Manuel Acuña Roxas (Tagalog: [maˈnwel aˈkuɲa ˈɾɔhas]; January 1, 1892 – April 15, 1948) was the fifth president of the Philippines, serving from 1946 until his death in 1948. He served briefly as the third and last President of the Commonwealth of the Philippines from May 28, 1946, to July 4, 1946, and became the first President of the Independent Third Philippine Republic after the United States ceded its sovereignty over the Philippines.
Manuel Roxas y Acuña was born on January 1, 1892, in Capiz, Capiz (present-day Roxas City) to Gerardo Roxas y Luis and Rosario Acuña y Villaruz. He was a posthumous child, as his father died after being mortally wounded by the Spanish Guardia Civil the year before. He and his older brother, Mamerto, were raised by their mother and her father, Don Eleuterio Acuña. His other siblings from his father included Leopoldo and Margarita, while he also had half-siblings, Consuelo, Leopoldo, Ines, and Evaristo Picazo after his mother remarried.
Roxas received his early education in the public schools of Capiz and attended St. Joseph's College in Hong Kong at age 12, but due to homesickness, he went back to Capiz. He eventually transferred to Manila High School, graduating with honors in 1909.
Roxas began his law studies at a private law school established by George A. Malcolm, the first dean of the University of the Philippines College of Law. On his second year, he enrolled at University of the Philippines, where he was elected president of his class and the student council. In 1913, Roxas obtained his law degree, graduated class valedictorian, and subsequently topped the bar examinations with a grade of 92% that same year. He then became professor of law at the Philippine Law School and National University. He served as secretary to Judge Cayetano Arellano of the Supreme Court.
In 1917, Roxas became a member of the municipal council of Capiz, serving until 1919. He then became the youngest provincial governor of Capiz, and served in that capacity from 1919 to 1922.
Roxas was elected to the Philippine House of Representatives in 1922, and for twelve consecutive years was Speaker of the House. He served as a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1934, secretary of finance, chairman of the National Economic Council, chairman of the National Development Company, and served in many other government corporations and agencies. He also served as a brigadier general in the United States Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE), was a recognized guerrilla leader and military leader of the Philippine Commonwealth Army. Roxas became one of the leaders of the Nacionalista Party, which was dominated by the hacendado class who owned the vast hacienda estates that made up most of the cultivated land in the Philippines. The same hacendado elite who dominated the Philippines under Spanish rule continued to be the dominant social element under American rule. Roxas himself was a hacendado, who had used his wealth to further his political ambitions. The politics of the Philippines were characterized by a clientistic system under which politicians would use their offices to create patronage networks, and personal differences between politicians were far greater than any ideological differences.
With the Great Depression, the Philippines started to be seen as a liability in the United States as demands were made to end Filipino immigration to the United States and end the tariff free importation of Filipino agriculture into the American market as many American farmers complained they could not compete with Filipino farmers. To end Filipino immigration and access to the American market, many U.S. congressional leaders favored granting immediate independence to the Philippines. At the same time that the U.S. Congress was debating granting independence to the Philippines, many Filipino leaders were worried by the increasing assertive claims being made by Japan that all of East Asia was its sphere of influence. In a role reversal, it was the Filipinos who were opposed to immediate independence, which was proposed in the Hare-Hawes-Cutting Bill being debated within the halls of Congress.
In early 1930, Roxas flew to the United States with Sergio Osmeña to lobby the U.S. Congress to go slow on the granting of independence in the Hare-Hawes-Cutting Bill. Aside from the fear of Japan, many Filipinos were deeply worried about the plans to impose heavy tariffs on Filipino agriculture after independence, which provided another reason to go slowly with independence. In Washington, Roxas lobbied U.S. government leaders such as Secretary of State Henry Stimson and Secretary of War Patrick Hurley. Roxas testified before the U.S. Congress that he favored Philippine independence, saying the Filipinos had fulfilled the "stable government" provision of the Jones Act of 1916, which mandated that independence be granted when Filipinos proved that they had a "stable government". However, Roxas went on to testify that "with the granting of tariff autonomy, serious difficulties may arise". In common with the rest of the Filipino elite, Roxas saw the plans of the U.S. Congress to impose tariffs on Filipino goods after independence as an economic disaster for the Philippines.
In May 1930, Roxas reported to Manuel L. Quezon that both Hurley and Stimson had testified before the U.S. Congress saying that the Philippines were not ready for independence nor would be for anytime in the foreseeable future, which he thought had a major impact on the U.S. Congress. Roxas advised that Quezon should now try to appease Senators Harry B. Hawes and Bronson B. Cutting by sending them a message saying he wanted immediate independence, which Roxas felt was not likely at present. On May 24, 1930, Quezon followed Roxas's advice and sent public telegrams to both Hawes and Cutting saying the Filipinos "crave their national freedom". In a compromise, the Senate Insular Committee advised on June 2, 1930, that the Philippines should be given more autonomy to prepare for independence within the next 19 years. Upon his return to the Philippines in 1930, Roxas founded a new pro-independence group called Ang Bagong Katipunan ("The New Association") that proposed disbanding all political parties under its fold and the unification of national culture in order to negotiate better with the United States. The plans for Ang Bagong Katipunan created widespread opposition, as the group was seen as too authoritarian and as a vehicle for Roxas to challenge Quezon for the leadership of the Nacionalista Party. Ang Bagong Katipunan was soon disbanded.
In the summer of 1931, Hurley visited the Philippines to assess its readiness for independence. In talks with Quezon, Osmeña, and Roxas, it was agreed that the Philippines should become an autonomous commonwealth under American rule and would be allowed to keep exporting sugar and coconut oil to the United States at the present rate. Roxas became seen as one of the less radical independence leaders, who favored "going slow" on independence to keep access to the U.S. market. At the time, Roxas cynically stated he and the other Nacionalistas had to make "radical statements for immediate, complete and absolute independence to maintain hold of the people". Filipino politics tended to be based more on personal loyalties to a politician who would reward his followers via patronage rather than ideological issues, and despite criticism of the Democratas that the Nacionalistas had abandoned their platform, the Nacionalistas triumphed in the election of July 13, 1931. In the election, Roxas was reelected and returned to his position as speaker of Philippine House of Representatives. In September 1931, Japan seized the Manchuria region of China. After the Mukden Incident, the leaders of both the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy started to argue in Washington that the Philippines occupied a strategical position in Asia, as naval and air bases located in the Philippines would allow any power that controlled them to dominate the South China Sea, the key sea that linked the markets of Southeast Asia to China. The prevailing opinion within the U.S. military was that the United States needed its Philippine bases to deter Japan from trying to seize control of all of East Asia.