing of the treaty, a cable message from Pres. McKinley on Nov. 25, 1898 was very explicit: "... to accept merely Luzon, leaving the rest of the islands subject to Spanish rule, or to be the subject of future contention, cannot be justified on political, commercial, or humanitarian grounds. The cessation must be the whole archipelago or none. The latter is wholly inadmissible, and the former must therefore be required." This however, did not settle well with the Muslims (Moros), and they fought, and are still continuing to fight to take back the homeland they lost to the subsequent violence of American colonizers.