Читать книгу Beautiful Philippines: A Handbook of General Information - Philippine Islands. Commission of Independence - Страница 7
ОглавлениеIV. Population of the Philippine Islands
A Homogeneous People The Filipinos are a homogeneous people. An American, Dr. Merton Miller, former chief ethnologist of the Philippine Bureau of Science is the foremost authority for the claim that:
“From the extreme northern end of the Archipelago to its southernmost limits, with the exception of the few scattered Negritos, the people of the Philippines, pagan, Moro and Christian are one racially. There is some reason for believing that they migrated into the islands at two different times. But in all probability they came from the same general region and have a common ancestry.
“There are many different languages or dialects in the Philippines but all are closely related one to another, the pronunciation and mode of speech vary but little from one section of the Philippines to another and the majority of the words are common to two or more of the Philippine languages. These languages, whether spoken by pagan, Moro or Christian, belong to the great Malayo-Polynesian family, branches of which are found in Sumatra, the Hawaiian Islands, Madagascar and on many islands between.”
Ex-President Taft has the following to say about Filipino homogeneity:
“The word ‘tribe’ gives an erroneous impression. There is no tribal relation among the Filipinos. There is a racial solidarity among them undoubtedly. They are homogeneous. I can not tell the difference between an Ilocano and a Tagalog or a Visayan.… To me all the Filipinos were alike.”
While Governor General Harrison, before a joint committee of Congress, expressed himself thus:
“To my way of thinking, they are very remarkably homogeneous, quite as much so as any nation in the world to-day with which I have any acquaintance. From one end of the Philippine Islands to the other the people look very much alike; their manners are very much the same; their style of living is about the same; and they are being generally educated along the same lines by the government and by the private schools, which are coöperating with the government. So that I think they already have one of the prime requisites to a nationality, namely, a general and universal feeling that they belong to the same race of people.”
Total Population The total population of the Philippine Islands according to the Census of 1918 is 10,350,640. Of this number 9,495,272 are Christians, while 855,368 are non-Christian so-called. The non-Christian element, therefore, represents 8.2 per cent of the total population. In this number are included the Mohammedans of the South and the Igorots and other mountaineers, who have been so widely advertised abroad and often represented as typical Filipinos.
FOREIGN POPULATION OF THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS
| American | 6,405 |
| Spanish | 4,015 |
| English | 1,063 |
| German | 312 |
| French | 218 |
| Swiss | 451 |
| Chinese | 45,156 |
| Japanese | 6,684 |
| All others | 1,111 |
| Total | 65,415 |
COMPARATIVE POPULATION
| Philippines | 10,350,640 |
| Argentina | 8,284,000 |
| Belgium | 7,658,000 |
| Canada | 8,361,000 |
| Australia | 4,971,000 |
| Cuba | 2,628,000 |
