Philippine E-Journals

The Philippines and the West

Salvador R. Gonzalez

Discipline: Political Science

 

Abstract:

The Philippines is a group of islands (about 7,100) south of Taiwan, west of Vietnam, and north of Indonesia. In the domino theory of Communist expansion it would be one of the first pieces to fall. Its most important city is Manila, which has a population of more than a million and located about 17 degrees above the equator; its capital, however, by law, is Quezon City. The land area of the Philippines is   about the size of Pennsylvania, New York State, and Ohio combined, or slightly smaller than the British Isles. Geographically, the Philippines is a part of the Malayan world or Southeast Asia. But so western are our manners and way of life that at one time the Department of Foreign Affairs of our government had to voice a policy of Asia for the Asians if only to win the confidence of our neighbors in Southeast Asia by showing them that we too were interested in participating in a common endeavor to develop that region under the sun to which we geographically belong.