Talk:Battle of Manila (1898)

Untitled
were there 1,500 or 15,000 defenders?

To answer your question, 15,000 defenders. jasendorf

The photo which accompanies this article states that it is from 1899. The Battle of Manila occured in August of 1898.

Use of the term "insurgents"
I suspect that the original creator of this page relied on the one source listed for this terminology. I have gone through and replaced all instances of the term with Filipinos or something not as biased. Broken Sphere Msg me 17:54, 28 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Hmmm... That would have been this edit.


 * From the Insurgency article: "An insurgency is an armed rebellion against a constituted authority (for example, an authority recognised as such by the United Nations) when those taking part in the rebellion are not recognised as belligerents." The forces under Aguinaldo were an insurgency against the Spanish government (at the time) of the Philippines. I have not reverted the edit, but I think the changes imposed a particular editorial POV rather than correcting a pre-existing editorial POV. Also, not all Filipinos at the time were insurgents; the use of the term "Filipinos" to describe the insurgent forces distorts this. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 01:15, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

First Philippine Republic as a belligerent
The Battle of Manila took place on August 13, 1898. The First Philippine Republic was established on January 23, 1899. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 00:55, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

requests for citations regarding the prearrangement of the surrender of Manila
See http://www.archive.org/stream/philippinespastp01worcuoft/philippinespastp01worcuoft_djvu.txt pp. 99-100

"There was certainly no need of Insurgent assistance in the assault on Manila.

The reports which reached Aguinaldo that the surrender of Manila had been agreed upon in advance were correct, as is shown by the following testimony of Admiral Dewey [in a U.S. Senate hearing]:

"Senator Patterson. When did you reach an understanding with the Spanish commander upon the subject,^ — how long before the 12th or 13th of August?

"Admiral Dewey. Several days before.

"Senator Patterson. To whom did you communicate the arrangement that you had ?

"Admiral Dewey. General Merritt and, of course, all of my own captains — General Merritt, and I think a council of officers on board of one of the steamers. I think there were several army officers present when I told the General that ; and I may say here that I do not think General Merritt took much stock in it.

"Senator Patterson. What statement did you make to them. Admiral, in substance?

"Admiral Dewey. That the Spaniards were ready to surrender, but before doing so I must engage one of the outlying forts. I selected one at Malate, away from the city. They said I must engage that and fire for a while, and then I was to make a signal by the international code, 'Do you surrender?' Then they were to hoist a white flag at a certain bastion ; and I may say now that I was the first one to discover the white flag. We had 50 people looking for that white flag, but I happened to be the first one who saw it. I fired for a while, and then made the signal according to the programme. We could not see the white flag — it was rather a thick day — but finally I discovered it on the south bastion; I don't know how long it had been flying there when I first saw it." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.127.202.129 (talk) 03:27, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Flag of the revolutionaries, etc.
This edit caught my eye, and my attention was quickly drawn to as the flag of the revolutionaries in this battle, and the wikilink.

I have WP:BOLDly edited the article's infobox accordingly.
 * This battle took place on August 13, 1898.
 * The Philippine Revolutionary Army article says that that organization was founded on founded on March 22, 1897 [...] during the Tejeros Convention. I think that an argument can be made in support of the wikilink that the revolutionaries on August 18, 1898 were part of that same organization.
 * Looking at Philippine Revolutionary Army suggests that the proper flag on August 13, 1898 might have been the flag shown in either file:Philippines Aguinaldo flag (obverse).svg or file:Flag of the Tagalog people.svg.
 * In the Flag of the Philippines article, the table section Philippine Revolution – First Philippine Republic suggests the same thing, and provides the information that the Philippines Aguinaldo flag was sewn by Doña Marcela Marino de Agoncillo, Lorenza Agoncillo, and Delfina Herbosa de Natividad in Hong Kong and first flown in battle on May 28, 1898. That flag, therefore, could not have been the flag of the revolutionaries in this battle. Neither could any other flag derived from that flag.
 * That suggests that file:Flag of the Tagalog people.svg might be the proper flag the flag to associate with the revolutionaries for this battle.
 * It appears to me that the proper flag the flag to associate with the revolutionaries for this battle is the flag at file:Flag of the Tagalog people.svg.
 * The flagicon template and associated templates use data from a template listed in Category:Country data templates. One might think of using the data in Country data Philippines, but that would be wrong. The Philippines was under Spanish sovereignty at the time of this battle, and the revolutionaries were insurgents against the Spanish colonial government.
 * Looking at the internals of flagicon/core, it appears to me that the way to do that is
 * This produces: Flag of the Tagalog people.svg.

Discussion? Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 06:23, 17 September 2016 (UTC) On re-reading the above, I see that the May 28, 1898 date when the file:Philippines Aguinaldo flag (obverse).svg is said to have first been flown preceded this battle. I ought to have noticed this earlier. This suggests that file:Philippines Aguinaldo flag (obverse).svg probably ought to be the flag used here. I'll re-edit the article to show that one instead. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 06:35, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

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Resullt, as summarized in the infobox
There are the makings of an edit war over this and I'm opening this discussion in hopes of heading that off. There are several ways to view this battle depending on what viewpoint it is seen from. This article takes a view which is widespread in historical sources in describing it as a "mock battle" between U.S. and Spanish forces. which were on opposite sides in the Spanish-American War. cooked up in order to prevent capture of the Spanish capital in the Philippines by Filipino forces and to engineer its capture by U.S. forces instead. That is clear from a reading of the article, I thank, and from the cited supporting sources. I have no argument with this general description.

The editorial point at issue here is over how to summarize the result of this battle in the infobox.
 * this 22:10, December 18, 2020 article says that the result was, "American-Filipino victory". There are probably other descriptions previous to this, but not immediately before it and this is as far as I looked back.
 * this Revision as of 03:19, January 23, 202r changed that without explanation to "Decisive American-Filipino victory";
 * this rvision as of 21:02, February 14, 2021, after a few unrelated revisions, changed that to "American-Filipino victory";
 * That change caught my eye and, in [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Manila_(1898)&diff=next&oldid=1006795454 this\ revision as of 21:21, February 14, 2021 I changed it to "American-American victory" (with a terrible proofreading error), explaining: (Spanish surrender of the city to the Americans.) ;
 * then, this revision as of 22:17, February 14, 2021 changed in back to "American-Filipino victory"., explaining: ([...] changing "American-Filipino victory" to "American-American victory" doesn't appear to make sense,)".

I assert that a better summary of the result of this "mock battle" staged with the intent to deprove Filipino forces of a victory, and accmplishing that intended result, is "American victory". I think that this is supported by the article (read the second paragraph of the lead section). I have edited the article here to that effect. Please discuss further here if needed. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 11:42, 15 February 2021 (UTC)


 * You appear to have misunderstood my intentions. Per Template:Infobox military conflict, terms such as "decisive" aren't used in the infobox. seems to have been adding "decisive" for quite a while (I haven't checked them all, but I'm prepared to wager a significant number of the edits that are "+9" size are adding decisive. So removing that was my first edit.


 * My second edit wasn't an attempt to edit war, but only to temporarily revert the error that inadvertently introduced the "American-American victory" text. Since your edit summary wasn't very clear as to what you were trying to do, I thought reverting you while ensuring you'd receive a notification would alert you to the problem and you'd fix it. I have no position on whether the article should say "American-Filipino" or "American", but it shouldn't say "decisive" and it shouldn't say "American-American". FDW777 (talk) 15:15, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't think that there is an edit war going on over this; it's more of a disconnect between what the article says and how the infobox summarizes it . This has had been edited recently by several people including myself (with a horrible proofreading error). The battle which is the topic of this article wasn't a straightforward battle between A and b, it was more complicated than that. I tried to sketch that out above, and the article body describes that more fully. Here, I am trying to get the infobox summary to reflect what the article and the supporting sources it cites say about the article topic. Following my edit, it said "American victory" (not "Decicive American victory"). I do see that the infobox military conflict docs say, so perhaps the two bullet points there, which were there prior to my edit, ought not to be there. Wtmitchell  (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 17:40, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 17:40, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Bold image removal
I've WP:BOLDly removed this image depicting Dewey's Asiatic Squadron in the Battle of Manila Bay which had taken place on May 1 from this article about the August 13 battle which was primarily a land action. Since the Background section does mention that May 1 battle, I initially re-edited the image caption for better clarity to read "US Navy Asiatic Squadron lead by the USS Olympia against the Spanish fleet" but, having done that, I still thought that the image was very out of place here, especially appearing where it did in the rendered article, and removed it instead. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 17:26, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

"fake" vs. "mock"
In this edit, the term "fake" grated on me at first -- the article uses "mock" in several places and that's the term I recall being used in outside sources. However, according to the distionaries I checked there is a nuance there, with "fake" implying intent to deceive while "mock" does not. Considering that, "fake" seems to be a better term here. Perhaps there is a better term than "fake", but none comes immediately to my limited mind. In any case, terminology should be consistent and I've left this edit introducing inconsistent terminology unreverted. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 14:05, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Skin color
This revert with an edit summary saying Not understanding removal reason caught my eye. The revert restored an observation re Filipino forces saying, "who have brown skin", that had been removed with an edit summary saying, Removed biased language, leaving a description of Spain earlier in that sentence as "a white country" intact. One of the two supporting sources cited is this journal article by historian Vicente L. Rafael. Some out-of-context snippets from that article illustrate my take on this: "President William McKinley had declared the policy of the United States toward the Philippines to be one of “benevolent assimilation,” seeking, he claimed, to Christianize and educate the Filipinos after centuries of captivity by Catholic Spain. War and occupation were thus meant to liberate, not subjugate the Filipinos. Taking on the white man’s burden, Americans were to wait upon the needs and wants of their captives, described in Kipling’s famous poem as “half devil and half-child.” [...] the American colonization of the Philippines cast white Americans as innately superior yet exceptionally benevolent masters of a wild collection of tribes of dark, brown, and mixed raced people yet to be tamed and pacified into a people who recognized their place in the new imperial order.[...] the Spaniards and Americans had agreed to stage a “mock battle” of Manila to save Spanish face and keep Filipinos out of the city, thereby making it seem that the Spaniards lost to fellow whites, not to an accursed collection of natives and half-breeds. Furious at this deception, the Filipinos withdrew to a town north of Manila. There, they convened a constitutional convention, inaugurating the First Philippine Republic, organizing a congress that drew up laws and sent out ambassadors to secure international recognition of the new nation."

I think that mention of skin color (particularly the mentioned shadings) here has due weight for inclusion. It does seem to cry out for a clarifying footnote citing sources with more detail about the social importance of skin color in stratified societies where the top strata tend to be predominately of one shading. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 12:12, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Result
This is a BRD discussion in response to this edit by unregistered editor 154.205.22.6. I have undone that edit here. The effect of that edit, which I see as problematic, was to change the Result field in the infobox from "American victory" to "Filipino-American victory" with an edit summary saying (BE MORE SPECIFIC). The undone reversion had reverted a previous edit making the same change by the same editor, saying (Not consistent with the 'Battle' section of the article.)

154.205.22.6, please WP:register. Please also read WP:BRD and WP:EW. Please also read the final two paragraphs in the |Battle section of this article. Please pay particular attention to the sentence there saying, "Except for the unplanned casualties, the battle had gone according to plan; the Spanish had surrendered the city to the Americans, and it had not fallen to the Filipino revolutionaries." That assertion cites a supporting source that is readable online and is linked in the cite. If you disagree with this, please read WP:DUE. DUE is part of WP:NPOV; please read that as well.

Please continue this discussion below if you disagree instead of edit-warring in the artice. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 10:32, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Commanders involved
I am very confused why Generals Mariano Noriel, Pio Del Pilar, Gregorio Del Pilar, Artemio Ricarte are removed from the commanders involved, according to Wtmitchell's summary of edit that Luna participated in 1899 battle of Manila, which is a fact, but what I was referring to is that the mentioned generals above participated in the 1898 Battle of Manila in this wikipedia article, and therefore their names must be included in the "commanders and leaders" section and were the same commanders (except Gregorio Del Pilar) who also fought or participated in the 1899 Battle of Manila, which can be seen in the main wikipedia page/article of Antonio Luna and the Battle of Manila (1899) RA9Markus (talk) 04:35, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
 * It was an error on my part -- I've done no research to verify individual cases but I recall making the reverted edit also without doing that and don't recall what I had in mind that led me to do that. I think that I must have mis-read this somehow. Thanks for pointing this out. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 07:15, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Trimmings from Philippine-American War
Per Talk, trimmings from the Battle of Manila subsection in the Philippine-American War article are being placed here in case they need to be added to this article, with a reference to the pre-trimmed version:   "The officers of the United States Army who believed that the insurgents were informing the Spaniards of the American movements were right. Sastrón has printed a letter from Pío del Pilar, dated July 30, to the Spanish officer commanding at Santa Ana, in which Pilar said that Aguinaldo had told him that the Americans would attack the Spanish lines on August 2 and advised that the Spaniards should not give way, but hold their positions. Pilar added, however, that if the Spaniards should fall back on the walled city and surrender Santa Ana to himself, he would hold it with his own men. Aguinaldo's information was correct, and on August 2 eight American soldiers were killed or wounded by the Spanish fire."
 * On July 9, General Anderson informed Major General Henry Clark Corbin, the Adjutant General of the U.S. Army, that Aguinaldo "has declared himself Dictator and President, and is trying to take Manila without our assistance", opining that that would not be probable but, if done, would allow him to resist any U.S. attempt to establish a provisional government. On July 15, Aguinaldo issued three organic decrees assuming civil authority.
 * On July 18, Anderson wrote that he suspected Aguinaldo to be secretly negotiating with the Spanish authorities.
 * In a July 21 letter to the Adjutant General, Anderson wrote that Aguinaldo had "put in operation an elaborate system of military government, under his assumed authority as Dictator, and has prohibited any supplies being given us, except by his order", and that Anderson had demanded that Aguinaldo must aid in fulfilling Anderson's demands for necessary supplies.
 * On July 24, Aguinaldo wrote a letter to Anderson in effect warning him not to disembark American troops in places liberated by Filipinos from Spain without first informing him in writing about the places and purpose of the action. Murat Halstead, official historian of the Philippine Expedition, wrote that General Merritt remarked shortly after his arrival on June 25: "As General Aguinaldo did not visit me on my arrival, nor offer his services as a subordinate military leader, and as my instructions from the President fully contemplated the occupation of the islands by the American land forces, and stated that 'the powers of the military occupant are absolute and supreme and immediately operate upon the political condition of the inhabitants,' I did not consider it wise to hold any direct communication with the insurgent leader until I should be in possession of the city of Manila, especially as I would not until then be in a position to issue a proclamation and enforce my authority, in the event that his pretensions should clash with my designs."
 * U.S. commanders suspected that Aguinaldo and his forces were informing the Spaniards of American movements. U.S. Army Major John R. M. Taylor later wrote, after translating and analyzing insurgent documents:
 * The secret agreement made by Commodore Dewey and Brigadier General Wesley Merritt with Spanish Governor-General Fermín Jáudenes and with his predecessor Basilio Augustín was for Spanish forces to surrender only to the Americans. To save face, the Spanish surrender would take place after a mock battle in Manila that the Spaniards would lose; the revolutionaries would not be allowed to enter the city.
 * Before the attack on Manila, U.S. and Filipino forces had been allies in all but name. After the capture of Manila, the U.S. and Spain formed a partnership that excluded the Philippine rebels. Relations continued to deteriorate, however, as it became clear to Filipinos that the Americans were in the islands to stay.

  Chino-Catane (talk) 04:34, 13 July 2024 (UTC)