The Commonwealth of the Philippines Is Inaugurated

In Brief

The Commonwealth of the Philippines was inaugurated on November 15, 1935, with Manuel Quezon as president. It formed part of a planned transition toward independence from the United States. The new government gained substantial domestic authority, while important aspects of sovereignty remained constrained by the American relationship. The coming war would disrupt the transition. The commonwealth's inauguration was not the final recognition of Philippine independence in 1946.

A Government Inaugurated in Manila

On November 15, 1935, Manuel L. Quezon took office as president of the Commonwealth of the Philippines, with Sergio Osmeña as vice president. The inauguration established a government with substantial control over domestic affairs while the islands remained under United States sovereignty. The arrangement was intended as a transition to independence. That distinction mattered immediately. Filipino officials now had new responsibilities and political authority, but important questions involving external relations, defense and trade could not simply be decided as if full independence had already arrived.

The Timetable Had Been Negotiated

The United States had taken control of the Philippines after the war with Spain and fought against Filipino forces seeking independence. The Commonwealth came after decades of colonial rule and Filipino political organization. The Tydings–McDuffie Act of 1934 provided for a transition and the framing of a constitution. Filipino voters approved the constitution and elected the new leadership. The system therefore involved both a framework set by U.S. law and choices made in Philippine political institutions. It is misleading to present the inauguration as either a unilateral gift or a completed act of national independence.

Building Institutions Before Independence

The Commonwealth had to operate schools, administration and public services while preparing for responsibilities that a sovereign state would assume. Quezon's government addressed questions about national defense, a national language and economic dependence on access to American markets. None was solved by the oath of office. The transition created a period in which policies could be tested and public expectations could develop. It also gave leaders a deadline against which to judge choices whose effects would extend beyond the new government's first years.

War Interrupts the Plan

Japan invaded the Philippines in 1941. Occupation and war disrupted the transition, and the Commonwealth government continued in exile for part of the conflict. Quezon died in 1944 and Osmeña succeeded him. The Commonwealth was restored in the Philippines before formal independence on July 4, 1946. Those events make the 1935 ceremony easier to place. It established an important stage of self-government, but the intervening years did not unfold as the planners had imagined. The strength of the Commonwealth as a historical subject lies in that gap between the timetable published before the war and the institutions that had to survive it.