First Philippine Commission

The Schurman Commission also known as the First Philippine Commission was established by United States President William McKinley on January 20, 1899, and tasked to study the situation in the Philippines and make recommendations on how the U.S should proceed after the sovereignty of the Philippines was ceded to the U.S. by Spain on December 10, 1898 following the Treaty of Paris of 1898.

Its final report was submitted on January 3, 1900, and recommended the establishment of a civil government having a bicameral legislature and being financially independent from the United States. The report also recommended the establishment of a system of public education.

On January 20, 1899, President McKinley appointed the First Philippine Commission (the Schurman Commission), a five-person group headed by Dr. Jacob Schurman, president of Cornell University, to investigate conditions in the islands and make recommendations. In the report that they issued to the president the following year, the commissioners acknowledged Filipino aspirations for independence. They declared, however, that the Philippines was not ready for it.

Specific recommendations included the establishment of civilian government as rapidly as possible (the American chief executive in the islands at that time was the military governor), including establishment of a bicameral legislature, autonomous governments on the provincial and municipal levels, and a system of free public elementary schools.

The three civilian members of the commission arrived in Manila on March 4, 1899, a month after the Battle of Manila which had begun armed conflict between U.S. forces and Filipino forces under Emilio Aguinaldo. General Otis viewed the arrival of his fellow commission members as an intrusion, and boycotted commission meetings. The commission spent a month meeting with Ilustrados who had deserted Aguinaldo's Malolos Republic government and studying the Malolos Constitution and other documents of Aguinaldo's revolutionary government. Meanwhile, with U.S. forces under Otis advancing northwards from Manila, the seat of Aguinaldo's revolutionary government had been moved from Malolos to new headquarters in San Isidro, Nueva Ecija. When Malolos fell at the end of March, it was moved further north to San Fernando, Pampanga.

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