The Philippines

2008-01-08T01:06:00.000-08:00

The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an archipelagic nation located in Southeast Asia, with Manila as its capital city. The Philippine archipelago comprises 7,107 islands in the western Pacific Ocean, bordering countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Palau and the Republic of China, although it is the only Southeast Asian country to share no land borders with its neighbors. The Philippines is the world's 12th most populous country with a population approaching 87 million people. The Philippines is also known as "Pearl of the Orient.

The Philippines became a Spanish colony in the 16th century, and then a U.S. territory and commonwealth after the Spanish-American War. The Philippine Revolution was an attempt to gain independence from Spain, only to be unsuccessful due to spill-over from the Spanish-American War in what would be known as the Philippine-American War. The Philippines ultimately gained its independence from the United States on July 4, 1946 under the terms of the Tydings-McDuffie Act. Today, the Philippines has many affinities with the Western world, derived mainly from the cultures of Spain, Latin America, and the United States. Roman Catholicism became the predominant religion, although pre-Hispanic indigenous religious practices and Islam still exist. The two official languages of the Philippines are Filipino, which is based on Tagalog, and English.

The name Philippines and its Spanish counterpart Filipinas are derived from the name of Philip II of Spain. Ruy Lopez de Villalobos used the name Las Islas Filipinas in honor of the then-Crown Prince during his expedition to the Philippines, originally referring to the islands of Leyte and Samar. Despite the presence of other names, the name Filipinas was eventually adopted as the name of the entire archipelago.

The official name of the islands, however, changed throughout the course of Philippine history. In the Philippine Revolution, the Philippines was officially called the República Filipina or the Philippine Republic. From the time of the Spanish-American War until the Commonwealth, American colonial authorities have referred to the Philippines as the "Philippine Islands", a translation of the original Spanish. It was in the Commonwealth period that the name Philippines began to appear, a name that still persists even in current official name.

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The Philippines