"The only country in the early twentieth century where the United States could impose its model of development through colonization was the Philippines. Like Cuba, the Philippines had been taken over after the Spanish–American War, but unlike the island in the Caribbean, the Southeast Asian islands were kept under direct American control as a dependency. The possession of the Philippines gave the United States an opportunity to experiment with the transposition of American ideals to a culture regarded as alien. In spite of the initially fierce resistance by the Philippinos to the American colonial project, by the mid-1930s many Americans were convinced that enough progress had been made for the colony to gain its independence within a decade. An alliance in Washington between trade protectionists, New Deal reformers, and fiscal conservatives secured a timetable for decolonization, on the clear understanding that the United States would keep its military bases and most of its political influence intact. The Philippines was seen as a triumph for American reform: it had brought a ‘‘new day of freedom’’ to an Asian people who earlier could have entertained no hopes for such a future."