Tagalog Republic

Tagalog Republic is a term used to refer to two revolutionary governments involved in the Philippine Revolution against the Spanish Empire and the Philippine–American War. Both were connected to the Katipunan revolutionary movement.

Etymology

The term Tagalog commonly refers to both an ethno-linguistic group in the Philippines and their language. Katagalugan often refers to the Tagalog-speaking regions of the island of Luzon in the Philippine archipelago.
However, the Katipunan secret society extended the meaning of these terms to all of the natives in the Philippine islands. The society's primer explains its use of Tagalog in a footnote:

Original writing	Modern Manila Tagalog translation	English translation
Sa salitáng tagalog katutura’y ang lahát nang tumubo sa Sangkapuluáng itó; sa makatuid, bisaya man, iloko man, kapangpangan man, etc., ay tagalog din.	Ang salitang Tagalog ay tumutukoy sa lahat ng ipinanganak sa kapuluang ito; samakatuwid, Bisaya man, Ilokano man, Kapampangan man, etc. ay Tagalog din.	The word Tagalog refers to all of those born in this archipelago; therefore, even Visayans, Ilocanos, Kapampangans, etc. are also Tagalogs.

The revolutionary Carlos Ronquillo wrote in his memoirs:

Original writing	Modern Manila Tagalog translation	English translation
Ang tagalog o lalong malinaw, ang tawag na "tagalog" ay waláng ibáng kahulugán kundi ‘tagailog’ na sa tuwirang paghuhulo ay taong maibigang manirá sa tabíng ilog, bagay na 'di maikakaila na siyáng talagáng hilig ng tanang anák ng Pilipinas, saa’t saán mang pulo at bayan.	Ang Tagalog o lalong malinaw, ang tawag na "Tagalog" ay walang ibang kahulugan kundi 'taga-ilog' na sa tuwirang pinanggalingan ay taong mahilig tumira sa tabing ilog, bagay na 'di maitatanggi na siyang talagang hilig ng lahat ng anak ng Pilipinas, saan mang pulo at bayan.	Tagalog, or more precisely, the name "Tagalog", has no other meaning but tagailog which, directly to its root, refers to those who prefer to settle along rivers, truly a trait that cannot be denied to all those who are the children of the Philippines, in whichever island and town.

In this respect, Katagalugan may be translated as the "Tagalog nation."
Andrés Bonifacio, a founding member of the Katipunan and later its supreme head, promoted the use of Katagalugan for the Philippine nation. The term "Filipino" was then reserved for Spaniards born in the islands. By eschewing "Filipino" and "Filipinas" which had colonial roots, Bonifacio and his cohorts "sought to form a national identity."
In 1896, the Philippine Revolution broke out after the discovery of the Katipunan by the authorities. Prior to the outbreak of hostilities, the Katipunan had become an open revolutionary government. The American historian John R. M. Taylor, custodian of the Philippine Insurgent Records, wrote:
Several Filipino historians concur. According to Gregorio Zaide:
Likewise, Renato Constantino and others wrote that the Katipunan served as a shadow government.
Influenced by Freemasonry, the Katipunan had been organized with "its own laws, bureaucratic structure and elective leadership". For each province it involved, the Supreme Council coordinated provincial councils which were in charge of "public administration and military affairs on the supra-municipal or quasi-provincial level" and local councils, in charge of affairs "on the district or barrio level".

Bonifacio

In the last days of August 1896, Katipunan members met in Caloocan and decided to start their revolt. A day after the Cry, the Supreme Council of the Katipunan held elections, with the following results:

Position	Name
Supreme President	Andres C. Bonifacio
Secretary of War	Teodoro Plata
Secretary of State	Emilio Jacinto
Secretary of the Interior	Aguedo del Rosario
Secretary of Justice	Briccio Pantas
Secretary of Finance	Enrique Pacheco

The above was divulged to the Spanish by the Katipunan member Pío Valenzuela while in captivity. Teodoro Agoncillo thus wrote:
Milagros C. Guerrero and others have described Bonifacio as "effectively" the commander-in-chief of the revolutionaries. They assert:
One name for Bonifacio's concept of the Philippine nation-state appears in surviving Katipunan documents: Haring Bayang Katagalugan - sometimes shortened into Haring Bayan. Bayan may be rendered as "nation" or "people". The term haring bayan was Bonifacio's neologism which sought to express and adapt in native terms the Western concept of "republic", from Latin res publica, meaning public thing or commonwealth. Since haring bayan means both "sovereign nation" and "sovereign people", where sovereign power is held by the nation/people, his concept was essentially democratic and republican in nature.
Thus Bonifacio is named as the president of the "Tagalog Republic" in an issue of the Spanish periodical La Ilustración Española y Americana published in February 1897. Another name for Bonifacio's government was Repúblika ng Katagalugan as evidenced by a picture of a rebel seal published in the same periodical the next month.
Official letters and one appointment paper of Bonifacio addressed to Emilio Jacinto reveal Bonifacio's various titles and designations, as follows:

President of the Supreme Council
Supreme President
President of the Sovereign Nation of Katagalugan / Sovereign Tagalog Nation
President of the Sovereign Nation, Founder of the Katipunan, Initiator of the Revolution
Office of the Supreme President, Government of the Revolution

An 1897 power struggle at the Imus Assembly in Cavite led to command of the revolution shifting at the Tejeros Convention, where a new insurgent government was formed with Emilio Aguinaldo as president. Bonifacio refused to recognize the new government after his election as Director of the Interior was questioned by Daniel Tirona. This led to the Acta de Tejeros, the Naic Military Agreement and Bonifacio's trial and execution.

Sakay

After Emilio Aguinaldo and his men were captured by the US forces in 1901, General Macario Sakay, a veteran Katipunan member, re-established in 1902 the Tagalog Republic as a continuation of Bonifacio's Katipunan government in contrast to Aguinaldo's Republic. Sakay was based in the mountains of Morong, and held the presidency with Francisco Carreón as vice president. In April 1904, Sakay issued a manifesto declaring Filipino right to self-determination at a time when support for independence was considered a crime by the American colonial government.

Position	Name
Supreme President	Macario Sakay
Vice President	Francisco Carreón
Minister of War	Domingo Moriones
Minister of the Government	Alejandro Santiago
Minister of State	Nicolás Rivera

The republic ended in 1906 when Sakay and his leading followers surrendered on July 14 to the American authorities upon being promised amnesty and being convinced of the need for a Philippine Assembly as a peaceful "gate to liberty". Instead they were arrested days later at a welcoming reception party in Cavite, imprisoned at the Old Bilibid Prison in Manila, and the following year executed for banditry. Some of its survivors escaped to Japan to be joined with Artemio Ricarte, an exiled Katipunan veteran, who later returned to support the Second Philippine Republic, a client state of Japan, during World War II.