ABSTRACT
In June 1998, the Philippines celebrated its ‘centennial’, but the anniversary was riddled with ambiguity as it marked the anniversary of both the declaration of the first independent republic in Asia and the colonisation of the islands by the United States. Since the stillborn birth of the first Philippine Republic in June 1898, the people of this repeatedly colonised archipelago have struggled to define what it means to be Filipino. With extreme ethnic and linguistic diversity, nationalism in the Philippines has been defined over time as an economic and political project, as is the case in many parts of the developing world where state units determined by colonial authority have little ethnic or linguistic coherence.
