The Philippines (Filipino: Pilipinas [pɪlɪˈpinɐs]) officially known as the Republic of the Philippines, is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. To its west across the South China Sea is Vietnam. The Sulu Sea to the southwest separates it from the island of Borneo and to the south the Celebes Sea from other islands of Indonesia. It is bounded on the east by the Philippine Sea. An archipelago comprising 7,107 islands, the Philippines has the 5th longest coastline in the world.[9][10] The islands are categorized broadly into three main geographical divisions: Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao.[3] The capital city is Manila. With an estimated population of about 92,000,000 people, the Philippines is the world's 12th most populous country.[11][12] It is estimated that there are about 11,000,000 overseas Filipinos worldwide, equivalent to about 11% of the total population of the Philippines.[13] Multiple ethnicities and cultures are found throughout the islands. Ecologically, the Philippines with its tropical climate is one of the most diverse countries in the world.[14] Its national economy is the 47th largest in the world, with an estimated 2008 gross domestic product (GDP nominal) of over US$ 166.9 billion (nominal).[15] Primary exports include semiconductors and electronic products, transport equipment, garments, copper products, petroleum products, coconut oil, and fruits.[3] Major trading partners include China, Japan, the United States, Singapore, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Thailand, and Malaysia.[3] Its unit of currency is the Philippine peso (PHP). In ancient times the archipelago was populated by successive waves of Austronesian peoples who brought with them influences from Malay, Hindu, and Islamic cultures. Trade introduced Chinese cultural influences. The arrival of Ferdinand Magellan in 1521 marked the beginning of an era of Spanish interest and eventually dominance. The Philippines became the Asian hub of the Manila-Acapulco galleon treasure fleet. Christianity became widespread and there was a brief British occupation. As the 19th century gave way to the 20th, there followed in quick succession the short-lived Philippine Revolution, the Spanish-American War, and the Philippine-American War. In the aftermath, the United States replaced Spain as the dominant power. Aside from the period of Japanese occupation, the United States retained sovereignty over the islands until the end of World War II when the Philippines gained independence. The United States bequeathed to the Philippines the English language and its democratic presidential system of government. Since independence the Philippines has had an often tumultuous experience with democracy, with popular "People Power" movements overthrowing a dictatorship in one instance but also underlining the institutional weaknesses of its constitutional republic in others. The name Philippines was derived from King Philip II of Spain in the 16th century. Spanish explorer Ruy López de Villalobos used the name Las Islas Filipinas, in honor of the Prince of Asturias (Spain) during his expedition to the islands, originally referring to the islands of Leyte and Samar.[16][17] Despite the presence of other names, the name Filipinas was chosen as the name of the archipelago. The official name of the Philippines changed throughout the course of its history. During the Philippine Revolution, it was officially called República Filipina or the Philippine Republic. From the period of the Spanish-American War and the Philippine-American War, until the Commonwealth period, American colonial authorities referred to the country as the Philippine Islands, a translation of the original Spanish name. It was during the American period that the name Philippines began to appear, a name that has become its common name. The official name of the country is now Republic of the Philippines. The earliest archeological evidence for man in the archipelago is the 40,000-year-old Tabon Man of Palawan and the Angono Petroglyphs in Rizal, both of whom appear to suggest the presence of human settlement prior to the arrival of the Negritos and Austronesian speaking people.[19] By 1000 B.C.E. the inhabitants of the Philippine archipelago had developed into four distinct kinds of peoples: tribal groups, such as the Aetas, Hanunoo, Ilongots and the Mangyan who depended on hunter-gathering and were concentrated in forests; warrior societies, such as the Isneg and Kalingas who practiced social ranking and ritualized warfare and roamed the plains; the petty plutocracy of the Ifugao Cordillera Highlanders, who occupied the mountain ranges of Luzon; and the harbor principalities of the estuarine civilizations that grew along rivers and seashores while participating in trans-island maritime trade.[24] Around 300–700 C.E. the seafaring peoples of the islands traveling in balangays began to trade with the Indianized kingdoms in the Malay Archipelago and the nearby East Asian principalities, adopting influences from both Buddhism and Hinduism.[25][26] In the years leading up to 1000 C.E., there were already several maritime societies existing in the islands but there was no unifying political state encompassing the entire Philippine archipelago. Instead, the region was dotted by numerous semi-autonomous barangays (settlements ranging is size from villages to city-states) under the sovereignty of competing thalassocracies ruled by datus, rajahs or sultans[27] or by upland agricultural societies ruled by "petty plutocrats". States such as the Kingdom of Maynila and Namayan, the Dynasty of Tondo, the Confederation of Madyaas, the rajahnates of Butuan and Cebu and the sultanates of Maguindanao and Sulu existed alongside the highland societies of the Ifugao and Mangyan.[28][29][30][31] Some of these regions were part of the Malayan empires of Srivijaya, Majapahit and Brunei.[32][33][34] In the year 900 the Dynasty of Tondo centered in Manila Bay flourished via an active trade with Chinese sea traders in the area. Later serving as a smuggling nexus after the Chinese imposed restrictions on their foreign trade.[35] During this time, the lord-minister Jayadewa presented a document of debt forgiveness to Lady Angkatan and her brother Bukah, the children of Namwaran. This is described in the Philippine's oldest known document the Laguna Copperplate Inscription.[36] By year 1011 Rajah Sri Bata Shaja, the monarch of the Indianized Rajahnate of Butuan, a maritime-state famous for its goldwork[37] sent a trade envoy under ambassador Likan-shieh to the Chinese Imperial Court demanding equal diplomatic status with other states.[38] The request being approved, it opened up direct commercial links with the Rajahnate of Butuan and the Chinese Empire thereby diminishing the monopoly on Chinese trade previously enjoyed by their rivals the Dynasty of Tondo and the Champa civilization.[39] Evidence of the existence of this rajahnate is given by the Butuan Silver Paleograph.[40] During the 11th century several exiled datus of the collapsing empire of Srivijaya[41] led by Datu Puti led a mass migration to the central islands of the Philippines, fleeing from Rajah Makatunao of the island of Borneo. Upon reaching the island of Panay and purchasing the island from Negrito chieftain Marikudo, they established a confederation of polities and named it the Confederation of Madyaas centered in Aklan and they settled the surrounding islands of the Visayas. This confederation reached its peak under Datu Padojinog. During his reign the confederations' hegemony extended over most of the islands of Visayas. Its people consistently made piratical attacks against Chinese imperial shipping.[42] Around 1225, the Country of Mai, a Sinified pre-Hispanic Philippine island-state centered in Mindoro, flourished as an entrepot, this attracted traders & shipping from the Kingdom of Ryukyu to the Yamato Empire. Chao Ju-kua, a superintendent of maritime trade in Fukien province, China; wrote a book entitled Chu Fan Chih (an account of various barbarians) which described trade with this classical Philippine state.[43] In 1380, Karim ul' Makdum and Shari'ful Hashem Syed Abu Bakr, an Arab trader born in Johore, arrived in Sulu from Malacca and established the Sultanate of Sulu. This sultanate eventually gained great wealth due to its manufacture of fine pearls.[44] At the end of the 15th century, Shariff Mohammed Kabungsuwan of Johor introduced Islam in the island of Mindanao and he subsequently married Parmisuli, a princess from Mindanao, and established the Sultanate of Maguindanao.[45] By the 16th century, Islam had spread to other parts of the Visayas and Luzon. During the reign of Sultan Bolkiah in 1485 to 1521, the Sultanate of Brunei decided to break the Dynasty of Tondo's monopoly in the China trade by attacking Tondo and establishing the state of Selurong (now Manila) as a Bruneian satellite-state.[46][47] A new dynasty under the Islamized Rajah Salalila[48] was also established to challenge the House of Lakandula in Tondo.[49] Islam was further strengthened by the arrival to the Philippines of traders and proselytizers from Malaysia and Indonesia.[50] The multiple states competing over the limited territory and people of the islands simplified Spanish colonization by allowing its conquistadors to effectively employ a strategy of divide and conquer for rapid conquest. In 1521, Portuguese-born Spanish explorer Ferdinand Magellan arrived in Samar and Leyte and claimed the islands for Spain[51] but was killed by a militia from Mactan island ruled by the datu Lapu-Lapu. The survivors of the expedition, however, returned to Spain and served as the impetus for the further discovery and conquest of the Philippine Islands.[51] Colonization began when Spanish explorer Miguel López de Legazpi, arrived from Mexico in 1565 and formed the first European settlements in Cebu. In 1571, the Spanish occupied the kingdoms of Maynila and Tondo and established Manila as the capital of the Spanish East Indies.[53][54] Spanish power was further consolidated after Miguel López de Legazpi's conquest of the Confederation of Madya-as, his subjugation of Rajah Tupas the King of Cebu and Juan de Salcedo's ransacking of the Chinese warlord Limahong's pirate kingdom in Pangasinan. This grab for power eventually culminated with the mass murder and exile of the royal families of the Dynasty of Tondo and the Kingdom of Maynila when the Tondo Conspiracy of 1587-1588 failed[55] in which a planned grand alliance with the Japanese admiral Gayo, Butuan's last rajah and Brunei's Sultan Bolkieh, would have restored the old aristocracy. Its failure resulted in the hanging of Agustín de Legazpi (great grandson of Miguel Lopez de Legazpi and the initiator of the plot) and the execution of Magat Salamat (the crown-prince of Tondo).[56]