The Philippine Society and Morga’s Report during the Spanish Period

Spain became a European Powers 1

The Mohammedan conquest served to make the history of Spain very different from that of the other states of Europe. The presence in the peninsula of a large population of alien race and religion made the task of unifying Spain doubly difficult; for it had also the same problem of curbing the ambitious nobles as France and England. During the tenth century, which was so backward a period in the rest of Europe, the Arab civilization in Spain reached its highest development. Cordova, with its half million inhabitants, its stately palaces, its university, its three thousand mosques, and its three hundred public baths, was perhaps unrivaled at that period in the whole world. But the Christian were finally able to reconquer the peninsula.(Robinson,. p.624-625)

As early as the year 1000 several small Christian kingdoms –Castile, Aragon and Navarre-had come into existence in northern Spain. Castile, in particular, began to push back the Mohammedans and, in 1085, reconquered Yoledo. By 1250 the long war of the Christians against the Mohammedans, which fills the medieval records of Spain, had been so successfully carried on that Castile extended to the southern coast and included that great towns of Cordova and Seville. The Moors, as the Spanish Mohammedans were called, held out for two centuries more in the mountainous kingdom of Granada, in southern part of the peninsula. Not until 1492, after a long siege, was the city of Granada captured by the Christians and last remnant of Mohammedan rule disappeared.( Robinson, Breasted and Smith, p625)

The first Spanish monarch was Queen Isabella of Castile, who, in 1469, married Ferdinand, the heir of the crown of Aragon. It was with this union of Castile and Aragon that the great importance of Spain in European history begins. For the next hundred years Spain was to enjoy more military power than any other European state. The year 1492 was a momentous one in Spanish history; for it saw not only the completion of the conquest of the peninsula but the discoveries made by Columbus, under the auspices of Queen Isabella, which opened up sources of undreamed- of wealth beyond the seas. The greatness of Spain in the sixteenth century was largely due to the riches derived from her American possessions. The shameless and cruel looting of the Mexican and Peruvian cities by Cortes and Pizarro, and the silver mines of the New World, enabled Spain for a time to hold a position in Europe which her ordinary resources would never have permitted.. ( Robinson, p 625)

The Discoveries and Colonization of the East33

The business and commerce of the medieval towns was on what would seem to us, after all, a rather small scale. There were no great factories, such as have grown up in recent times with the use of steam and machinery, and the ships which sailed the Mediterranean and the North Sea were same and held only a very light cargo as compared with modern merchant vessels. The gradual growth of a world of commerce began with the sea voyages of the fifteenth century, which led to the exploration by Europeans of the whole globe, most of which was entirely unknown to the Venetian merchants and those who carried on the trade of the Hanseatic League. The Greeks and Romans knew little about the world beyond southern Europe, northern Africa, and western Asia, and much that they knew was forgotten during the Middle Ages. The Crusades took many Europeans as far as East as Egypt and Syria. (Robinson, p. 561)

When the Crusades, which had revealed the Near East, were beginning to peter out in the thirteenth century, the far –distant Orient was brought into the vision of Europe, Eastern Asia came to meet eastern Europe. The great Tatar conqueror Genghis Khan and his successors extended their empire westward from Mongolia to the borders of the Balkans..The Mongols were hospitable to the Europeans , and before the century was over missionaries, ambassadors, and traders, had found their way from western Europe to Cathay, or China. The most famous of these visitors was Marco Polo, a Venetian merchant, whose account of his travels marked the greatest advance in geographical knowledge for more than a thousand years. Polo as a boy of seventeen accompanied his uncle on trading ship trips to Peking, the capital of the great Kublai Khan of the Mongols, and, pleasing the Khan, was retained by him as a councilor and diplomat for twenty years. Allowed at last to return Venice in 1295, Polo astounded his fellow citizens by the magnificence of the jewels which he ripped from the seams of his garments and with the stories of golden-roofed palaces that made the splendor of Venice like a village of hovels. He was nicknamed “ Messer Millione,” or “ Mr. Millions.” Perhaps the most important news brought back from the distant East was that the further shore of China was washed by the sea, and hence the treasure-laden lands of the great Khan could be reached by ship-if one only knew where and how. ( Muszey, p.5)

The Discoveries of the Portuguese. So at least thought the man who deserves to be called the father of European overseas expansion. Prince Henry “ the Navigator,” the third son of King John I of Portugal, devoted his life to maritime enterprise with the double purpose of finding places where there was “ a sure and certain hope of profit “ and of converting the infidel inhabitants thereof to the

true faith. Prince Henry established a sort of maritime college, where he assembled the most noted geographers, map makers, and naval architects of the day. Continuous improvements were made in the design, construction, and rigging of vessels, and fleet after fleet was sent out to explore the waters of the African Coast. (Muzzey,1935, p. 10) Likewise, about the year 1318 Venice and Genoa opened up direct communication by sea with the towns of the Netherlands. Their fleets, which touched at the port of Lisbon, aroused the business ambition of the Portuguese, who soon began to undertake larger maritime expeditions. By the middle of the fourteenth century Portuguese mariners had discovered the Canary Islands, Madeira, and the Azores. Before this time no one had ventured along the coast of Africa beyond the desert region of Sahara. In 1445, however, some adventurous sailors came within sight of a headland beyond the desert, and, struck by its luxuriant growth of tropical trees, they called it Cape Verde ( the “ green cape”). Its discovery put an end once for all to the idea that there were only parched deserts to the south.

For generation the Portuguese ventured farther and farther along the coast, in the hope of finding it coming to an end, so that they might make their way by sea to India. At last, in 1487, Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope. Eleven years later ( 1498) Vasco de Gama, spurred on by Columbu’s great discovery, sailed around the Cape of Good Hope. He proceeded northward to a point beyond Zanzibar and then, aided by an Arab pilot, steered eastward straight across the Inidan ocean and reached Calicut, in Hindustan by sea.

The Spice Trade .Vasco da Gama and his fellow adventurers were looked upon with natural suspicion by the Mohammedan spice merchants, who knew very well that their object, was to establish direct trade between the Spice Islands ( Moluccas) and western Europe.However, the Mohammedans had the entire control of the spice trade between Moluccas and the eastern ports of the Mediterranean, where the products were handed over to Italian merchants. The Mohammedans were unable, however, to prevent the Portuguese from making treaties with the Indian princes and establishing trading stations at Goa and elsewhere . In 1512 a successor of Vasco da Gama reached Java and the Moluccas, where the Portuguese speedily built a fortress. By 1515 Portugal had become the greatest among sea powers; and spices reached Lisbon regularly without the assistance of the Mohammedan merchants or of the Italian towns, especially Venice, whose was fatally hurt by the change.

There is no doubt that the desire to obtain spices was at this time the main reason to the exploration of the globe. This motive led European navigators to try in succession every possible way to reach the East: by going around Africa; by sailing west in the hope

of reaching the Indies ( before they knew of the existence of America); then, after America was discovered, by sailing around it to the north or south, and even sailing around Europe to the north. It is hard for us to understand this enthusiasm for spices, for which we care much less nowadays. One former use of spices was to preserve food, which could not then, as now, be carried rapidly, while still fresh, from place to place; nor did our conveniences then exist for keeping it by the use of ice. Moreover, spice served to make even spoiled food more palatable than it would otherwise have been.

Idea of Reaching the Spice Islands by Sailing Westward.It finally occurred to thoughtful men that East Indies could be reached by sailing westward. Many intelligent people knew, all through the Middle Ages, that the earth was a globe. The chief authority upon the form and size of the earth continued to be the ancient astronomer Ptolemy, who lived about A.D. 150. he had reckoned the earth to be about one sixth smaller than it is; and as Marco Polo had given an exaggerated idea of the distance which he and his companions had traveled eastward, and as no one suspected the existence of the American continents, it was supposed that it could not be very long journey from Europe across the Atlantic to Japan. (Robinson,p.565)

Cristoforo Columbo.Among the goodly company of navigators attracted to the Portuguese harbors was a young Genoese named Cristoforo Columbo ( Christopher Columbus). At early age the boy developed a great interest in the sea, picked up considerable knowledge of geography, shipping and map making, and probably sailed with a Genoese captain to eastern Mediterranean ports. About fifteen years after the death of Prince Henry, Columbus arrived at Lisbon, where he soon won a conspicuous palce among the mariners. He made voyages to England and to the African coast and married the daughter of one of Prince Henry’s old sea-dogs, the royal governor of the Madeiras. From sources that are not clear to us, Columbus arrived at the unshakable conclusion that there were new lands to be found by sailing boldly out into the Atlantic. He broached his plan to the king of Portugal, whose commission of wise men ridiculed it as fantastic, but sent out a secret expedition to confirm their doubts. Disgusted with this trickery, Columbus shook the dust of Portugal from his feet and went to Spain, where for seven years he labored endeavoring to enlist the support of the sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella, who were in the midst of a campaign to drive the Arabs out of their last stronghold in the country. After his scheme had been twice rejected by the royal commissioners, the indomitable man started to cross the Pyrenees to lay his plan before the king of France, but to his surprise he was recalled and graciously received by the Spanish sovereigns. They had just entered Granada in triumph. Queen Isabella, perhaps in gratitude for the victory over the infidels, perhaps through the

persuasion of some high official who approved Columbus’s plan, perhaps from jealousy lest another nation might after all reap the glory and profit from that plan gave the Genoese adventurer her whole-hearted support. “ Capitulations,” or articles of contract, were signed on April 17,1492, conferring upon Columbus the title of Don and Admiral and the powers of viceroy and governor “ in all the islands and lands which should be discovered or acquired” by him, together with the tenth part of “ all the pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices and other merchandise” there found, and the right to subscribe one eighth of the cost of the expedition and to have one eighth of the profits.

Though the inhabitants of Palos neighboring towns had been ordered to provide ships and men for the enterprise , it was till the beginning of August that Columbus was able to equip three small vessels with about a hundred sailors. For even of the hardy mariners of Portugal were willing to enlist in so hazardous and novel an expedition. On August 3, 1492, the little fleet I the Santa Maria of about two hundred and thirty tons, the Pinta and the Nina, somewhat smaller) left Palos and put in at the Canaries for final overhauling and instruction. Quitting the Canaries on September 6, they sailed due west into the uncharted sea. The weather was favorable and trade winds from the east bore them rapidly on their way. But as weeks passed and no sign of land appeared the sailors began to murmur and the murmurs rose to threats of mutiny. It took all the iron courage of the great commander to sail on. He had confidently expected to find land not more than seven hundred and fifty leagues from the Canaries; but by the end of September that point had been passed and still there stretched before him only the gray horizon, broken now and then by a cloud-bank which the lookouts eagerly mistook for a shore. On October 6 he yielded to the advice of his chief captain, Martin Pinzon, to turn the course a little south, and soon after midnight of the eleventh a sailor on the Pinta spied a light ahead like a moving torch. The next morning the ships approached the shore of an island in the Bahama group, and while the sailors thankfully chanted the Gloria in Excelsis Columbus landed and, with the red robe of the Admiral of Spain throne over his armor and the standard of Spain held aloft, took possession of the land in the name of Ferdinand and Isabella. For several weeks he cruised line of Cuba for a part of the mainland of Asia and identifying Haiti ( or Hispaniola) with the island of Japan. Here on the day after Christmas he built the fort of the Nativity, in which he left a garrison of thirty-seven men, and started for home in the tiny ship Nina. After a stormy voyage he landed at Palos in March, 1493, and a few weeks later was summoned to the court of Barcelona, where he told his marvelous tale, exhibited the Indians, the strange birds and animals, and the specimens of gold which he had brought from the islands of the West, and received royal honors from his sovereign.

Columbus himself set out on a second voyage in September, 1493, with a fleet of seventeen vessels, carrying fifteen hundred men, with horse, cattle, sheeps, hogs and chickens, fruits and vegetables, seeds and sugar cane from the Canaries. On the island of Haiti he established the colony of Isabella as the capital of his vice-royalty- the first permanent settlement of Europeans in the Western Hemisphere.

Had Columbus dreamed that a solid barrier of land, reaching from artic to antartic snows, and beyond that another ocean wider than the one he had just crossed, lay between the island which he mistakenly called Indies and the real Indies of the East, he would not have spent the remaining years of his life in the attempt to locate the rich cities of Cathay. He sailed along the northern coast of South America in 1498 and called it “ a mainland and very large of which no knowledge has been had till now.”; but it was obviously not the kingdom of the Great Khan. Then he tries to find a passage to Asia further west and for a whole year skirted the savage shores of Central America from Nicaragua to Panama with no better success. Meanwhile his misfortunes as an administrator equaled his disappointments as an explorer. His vanity, avarice, and despotism invited resentment and plots among his followers. The meager returns oh is costly expeditions disappointed the sovereign and grandees of Spain. Even as he was sailing along the pestilential coast of South America the Portuegese Vasco de Gama had reached the harbors of India by way of the cape of Good Hope and had brought back to Lisbon treasure sufficient to pay the cost of the voyage sixty times over. Compared with such returns the results of Columbus’s exploits seemed trivial indeed. The court wits dubbed him “ the Admiral of the Mosquitoes, who has discovered lands of vanity and delusion as the miserable graves of Castilian gentlemen.” He returned to Spain in 1504 to find his benefactress Isabella on her deathbed and two years later, in humiliation of poverty and obscurity, he followed her to the grave. Never was reward more ill-proportioned to deserts. The man whose vision and courage had discovered a new world was not even to have the honor of giving it his name.

But when we say” the American continents” the student must realize that neither the pope nor Columbus nor anybody else had any idea in 1493 that such continents existed. Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine merchant who had helped to fit out Columbus’s expedition, made remarkable voyage of discovery in 1501, while in the service of the king of Portugal.Sailing from Lisbon, he struck the coast of Brazil near Cape St. Roque and running down to 34 degrees south latitude, found the constant westward trend of the shore carrying him across the papal demarcation line into the region assigned to Spain. So he steered out into the Atlantic again and

reached the ice-clad island of Georgia in latitude 54 degrees south, whence he sailed northeast in a straight line of four thousand miles to the coast of Africa.

Vespucci was a good advertiser. He wrote letters about the “ New World” ( novus mundus) which he had discovered, declaring that he had found a continent in the south “ more populous and full of animals than our Europe or Asia or Africa and even more temperate and pleasant than any other region known to us.” For man who had set foot in his “ new world.” Vespucci certainly claimed to know a good deal about it. However, his letters had great vogue and were responsible for the naming of western continent. Shortly after Vespucci’s letter were published some of the faculty of the little college of St. Die in the Vosges Mountains were preparing a new edition of popular Geography of Ptolemy. One of the collaborators, a German Martin Waldseemuller, wrote an introduction to the work in 1507, in which suggestion that since in addition to Europe, Asia,and Africa, “ another fourth part of the world has been discovered by Americus Vespuccius… I do not see fairly hinders us from calling in Amerige or America,viz, the land of America.” There was no intention of robbing Columbus of hius due honor, because it was believed by all ( including the great discoverer himself, who died year before Waldseemuller’s introduction was written) that Columbus had found only a new way to the old world and not a new world. It was this new worth south of the equator to which the new name was given. And when in the course of time it was found out that the ‘ Ameirca” of Vsepucci was the same continent along whose northern shore Columbus had sailed in 1498, and that it was joined by an isthmus to another great northern continent which Vespucci had never seen, it was too late to remedy the mistake. The name “ America” had become popular and it spread with the progressive discovery of the true shape and extent of the continent until 1541 the geographer Mercator applied it to the whole mainland from Labrador to Patagonia. So it came about that this continent was named by an obscure German professor in a French College for an Italian navigator in the service of the king of Portugal. ( Muzzey,p.18-21)

The Demarcation Line of the Maritime and Colonial Domains of Spain and Portugal 34

Missionary zeal was quite as prominent a motive as the search for wealth in the explorations of new age. The Pope as the acknowledged head of Christian Europe was regarded as having a special interest and authority in matters pertaining to the conversion of heathen peoples .He had sanctioned the Portuguese establishments on the coast of Africa in the middle years of the fifteenth century. Now Spain had entered into competition with

Portugal for the exploitation of the Indies, her sovereigns asked for papal recognition of their claims too. Accordingly Pope Alexander VI, who was a Spaniard, issued a proclamation or “Bull” ( from bulla, “ a seal”) a few weeks after Columbus returned from his first voyage, assigning to Portugal all the new heathen lands to be discovered to the eastward and to Spain all such lands to the westward of a line drawn from pole to pole, one hundred leagues west of the cape Verde Island. The two countries accepted that papal idea of the division of the spoils in a treaty concluded at Tordesillas the following year (1994), but they shifted the location of the line to three hundred and seventy leagues west of the said islands. ( Muzzey, p.17)

After the crown of Portugal had won the City of Mallaca in the Asian Mainland, within the Kingdom of Ior ( Johore) which the ancient people called Aureachersoneso, in the year Fifteen Hundred and Eleven (1511) A.D. upon learning that these Islands were near by, particularly the Moluccas and Banda, from which cloves and nutmeg were obtained; a Portuguese fleet sailed for their discovery.Having reached and stayed in Banda they were taken Ternate Island belonging to the Moluccas, by its King, in order to defend himself against his neighboring fellow-King of Tydor with whom he was at war. And this was the beginning of the Portuguese occupation of the Moluccas. ( Morga, p. 2)

Francisco Serrano who had returned to Malacca with this voyage of discovery and had started back to Portugal through India to report on said discovery, died before he could finish the voyage. He had communicated by letter to his friend Ferdinand Magellan ( together with whom he had taken Malacca and was at the time in Portugal) what he had witnessed, and with said reports the latter understood what was proper to do regarding the discovery and expedition to the islands. At this time Magellan transferred to the service of the King of castile owing to certain reasons of his own and approached our Lord and Emperor Carles V, apprizing him that the moluccas were within the line of demarcation of the crown of Castile so that he, Magellan, now offered himself to make expedition of discovery. ( Morga, p.3)

First Circumnavigation of the Globe, begun in 1519, was an attempt to prove that the coveted Spice Islands, or Moluccas, were actually property of Spain. Finding a direct route between the Spice Islands and Spanish Peru would be argument enough for ownership of these lands. Ferdinand Magellan set out from Spain on this voyage with five ships, but the voyage was more difficult than expected. Disease, bad weather, and loss of ships to Portuguese attack hampered the voyage. On April 27, 1521, Magellan was killed in the Philippine Islands attempting to convert a native chief to Christianity. With only two ships remaining, the crew continued the

voyage making it back to Seville, Spain with only 18 crew members on a single ship.

Magellan attempted to receive funds from the King of Portugal, but he would not fund this voyage because he saw no need for such a frivolous expenditure. Magellan then turned to King Charles (also known as Holy Roman Emperor Charles V) of Spain for support. Magellan convinced the king that this voyage would be useful to show that the Spice Islands were property of Spain, not Portugal. The dispute over these islands was significant because the possession of these islands would bring vast wealth to the owner. King Charles I saw this as an opportunity to gain status and wealth for his country and gave Magellan his funding.

Voyage of Ferdinand Magellan 35

Ferdinand Magellan (Portuguese: Fernão de Magalhães, Spanish: Fernando or Hernando de Magallanes; Spring 1480–April 27, 1521[1]) was a Portuguese maritime explorer who led the first successful attempt to sail around the entire Earth. He did not complete his final voyage; he was killed during the Battle of Mactan in the Philippines. He did, however, die further west than the Spice Islands, which he had visited on earlier voyages, making him one of the first individuals to cross all the meridians of the globe. He became the first person to lead an expedition sailing westward from Europe to Asia and to cross the Pacific Ocean.Of the 237 or 270]

crew members who set out with Magellan to circumnavigate the globe, only 18 managed to return to Spain and thereby complete the circumnavigation. They were led by Spaniard Juan Sebastián Elcano, who took over command of the expedition after Magellan's death.

Magellan went on his first voyage on the sea at the age of 25 in 1505 when he was sent to India to install Francisco de Almeida as the Portuguese viceroy. The voyage gave Magellan his first experience of battle when a local king, who had paid tribute to da Gama three years earlier, refused to pay tribute to Almeida. Almeida's party attacked and conquered the capital of Kilwa in present-day Tanzania.In 1506, Magellan travelled to the East Indies and joined expeditions to the Spice Islands. In February 1509, he took part in the naval Battle of Diu, which marked the decline of Ottoman influence in the area. In 1510, he was made a captain. Within a year, however, he had lost his commission after sailing a ship eastward without permission. He was forced to return to Portugal.

In 1511, Magellan was sent to Morocco, where he fought in the Battle of Azamor. In the midst of the battle he received a severe knee wound. After taking leave without permission, he fell out of favor with Almeida, and was also accused of trading illegally with the Moors. Several of the accusations were subsequently dropped, but Magellan fell into disfavor at the court of the new king, Manuel I. He refused to increase Magellan's pension and told him that there would be no further offers of employment after May 15, 1514. Magellan therefore decided to offer his services to the court of Spain.

On August 10, 1519, five ships under Magellan's command left Seville and traveled from the Guadalquivir River to Sanlúcar de Barrameda at the mouth of the rivers, where they remained more than five weeks. Spanish authorities were wary of the Portuguese admiral and almost prevented Magellan from sailing, and switched his crew of mostly Portugese men with men of Spain, but on September 20, Magellan set sail from Sanlúcar de Barrameda with about 270 men.

After three long months of sea travel, Magellan anchored near present day Rio de Janeiro. The ships were restocked and the crew traded with the friendly natives, but the rest was short-lived. Cautious because of being in Portuguese waters, Magellan quickly resumed the voyage on a path towards the Great South Sea of the Orient. Magellan believed he had found the Spice Islands and exclaimed, "Montevideo," that is, "I see a mountain"; but it was only the large delta of the Rio de la Plata. Disappointed, the crew sailed on.

King Manuel ordered a naval detachment to pursue Ferdinand Magellan, but Magellan avoided the Portuguese. After stopping at the Canary Islands, Ferdinand Magellan arrived at the Cape Verde Islands, where they set course for Cape St. Augustine in Brazil. On November 20, they crossed the equator; on December 6, the crew sighted Brazil.

Since Brazil was Portuguese territory, Magellan avoided it, and on December 13 anchored near present-day Rio de Janeiro. There the crew was resupplied, but bad conditions caused them to delay. Afterwards, they continued to sail south along South America's east coast, looking for the strait that Magellan believed would lead to the Spice Islands. The fleet reached Río de la Plata on January 10, 1520.Greg Bobs established a settlement that they called Puerto San Julian. A mutiny involving two of the five ship captains broke out. It was unsuccessful because the crew remained loyal. Quesada was executed; Cartagena and a priest were marooned on the coastThe Straits of Magellan cut through the southern tip of South America connecting the Atlantic and Pacific

The journey resumed. Santiago, sent down the coast on a scouting expedition, was wrecked in a sudden storm. All of its crewmembers survived and made it safely to shore. Two of them returned, overland, to inform Magellan of what had happened, and bring rescue to their comrades. After this experience, Magellan decided to wait for a few weeks more before again resuming the voyage.

At 52°S latitude on August 24, 1520, the fleet reached Cape Virgenes and concluded they had found the passage, because the waters were brine and deep inland. Four ships began an arduous passage through the 373-mile long passage that Magellan called the Estreito (Canal) de Todos los Santos, ("All Saints' Channel"), because the fleet traveled through it on November 1–All Saints' Day. The strait is now named the Strait of Magellan. Magellan first assigned Concepcion and San Antonio to explore the strait, but the latter, commanded by Gomez, deserted and returned to Spain. On November 28, the three remaining ships entered the South Pacific. Magellan named the waters the Mar Pacifico (Pacific Ocean) because of its apparent stillness.

Heading northwest, the crew reached the equator on February 13, 1521. On March 6, they reached the Marianas and on March 16, the island of Homonhon in the Philippines, with 150 crewmen left. Magellan was able to communicate with the native peoples because his Malay interpreter could understand their language. They traded gifts with Rajah Kolambu of Limasawa, who guided them to Cebu, on April 7. Rajah Humabon of Cebu was friendly to them, and even agreed to accept Christianity.

The initial peace with the Philippine natives proved misleading. Magellan was killed in the Battle of Mactan against indigenous forces led by Lapu-Lapu on April 27, 1521. Antonio Pigafetta, a wealthy tourist who paid to be on the Magellan voyage, provided the only extant eyewitness account of the events culminating in Magellan's death.

The passage of Pigafetta, an eye witness, described the Battle of Mactan and the death of Magellan :

“On 26 April, 1521 ( Friday) Zula who was one of the chiefs, or rather one of the heads of the Island of Maktan sent to the Captain General ( Magellan) one of his sons with two goats as a present to him; and he ordered that he be told that if he did not do all that he had promised him, it was because of another chief called Si Lapulapu who prevented him from doing so as he did not want to obey at all the King of Spain. But, if the Captain would only like to send him the following night a boat load of men to help him, he would conquer and subjugate his rival. Upon hearing this message,

the Captain decided to go himself with three crafts. We entreated him earnestly not to go personally, but he as a good shepherd, did not want to abandon his flock.

We Sulu at midnight. We were seventy men armed with corselets and helmets. Those who came with us were the Chrsitian king, the prince, some chiefs, and many others, divided into 20 or 30 balangai. We arrived at Maktan at three o’clock in the morning. The Captain, before springing over, still wanted to use gentleness and he sent ashore the Muslim merchant to tell the islander of the party Si Lapulapu that if they would recognize the Christian king as their lord, and obey the king of Spain, and pay us the tribute demanded, our Captain would be their friend: and on the contrary, they would taste how our lances wounded. The islanders were not frightened; they replied that if we had lances, they too have lances of bamboo and wood, hardened in the fire. However, they wanted us to understand that they did not wish us to make the assault at night but ot wait for the day, inasmush as they were awaiting reinforcement and they would be in the majority and they made us understand this maliciously so that in this way we would be encouraged to attack them at night, supposing them to be less prepared; but this was their ardent desire because between the shore and the houses they had dug ditches into which they expected us to fall on account of the darkness.

For that reason we awaited for daytime. Forty-nine of us jumped the water which reached until waist, because the ships could not come near to the shore on account of the shallow water and the reefs, and thus we had to wade through the water for a great distance before reaching the shore. The other 11 men remained to guard the boats. When we reached land, the islanders, numbering 1,500 were formed into three corps and advanced toward us with terrible outcries, two corps attacking us on the flanks and the other in front.Then the Captain divided his men into two sections. Our musketeers and archers shot from afar foir half an hour, but they gained nothing, as the bullets and arrows, though they pierced through their shields made of fine wood, wounded them only in the arms, which did not stop them. The Captain ordered shouting not to shoot, but he was not heeded. The islanders seeing that the blows of our muskets caused them little or no damage, did not want to withdraw any more and shouting then with greater force and jumping here and there to avoid our shots, they came near to us hurling arrows, bamboo lances, sticks sharpened in fire,stones, and even mud, in such a way that we could hardly defend ourselves. Some hurled to the Captain General lances with iron tips.

Seeing this the Captain ordered some of our men to set fire the houses in order to drive away such a throng and terrorize them

but this made them more furious. Some ran to the fire that burned from twenty to thirty houses, and there by killed two of our men. The other advanced toward us with greater fury. They discovered that our bodies were protected but our legs were uncovered and aimed at them principally. In fact, a poisoned arrow pierced the right leg of the Captain for which reason he ordered us to retreat little by little; but almost all of our men fled hurriedly in such a way that hardly seven or eight of us remained with him. We were overwhelmed by the lances and stones that the enemies hurtled and we could not resist any more. The lombards that we had in the crafts did not help us because they were too far from land on the account of the low tide. Therefore, we retreated little by little, always figthing and only ahort distance separated us from the shore, submerged in the water until knees. The islanders followed us and picking up the lances already hurled, they threw them to us five and six times, their shots being directed specially to the Captain who they knew; but he, together with a few of our men, remained at their place like a good gentlemen, without wanting to retreat more than the rest.Thus we fought for more than an hour until an Indio succeeded to hurl a bamboo lance to his face. The irritated , he hurled him his own lance which it hit his breast and there he left it; but in wishing to unshjeathe his sword, he did not succeed more than half way because of a wound he received in the right arm from a cane. Seeing this, the enemies all came over him and one of them with large kampilan, which was equivalent to a large falchion,dealt him a big cut on the left leg that made him fall head-long to the ground.Then the Indios with cane lances with iron tips, with falchions,and with arms that they had hurled over him and wounded him until they deprived of life the mirror, the light, the solace, our true guide. While they pressed him down in that way, more than once he turned back to see if were safe, as his obstinate resistance had no other object but to cover up the retreat of his men. Those of us who fought beside him until the end and were covered with wounds, seeing him dead, we too went to our crafts which were ready to depart. This fatal battle took place on 27 (28) April 1521. Saturday, ( Sunday), a day chosen by the Captain himself for his devotion to it. With him died of eight of our men and four Indios of those who had been baptized. We also had wounded men among whom I count myself. The enemies did not lose more than 15 men…

The Christian ling could have helped us in fact and he would have done it, but our Captain, far from forseeing what occurred, upon going down ashore with his men, had requested him not to leave his balangai, wishing him to watch from there how we fought. When he learned about the Captain’s death, he wept bitterly. ( Pigafetta, Prino Vingio intorno of Mondo. Book II). “

Monument in Lapu-Lapu City that marks the site where Magellan was pur portedly killed

"When morning came, forty-nine of us leaped into the water up to our thighs, and walked through water for more than two cross-bow flights before we could reach the shore. The boats could not approach nearer because of certain rocks in the water. The other eleven men remained behind to guard the boats. When we reached land, [the natives] had formed in three divisions to the number of more than one thousand five hundred persons. When they saw us, they charged down upon us with exceeding loud cries... The musketeers and crossbow-men shot from a distance for about a half-hour, but uselessly... Recognizing the captain, so many turned upon him that they knocked his helmet off his head twice... An Indian hurled a bamboo spear into the captain's face, but the latter immediately killed him with his lance, which he left in the Indian's body. Then, trying to lay hand on sword, he could draw it out but halfway, because he had been wounded in the arm with a bamboo spear. When the natives saw that, they all hurled themselves upon him. One of them wounded him on the left leg with a large cutlass, which resembles a scimitar, only being larger. That caused the captain to fall face downward, when immediately they rushed upon him with iron and bamboo spears and with their cutlasses, until they killed our mirror, our light, our comfort, and our true guide. When they wounded him, he turned back many times to see whether we were all in the boats. Thereupon, beholding him dead, we, wounded, retreated, as best we could, to the boats, which were already pulling off."

Lapu-Lapu 36

He (Kaliph Pulaka) (born 1491, died 1542) is the earliest known Muslim Chieftain of Mactan in the Philippines. Known as the first native of the archipelago to have resisted Spanish colonization, he is now regarded as the first National hero of the Philippines.

On the morning of April 27, 1521, Lapu-Lapu and the men of Mactan, armed with spears and kampilan, faced 49 Spanish soldiers led by Portuguese captain Ferdinand Magellan. In what would later be known as the Battle of Mactan, Magellan and several of his men were killed.

In his honor, the Cebuano people have erected a statue and church in Mactan Island and also renamed the town of Opon in Cebu to Lapu-Lapu City.

One of Magellan's ships circumnavigated the globe, finishing 16 months after the explorer's death.

Magellan had provided in his will that his Malay interpreter was to be freed upon his death. His interpreter, who was baptized as Enrique (Henry the Black) in Malacca in 1511, had been captured by Sumatran slavers from his home islands. Thus Enrique became the first man to circumnavigate the globe (in multiple voyages). Enrique was indentured by Magellan during his earlier voyages to Malacca, and was at his side during the battles in Africa, during Magellan's disgrace at the King's court in Portugal, and during Magellan's successful raising of a fleet. However, after Mactan, the remaining ship's masters refused to free Enrique. Enrique escaped his indenture on May 1, with the aid of Rajah Humabon, amid the deaths of almost 30 crewmen. However, Antonio Pigafetta had been making notes about the language, and was apparently able to continue communications during the rest of the voyage.

Magellan's voyage to the Spice Islands led to Limasawa, Cebu, Mactan, Palawan, Brunei, Celebes and finally to the Spice Islands (Zoom in for detail here: 0°47′N 127°22′E)

The casualties suffered in the Philippines left the expedition with too few men to sail the three remaining ships. Accordingly, on May 2, 1521, they abandoned Concepción, burning the ship to make sure it could not be used against them. The fleet, now reduced to Trinidad and Victoria, fled westward to Palawan. They left that island on June 21, 1521, and were guided to Brunei, Borneo by Moro pilots, who could navigate the shallow seas. They anchored off the Brunei breakwater for 35 days, where the Venetian Pigafetta mentions the splendor of Rajah Siripada's court (gold, two pearls the size of hens' eggs, etc.). In addition, Brunei boasted tame elephants and armament of 62 cannon, more than 5 times the armament of Magellan's ships. Brunei disdained the cloves which were to prove more valuable than gold, upon the return to Spain. Pigafetta mentions some of the technology of the court, such as porcelain (which was not yet widely available in Europe), and spectacles (eyeglasses were only just becoming available in Europe).

After reaching the Maluku Islands (the Spice Islands) November 6, 1521, 115 crew were left. They managed to trade with the Sultan of Tidore, a rival of the Sultan of Ternate, who was the ally of the Portuguese.

The two remaining ships, laden with valuable spices, attempted to return to Spain by sailing west. As they left the Moluccas, however, Trinidad was found to be taking on water. The crew tried to discover and repair the leak, but failed. They concluded that Trinidad would need to spend considerable time being overhauled. The small Victoria was not large enough to accommodate all the surviving crewmembers. As a result, Victoria with some of the crew sailed west for Spain. Several weeks later,

Trinidad left the Moluccas to attempt to return to Spain via the Pacific route. This attempt failed; the ship was captured by the Portuguese, and was eventually wrecked in a storm while at anchor under Portuguese control.

The Victoria set sail via the Indian Ocean route home on December 21, 1521. By May 6, 1522, the Victoria, commanded by Juan Sebastián Elcano, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, with only rice for rations. Twenty crewmen died of starvation before Elcano put in to the Cape Verde Islands, a Portuguese holding, where he abandoned 13 more crewmen on July 9 in fear of losing his cargo of 26 tons of spices (cloves and cinnamon).

The eigtheen men who returened to seville with Victoria in 1522: (1)Juan Sebastian Elcano from Getaria (Master);(2) Francisco Albo, from Axio (Pilot);(3)Miguel de Rodas( Pilot );(4)Juan de Acurio, from Bermeo( Pilot); (5)Antonio Lomabrdo ( Pigafetta, from Vicenza( Supernumerary); (6)Martin de Judicibus, from Genoa(Chief Steward);(7)Hernando de Bustamante from Alcantara( Mariner ); (8) Nicholas the Greek, from Naples( Mariner); (9)Miguel Sanchez, from Rhodes ( Mariner);(10) Antonio Hernandez Colmenero, from Huelva( Mariner);(11) Francisco Rodrigues, Portuguese from Seville( Mariner); (12)Juan Rodriguez from Huelva( Mariner); (13)Diego Carmena ( Mariner);(14)Hans of Aachen(Gunner); (15)Juan de Arratia from Bilbao(Able Seaman);(16) Vasco Gomez Gallego, from Bayona ( Able Seaman );(17) Juan de Santandres, from Cueto (Apprentice Seaman) ; and (18)Juan de Zubileta from Baraldo (Page).

On September 6, 1522[7], Juan Sebastián Elcano and the remaining crew of Magellan's voyage and the last ship of the fleet, Victoria, arrived in Spain, almost exactly three years after leaving. The expedition actually eked out a small profit, but the crew were not paid their full wages. Maximilianus Transylvanus interviewed the surviving members of the expedition when they presented themselves to the Spanish court at Valladolid in the fall of 1522, and wrote the first account of the voyage, which was published in 1523. The account written by Pigafetta did not appear until 1525, in and was not wholly published until the late eighteenth century.

Four crewmen of the original 55 on the Trinidad finally returned to Spain in 1525. That means 51 of them had died in war or from a disease.

Significance of the Voyage

Magellan's expedition was the first to circumnavigate the globe and the first to navigate the strait in South America connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Magellan's crew

observed several animals that were entirely new to European science. These included the "camel without humps", which could have been the llama, guanaco, vicuña, or alpaca. A black "goose" which had to be skinned instead of plucked was the penguin.Two of the closest galaxies, the Magellanic Clouds, were discovered by crew members in the Southern Hemisphere. The full extent of the Earth was also realized, since their voyage was 14,460 leagues (69,800 km or 43,400 mi).

Finally, the need for an International date line was established. Upon their return they observed a mismatch of one day between their calendars and those who did not travel, even though they faithfully maintained their ship's log. However, they did not have clocks accurate enough to observe the variation in the length of the day during the journey. This phenomenon caused great excitement at the time, to the extent that a special delegation was sent to the Pope to explain this oddity to him.

Ferdinand Magellan was the first European to reach Tierra del Fuego on South America's southern tip.

He was the first European to see a South American Native American tribe. He saw a "race of giant sub-humans." The race he saw was the Dagons. After the encounter he brought a few to the Philippines as slaves. He was also the first European to land in The Philippines and meet its native people.

He had professional scientists on the trip to help determine the species of some of the animals he found on his voyage.

About 232 Spanish, Portuguese, French, English and Greek sailors died on the expedition around the world with Magellan.

The King and Queen of Spain supported him on his voyage.

The Voyages of Loaysa, Saavedra, Villalobos37

Juan Jofre de Loaysa

Magellan’s discovery of the western route to the Pacific pointed up more than ever the need for settling the vexing question of the ownership of Moluccas. The claims and counterclaims of both Chrales V of Spain and John III of Portugal grew so numerous that the two kings finally decided to settle the dispute once for all by a decisive discussion. They agreed to have their representatives meet in March or April of 1523 on the Portuguese- Spanish frontier between Budajoz and Yelves. They actually met a year later but the discussion yielded no positive results.

When this attempt at a settlement round a discussion table field, Charles V decided to take action. On April 5, 1525, a royal cedula appointed Juan Garcia Jofre de loaysa captain general of the

islands of the Moluccas, and placed him in charge of an expedition which was to sail from La Coruna to the South Seas by way of the Strait of Magellan. The Philippines was to play a prominent, albeit secondary, role in the voyage.

One of the best accounts of the Loaysa expedition was written by a young Basque seaman, Andres de Urdaneta, who forty years later was to accompany Legazpi in the first successful attempt at colonization in the Philippines. Urdaneta wrote that Loaysa’s fleet of seven ships departed from La Coruna on July 24, 1525, and made for the Canaries. At the end of a week they were in Gomara, taking on more fresh supplies. On August 14, they lifted anchor, and after coasting down the African, then over to the Brazilian, coast were in the Strait of Magellan by mid-January of 1526; but not before heavy stroms separated the vessels and wrecked the Sancti Spiritus. By then two ships decided they had had enough and made off, the Anunciada and San Gabriel. By the time Loaysa reached the strait he had only four ships left, the flagship Victoria, the Santa Maria del Parral, the San Lesmes and the pinnace Santiago. He took the strait by stages, having been driven back to the Atlantic by several storms, and on May 26 sighted the Pacific. But their joy was shattered on June 1 when a violent storm struck and separated the Victoria from the two caravels and the pinnace. The caravels were never heard of again. The adventures of the Santiago will be recounted later. Loaysa’s situation was grim, to say the least. His ship was leaking, overcrowded because they had taken on the survivors of the Sancti Spiritus, and desperately short of provisions. Death by scurvy was claiming his men. But instead of heading for Mexico and certain relief, he showed that determined courage of the conquistador and set off to cross the broad Pacific. He did not get far. Loaysa died, probably of food poisoning, on July 30, 1526. such an event was always provided for on Spanish ships and so the officers opened the secret packet of the king which contained a list of successors. The new leader was Sebastian del Cano. Four days later he too was dead. Alfonso de Salazar was next in line. In the meantime, Urdaneta wrote, “Weary with exertion we sailed on near fourteen or fifteen degrees north latitude in search of Cipangu. But because the crew was almost exhausted from both working the pump and from drink, with men dying every day, we decided to make for Maluco.”

Three weeks after del Cano’s death, on August 21, 1526, the first Pacific landfall took place, an island which they called San Bartolome. On September 4 one of the Marianas was sighted, and the Victoria decided to heave to. Next day an outrigger canoe came paddling out and in it was Gonzalo de Vigo of Magellan’s expedition. He was one of the three survivors of the Trinidad which had attempted to cross from Maluco to Mexico. They were stranded at

this lonely island and only Vigo survived the ordeal. He was quickly taken board.

Rice, fruit, and water were hauled aboard in abundance. But food was not the only product taken aboard. Eleven natives who had come out to the Spaniards to sell their wares were pressed into involuntary service. Urdaneta does not mention the episode but Hernando de la Torre’s log book does, nothing that, “we took them as slaves by order of the captain, Alonso de Salazar, for our own vessels was shipping water badly and the crew needed to rest. The natives were released on October 10, near Mindanao, with the same boat in which they were taken. One wonders of they made it safely back to the Marianas.

Having obtained what supplies they could, the Victoria pushed on. On September 10 they set sail for the Moluccas, heading west-southwest. But ill luck still rode the ship, for Captain Salazar died within a week. The fourth captain to head the expedition was Martin Iniguez de Carquizano.

Three weeks out of the Marianas, on October 2, the decimated expedition reached Mindanao, putting into a broad bay which they called Vizaya, probably present-day Lianga Bay. A landing party was sent ashore to bargain for food. The local natives willingly exchanged rice, chickens, and fruit, but later they acted more reservedly and negotiations for supplies proved unsuccessful. Urdaneta wrote that there was evidence of much gold in the area and the natives even came out with chunks of it to sell to the Spaniards, but Carquizano forbade his men from buying it. So with no hope of relieving their now chronic food shortage, they lifted anchor on October 15 and sailed out of the bay. Their next stop, however, was not to be the Moluccas, but Cebu to the north, probably hoping to take on supplies there before attempting to make the final leg of their voyage south. Nature interfered with their plans. Once clear of the bay, both the winds and the currents presented them from sailing north. There was nothing for them to do but turn south and make for Maluco. Cape St. Agustine was sighted on October 16, and on the 19th, Sargani, off the southern extremity of Mindanao. They crossed the Molucca Passage and on October 22 landed on the island of Kepulauan Talaud, about halfway between Mindanao and the Moluccas. They were graciously received by the local chief, already familiar with Portuguese who had stopped at this island. He gave the half-starved Spaniards fish, goats, fruits, and hens, so Carquizano’s men made the best of a good thing, staying ten days. Here they learned from a former Portuguese slave that the Portuguese not only had a fort in Ternate as well as ships, but that less than two months previous they had burned Tidore in reprisal against the native ruler because he had helped the Spaniards of Magellan’s Trinidad. Although importuned to stay by

the chief and help him in a local war, the Spaniards sailed off and into a maelstrom of conflict with the Portuguese.

With only 105 men remaining of the 450 that sailed from La Coruna, the Spaniards could not have harbored any illusions as to what fate awaited them in the Moluccas. They reached Morotai on November 9, 1526. it was not long before Francisco de Castro, in the name of the Portuguese captain major of Ternate and imprisonment. In the skirmished and local intrigues which followed, the emperor’s men fared surprisingly well, hardly behaving like a famished crew which had just sailed across two oceans. Naturally, Portuguese jurisdiction was always denied, but it was not until Saavedra arrived in 1528 that they surrendered to the Portuguese.

On the face it, loaysa’s expedition was a failure. It did not occupy the moluccas nor did it wrest the spice trade from the Portuguese. But it did have its value in that it emphasized several points. Although a western route to the Moluccas did in fact exist, it was wholly impracticable until a number of fortified stopping places could be erected where a fleet could be revictualed. If such places could be maintained on the Patagonian coast, the long haul across the southern Pacific would still remain a devastating barrier, even for the most stalwart of crews. Also, if the route did at some future time prove workable, how were the fleets to return? The Portuguese had the lanes around Africa to themselves. The only alternative was to return the same way they came. The development of New Spain could provide a suitable stepping-stone for future expeditions, like Saave-dra’s in 1527. here too, however, the question of a return route still had to be solved.

Saavedra

The third Spanish expedition to reach the Philippines in the sixteenth century took place while the remnants of Loaysa’s crew were still floundering about the Moluccas. To find out what happened to Loaysa and also to Sebastian Cabot who had sailed from Spain for the Moluccas in 1526, Charles V ordered Herman Cortes to send another expedition to the South Seas. The cedula of authorization arrived from Spain about the same time that Fray Juan de Areizaga was pulled ashore half-drowned on the Mexico coast of Tehuantepec. Areizaga was brought to Mexico City and he related the adventures of the Santiago, the pinnance which was separated from the other ships and alone in the Pacific with only eight casks of water and four quintals of powdered biscuit. The bulk of the supplies had been on the flagship. Because of the critical situation they decided to make for New Spain. They kept sighting land from July 11 on but no suitable place to put ashore. Finally one was spotted on July 25. since there was no skiff aboard, Fray Juan, the ship’s chaplain, volunteered to float ashore in a wooden box. The captain

of the ship, Santiago de Guevara, objected, but the chaplain of the ship insisted and had his way. So Areizaga, with shoes and habit on, as well as a sword buckled to his waist, pushed off in his box. It capsized before reaching land but the friar swam the rest of the way. He was happy to learn from the Indians who had gathered to watch the spectacle that he had landed in Spanish territory. The remaining members of the Santiago’s crew were rescued and brought to the Spanish officials of Techuantepec. Areizaga hurried to Mexico City and reported to Cortes. It was about this time that the cedula from Charles V also arrived, ordering Cortes to equip a fleet to search for Loaysa and Cabot.

The ill fortune of Cabot and Loaysa provided the opportunity for which Herman Cortes, upon whom Lady Luck seemed ever to smile, had been impatiently waiting. Cortes wished to see New Spain made the crossroads of a Spain-East Indies spice trade. Precisely for expeditions to the South Seas Cortes had bought 100 horses in Santo Domingo, enlisted 500 men and had four ship built. But when he returned to New Spain he found that Nuno de Guzman had incorporated the men into the latter’s own expedition to New Galicia. In spite of this, Cortes was willing to organize another expedition to the Spice Island.

Charles V’s cedula was dated from Granada, June 20, 1526. in it the king empowered Cortes to search for survivors of Magellan’s Trinidad and to find out what had happened to both Sebastian Cabot and Loaysa. Cortes was to use two or three of the vessels which he had already prepared for trading purposes to the Spice Islands and he was to choose his cousin, Alvaro de Saavedra Ceron, to command the expedition. Saavedra had more than his share of the consquistador. Antonio Galvao, who wrote one of the earliest accounts of Portuguese and Spanish exploration, reported that it was said of Saavedra “ that he intended to act as the Emperor, to open the land from Castilla de Oro and New Spain from sea to sea, because it could be done in four different places….then they could sail from the Canaries to the Moluccas under the climate of the Zodiac in less time and with much less danger than around the Cape of Good Hope or through the Strait of Magellan, or by way of the land the Corte Real ( the Northwest Passage)…. This would make Saavedra one of the several Spanish explorers who thought feasible the idea of a Panama Canal.

The expedition, organized by Cortes and headed by Saavedra, consisted of two naos, the Florida and the Santiago, and one brigantine, the Espiritu Santo. With 115 men, including four secular priests, they set sail from Zaguatanejo on October 31,1527. Saavedra carried instructions on practically all aspects of the voyage. No one, from officers to cabin boys, was to blaspheme, and the occasion for balashphemy, and card playing, was to be overseen

by the captain or his delegate. Of course, no women were permitted to embark. No one was to go ashore on any of the islands without Saavedra’s permission, and this under penalty of death. Trading was to be supervised by Saavedra. In Cebu they were to try to ascertain whether Magellan’s pilot, Juan Serrano, was still alive, and they were to ransom any others held prisoner. Saavedra was also to write detailed reports on the island of Cebu and especially whether it could be conquered by cavalry. In the Moluccas Saavedra was to look for Loaysa and Cabot but he was also to keep an eye out for spices. He was to search for a good place for a settlement, load the ships with spices, and send them back to New Spain. There is no doubt that Cortes wished to see New Spain one of the chief beneficiaries of any future spice trading with the Moluccas.

An interesting sidelight of Saavedra’s trip is the letter he was to deliver to the rajah of Cebu. In it Cortes the diplomat accuses Magellan 9of overstepping the orders of the king of Spain and causing war and discord with the Cebuas. Because of this disobedience, Cortes wrote, God permitted that he be killed. And he added, it were well that he died, because the king of Spain would have visited worse punishments on him. Certainly Cortes was no one to speak of overstepping the king’s commands, but so far up the ladder of diplomacy had the former soldier climbed! He also wrote letters for the king of Tidore and Sebastian Cabot.

Saavedra’s fleet of two naos and a brigantine lifted anchor on the night of October 31, and headed southwest. Two weeks later the first bad omen reared its head. The Florida sprang a leak which made necessary the lightening of the vessel. Thirty quintals of bread and meat were thrown overboard. After a month and a half at sea, at about 11 degrees north, a storm hit. The Florida proved difficult to handle and took in sail while the Santiago and Espiritu Santo ran past with the wind. The latter two were never seen again and were probably wrecked on the reefs near Gaspar Rio, present –day Taongi, which had been named San Bartolome by Loaysa’s expedition. The Ladrones weres sighted by the Florida on December 29, but the ship did not anchor. On New Year’s Day, 1528, the Florida did heave off Yap or Ulithi in the western Carolines. The crew collected twelve barrels of water ashore and waited a week before resuming the voyage. Two weeks out of the Carolines the pilot, and Savedra was hard put to it to find a replacement. He finally choose a certain Virico” who knew nothing about taking latitudes but was a good sailor and skillful at dead reckoning. “ About a week later, on February 1, land was sighted. One author conjectures that it may been Surigao, taking into account their later movements and the description of their surroundings. After a few days the group of weary Spaniards sought shelter at a nearby island protected by two small islets standing four leagues eastward and seaward. The only

group in the area of the landfall which fits this description is Bucas Island and the islets of Lanajosa and Anjuan.

Saavedra’s encounter with the native Filipino was brief. Off Bucas a native outrigger with six rowers came out to the Florida and they surprised the Spaniards by shouting, “ Castilla, Castilla.” Four days later another outrigger approached the Florida, this one a bit larger, carrying fourteen people. Still they did not board the Florida, probably afraid of the lighted fuses of the Spanish muskets. It was only when they exchanged hostages and the lighted fuses were hidden below deck that the natives came aboard to inspect the ship. The mutual goodwill did not last long, however, for when the natives attempted to retain the Spanish hostages, a fight broke out, but the hostages made good their escape. That same day the Florida was attacked again but when the attackers realized they could do nothing against the well-armed caravel, they returned to shore. Saavedra had enough of Mindanao. He left for the Moluccas on February 23.

Only a day out of Bucas, while sailing south ward along the Mindanao coast, the Spaniards came upon a fourteen-oared native galley, nine miles off the coast. The galley’s boat approached Florida and by signs gave the Spaniards to understand that food and refreshments awaited them on shore. The Florida turned about and headed towards the beach. When it anchored , probably in Baganga Bay, some sailors of the galley asked for water kegs to fill. The Spaniards noticed that one of the natives wore what appeared to be a Portuguese colored cap, similar to the ones brought from Europe for barter.The Spaniards asked no questions. The natives seemed hospitable enough. They filled the casks and when they returned said that on the next day they would bring rice and coconuts. They kept their word. The chief, called Catunao, also sent his son-in-law aboard the Florida bringing his own little son in his arms. Saavedra presented him with pieces of cloth and asked that his people bring more supplies. The chief’s son-in-law agreed, but no supplies were ever provided.

One night, several of the young men attempted to cut the anchor cable on the landward site of Saavedra’s ship. They tried the cable to their own rope ashore and tried to beach the caravel, but it would not budge. A bit puzzled, they went back to the beach and asked two Christian prisoners they had with them what to do. The prisoners suggested that there was probably another anchor holding it fast. Returning to the ship, the natives tried to cut the other cable. A guard spotted them, and the subsequent noise from the ship sent the mischievous natives scurrying off. In the confusion one of the prisoners loosed his tied hands and escaped. When all the natives had gone he returned to the shore and shouted with all his might. Saavedra thought it was another trick and was inclined to ignore the

solitary man shouting in the night. It was only when someone suggested that it might be a Christian that Saavedra sent an armed boat to investigate, Before the boat reached the beach the man was in the water swimming to meet it. He was Sebastian de Puerta of Loaysa’s lost ship, the Santa Maria del Parral.

It was not long after rescuing Puerta that two more stray Spaniards were picked up. Sanchez and Romay, also of the Parral, were ransomed from antives of Saragani. Both wove a complicated story of how they got there, but the truth of the matter was that they had murdered the captain of the Parral, Don Jorge Manrique, and his brother, Don Diego. They then made off with the ship, which was subsequently wrecked. Saavedra, who knew nothing of what had happened, took them aboard. Once past Sarangani Saavedra was in troubled waters and he soon ran into a Portuguese fusta. After some preliminary diplomatic sparring, the fusta and the Florida exchanged fire, but since neither seemed too anxious to press conclusions, the Spaniards kept moving south. Several days later the Florida spotted what seemed to be more trouble ahead caracoas, loaded with natives and a few Europeans. But the niatives turned out to be friendly and the Europeans, Spaniards. The three Spaniards in the caracoas were overjoyed when they learned tha Saavedra had been sent to find them, but Saavedra was not so overjoyed to learn that Hernando de la Torre was holed up with a band of eigty in a well-constructed fort which his mean had built in Tidore. They were in danger of being wipe out by the Portuguese and their confederates, and Saavedra knew his decimated crew of thirty could do little to aid them. But he turned south to Tidore and arrived there on March 30, 1528. If nothing else, they must have given a moral boost to de la Torre’s beleaguered garrison.

Saavedra wasted little time in refitting for the return trip to New Spain, for he was primary interested in finding areturn route for Cortes. The Florida, filled with seventy quintals of spices, left Tidore in June 28, 1528. the route they tried was east, along the New Guinea coast. It proved impossible to battle the winds and on November 19 they were back in Tidore. Less than a year later, on May 8, 1529, Saavedra again attempted to recross the Pacific. Loaded with spices the Florida headed east-northeast to the Barbudos ( Carolines) where they stopped for water and coconuts. They continued their climb up to 26 degrees, and there Saavedra suddenly died, taken by a fever. In his dying breath he urged his men on and appointed his successor, Pedro Laso. Led by Laso, they continued to climb to 31 degrees. Here the winds were found to be unfavorable , so back to Tidore they went. When Laso died eight days after Saavedra, the spirit of the crew was broken. The pilot of the Florida calimed that “contrary winds” prevented the vessel from continuing. One wonders whether it was actually contrary winds or

rather an eagerness to head back to Tidore and not risk an unprecedented dash across the Pacific. In the month of July, at 30 degrees north, there are no contrary winds impeding an easterly voyage. The Florida was directly on the future galleon route which was to be used for 200 years as the path to New Spain.

Shortly after the Florida’s return to Tidore, the Spanish force there surrendered to the Portuguese. Unknown to both sides, as they battle in the Orient, Charles V and John III were busy drawing up a scheme whereby Spain would cede its supposed rights to the Molucca for 350,000 ducats. When the agreement, called the Treaty of Zaragoza, was signed in 1529, it temporarily put an end to Portuese-Spanish squabbling in the Far East.

Ruy Lopez de Villalobos

Pedro de Alvarado, a weather-beaten veteran who had marched with Cortes, began negotiations with the viceroy of Mexico, Antonio de Mendoza, to send an expedition to the South Seas. In 1541 Alvarado and Mendoza drew up a contract for the enterprise. In return for sending a scouting force of three vessels fully provisioned for three years, and –if land was discovered- an additional ten vessels with 800 soldiers, Alvarado was to receive the governorship of Guatemala for seven years and from the expedition four percent of the royal fifth on all gold, silver, pearls and spices, as well as four percent of all tributes. But Alvarado never lived to see the expedition leave. He died of a wound received while trying, with the 400 men destined for the South Seas expedition, to put down an Indian rebellion.

With Alvarado’s death, Mendoza assumed responsibility for dispatching the expedition to the Philippines. He chose as captain general a gentleman from Malaga with a licentiate in civil law, Ruy Lopez de Villalobos as “ tall and lean, with a thick. black beard, threaded with grey; a gentleman, polite and pleasant,” Gonzalo Davalos was appointed treasurer, Guido de Lavezaris ( later to serve under Legaspi and to become governor of the Philippines) was the accountant, and Martin de Islares was named factor. On September 18, 1542, complete instructions on the organization and conduct of the expedition were given to Villalobos. Six vessels had been fitted out in Navidad: four naos, the flagship Santiago, the San Jorge, the San Antonio, the San Juan Letran, a galiot, the San Cristobal, and a small lateen-rigged fusta, the San Martin. Mendoza was so impressed with his little fleet that boasted, “they are the finest ships to sail he South Seas.” For each, a pilot, master, boatswain, and notary were appointed. Villalobos was to ship to Mendoza samples of all natural products they found. Reports were to be sent of the manner of dress, mode of life, religion, and method of warfare of the peoples they met. Once at the destination, no soldier

was permitted without leave and under severe penalties” to go to the Indian settlements and enter their houses, and no one shall take anything by force in the camp or in the town, contrary to the will of the Indian where you shall have made peace.” All trading was to take place in the presence of the veedor ( overseer) in order to lessen the possibility of cheating the Indians. On October 22, 1542, the offices and about 400 men took their oath of allegiance to the king of Spain and to their captains. The officers were enjoined to declare and advise what they deemed suitable and necessary for the good of the voyage, whether Villalobos liked it or not, “ although you think he may be vexed or angry at what you advise.” Villalobos himself ordered that all soldiers had to have a signed certificate before embarking, attesting to having received the sacraments of penance and the Eucharist. Blasphemy and public sins were to be punished severely, while those who were unlucky enough to be caught sleeping on post more than once were unceremoniously to be thrown overboard.

On the feast of All Saints, November 1,1542, the little fleet weighed anchor in the port of Navidad, or Juan Gallego. It dropped down to catch the easterly trades and sailed effortlessly on what was to be called the Mar de Damas, the Ladies’ Sea. The first landfall took place two months later, at 18 degrees- two desolate islands twelve leagues apart, 180 leagues off New Spain. They had been named by their discoverer, Hernando de Grijalvez, Santo Tomas and Anublada, which are probably the present-day San Benedito and Socorro of the Revilla Gigedo group. Three other separate islands were sighted within the next few weeks, but these were further out in the Pacific. They were fittingly christened Islas de Coral, Islas de los Reyes, and Los Jardines, which are today probably the Radak and Ralik chains of the Marshalls. One hundred leagues west of the Jardines a storm separated the galiot San Cristobal from the rest of the fleet, but they later rejoined. On January 23 the fleet passed an island whose inhabitants came paddling out to the ships. The natives must have had some previous contact with Spaniards, for they made the Sign of the Cross and shouted, “ Buenos dias, matalotes”-“Ahoy,mates!” The island was promptly dubbed, Matalotes.

It was not until February 2, that the Islas del Poniente were reached. The fleet put into Baganga Bay on the east coast of Mindanao. Villalobos named the bay, Malaga, probably in honor of his home town, and the island itself was given the rather ostentatious name of Ceasarea Caroli, because, he said, the island itself was given the rather ostentatious name of Cesaria Caroli, because, he said, the island was large and the majesty of the name suited it.

The Spaniards were soon exploring the Mindanao coast and they found it as uninviting as the place on which they landed. Food was not readily available so the fleet struck north, heading for Limasawa, off the southern tip of Leyte. It was March and the steady southeast winds prevented the vessels from making much headway. For ten days they struggled before capitulating to nature. They could do nothing else but drop down to Sarangani off the southeat Mindanao coast. It was not the first time a Spanish vessel put into Sarangani, for Saavedra had touched here. But Villalobos came with a purpose. He took the existing native village by force, driving the inhabitants off to Mindanao, and after splitting what little spoils they took-porcelain, a little gold, and some bells- the expedition attempted to remedy the grave problem of lack of food. But none could be found, so the soldiers turned farmers and sowed. Twice they sowed and twice they were bitterly disappointed. Nothing came up. Grumbling began. The soldiers said that they didn’t come to sow but to conquer. Better to take what they found and then look for more when they needed it. Villalobos answered that he had come to found a colony and discover the return route to Mexico. “ Each man was to shift for himself; he did not intend to die of hunger, and with thirty men he would still give a good account of the expedition.”

Villalobos’ next move was to send Bernardo de la Torre with forty men and the San Juan to a town northwest of Sarangani on Mindanao. Food was reported to be in abundance there so they brought with them articles for trade. The chief of the village was called Salipada. De la Torre was a t first well received but a party of six Spaniards, sent to sound the river entrance, was surrounded and attacked. They had to fight their way back to the San Juan. De la Torre sailed back to Sarangani with nothing to show for his efforts but six wounded men. In the meanwhile the San Cristobal had turned up. It had weathered the storm which separated it from the fleet and managed to get to Limasawa. The crew lived of the island for two months, so it was apparently well-stocked with food. Villalobos must certainly have wished to head for this land of plenty but the prevailing northeasterlies which blew down the eastern coast of the Philippines did not permit it. Instead, he took the San Antonio, the San Martin, the San Cristobal, four native galleys fitted with lateen rigs, and 150 men, with the intention of forging for food since, as he said, the natives would not trade with him peaceably. The forging party headed for Sanguir. Before reaching their objective, however, they came upon five tiny islands, only one of which was populated. Perhaps food could be gotten here. Their petition for supplies was read to the islanders and refused. Preparing for a struggle, the villagers retired to a fortified rock which was in the sea. Villalobos attacked and after four hours the defenders were slain to a man. Only a few women and children escaped. As it turned out, the food which they found scarcely warranted their battling for it. But hunger was driving them on and

the little band was desperate. Instead of continuing to Sanguir, Villalobos started back to feed his starving men at Sarangani. But ill luck was still plaguing him. On the way, a typhoon struck and the four galleys carrying arms were all sunk. The San Antonio was beached and the San Cristobal lost its sails and rudder. But the food was saved, and it provided some relief.

By now the wind had shifted favorably to permit a northward climb. It was August and so a steady southwest wind blew. The San Juan, under Bernardo de la Torre, was hastily readied, this time not to look for supplies but to make the return trip to New Spain and report to Viceroy Mendoza. The galiot San Cristobal was to accompany it part of the way, as far as Samar ( called by Villalobos Felipinas, in honor of Philip the crown prince, and later use to include all of the islands) where both vessels could be refitted. The San Juan was then to continue alone while the galiot was to return to Saragani. Both ships left Sarangani on August 4, 1543.

While Villalobos and his expedition were floundering about the islands, the Portuguese in the Moluccas were serenely looking on. They were kept well informed of the Spaniards’ moves by the Muslims of Mindanao who maintained a reliable spy network. It was in great part due to the Portuguese propaganda system that Villalobos could not get his hands on a desperately needed food supply. But only after the San Juan left for new Spain did the Portuguese come into the open. Three proas from Maluco made their appearance off Sarangani on August 7, 1543. A Portuguese crewman came ashore with a message from the governor of the Moluccas, Dom Jorge de Castro, which politely informed Villalobos that the islands belonged to the king of Portugal and consequently their rights were those of primi occupantis, for five years before, Francisco de Castro had claimed Mindanao, and as a lay catechist had converted a number of natives in Antonia, probably present-day Tirina, one of the Sarangani group. The message wryly continued that if Villalobos had been driven to the islands by an ill wind and if his crew lacked of supplies, then the king of Portugal would generously allow his subjects of Mindanao to supply the unfortunate Spaniards. Villalobos replied in a like vein but slightly less diplomatically. He said that he knew that the Moluccas were subject to the Portuguese king, but that the islands he now occupied fell within the demarcation of the king of Spain. A number of other messages passed between the Portuguese and the Spaniard before the proas returned to Ternate. The sight of Villalobos’ half-starved men must have convinced the Portuguese that the expedition would slowly fade away by itself. No need to drive them out by force. But for good measure the Portuguese informed the coastal inhabitants of Mindanao that they were not to sell any supplies to the intruders, and they were invited to wreak as much havoc as possible on the Spaniards.

Villalobos was not that easily defeated. He was able to gather some rice in Mindanao and with what the galiot brought from Limasawa, the situation eased a little. Nevertheless, the expedition’s chronicler, Garcia Descalante. Alvarado, reported that they suffered greatly from hunger in Sarangani. Rats, herbs and grass were now the daily diet. The death toll mounted. Only when the situation seemed impossible did Villalobos move. He quit Sarangani for food in September 1543, and led his men north to Leyte, about which he had received favorable reports. The smaller galiot and the galleys were able to lie closer to the shore, they made Abuyog. The Santiago could make little headway against the northeast winds in October and so was forced into Lacayan Bay. Villalobos waited for the winds to shift but they never did. In the meantime his men were growing weaker. It was only when the galiot returned, unable to cope with the headwinds and minus eleven men with only enough remaining for ten days, that Villalobos made the decision to go to the Moluccas and seek assistance. In spit of the strong injunctions to the contrary, he saw nothing else to do but to drop further south. Necessity drove him into the enemy camp.

While Villalobos was leading the remnants of his expedition to Djailolo on the northwest coast of Halmahera, the San Juan was well on its way to making a successful return to New Spain. After having taken on provisions in Leyte, it began the crossing on August 26,1543. land was spotted at 26 degrees. Then they came upon the Volcano Islands which in future decades were to become a standard milestone for the Manila-Acapulco galleons. Still further the San Juan climbed in an east-northeast direction until, on October 18, It was at 30 degrees north, 2, 250 miles off the Philippines. Here near-disaster struck. A heavy storm wrecked the masts and the tiny vessels began to ship water. They had no alternative but to turn around and head back to the Philippines. If it were not for this stroke of ill luck, the credit for finding the return route to New Spain would have to be given to Bernardo de la Torre and the pilot of San Juan, Alonso Hernandez. They had put themselves on the sea lane to Acapulco which would later be used for almost three continuos centuries. As it was, the San Juan made it back to Leyte and there revictualled, buying rice and pork with the porcelain they intended to present to Viceroy Mendoza. They found a favorable reception in Leyte and the sight of a native chief with golden earrings and necklace revived hope of a profitable expedition. After visiting a few neighboring islands, the San Juan picked up, quite by chance, the Spaniards who had made it to Abuyog in the galleys accompanying the galiot. Then it healded for Sarangani, looking for Villalobos. Instead of finding of finding their companions, they found letters left at the foot of a tree informing potential readers that Villalobos departed for Samafo in Halmahera. (The letters had actually been left for the two brigantines which had gone off to Leyte). They also

found a letter of Fray Sanesteban, left nine days before. Obediently, the San Juan pulled out of Sarangani, and after stopping at Sanguir, made for the Moluccas. With the depature of the San Juan from Philippine waters, there ended, rather ingloriously, the first attempt to establish a Spanish colony in the Islas del Poniente.

Villalobos arrived in Tidore in the Moluccas on April 24, 1544, at a time when the Portuguese were entangled in a local war. He signed a treaty with the Portuguese, whereby the Spaniards were allowed to stay unmoslested in Tidore and sell the spices they collected until the kings of Portugal and Spain or the governor of India should decide what was to be done. The Spanish commander was anxious to show something for his efforts and so refitted the San Juan for another attempt at a Pacific crossing to New Spain. The vessels was readied and left Tidore on May 16, 1545, under the command of Inigo Ortiz de Retes. But had luck was still plaguing the expedition. The very laws of nature seemed to have been against the Spaniards, for that year the winds shifted later usual. The San Juan was back in Tidore by October. This last failure was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Villalobos was now for surrendering to the Portuguese. But his men were not, or at least they so wrote after Villalobos’ death. They presented a signed statement to their captain in which they offered to build a ship, provision it, and sail it back to New Spain, saying that “they preffered to go poor to New Spain rather than rich to India.” Apparently, finding the return route presented no difficulty to them. Alonso Hernandez, who went with Bernardo de la Torre on the first attempt to cross the Pacific, was to act as pilot. But Villalobos refused to have the vessels make third attempt. Another petition was drawn up by Martin de Islares, the factorof the expedition. He wrote, “I have a pilot and several soldiers and sailors who are volunteering to make the voyage in the San Juan. It is known by everyone (es publico y notorio) that the voyage can be made, as you yourself said many times. The pilot who wants to go says so and would attempt to make it since he went before with Captain Bernardo de la Torre.” Villalobos heard the petition read but made no reply. No third attempt at a crossing was ever made.

Villalobos’ situation is not difficult to understand. As he himself explained it, he was in the Moluccas against the express wishes of his king. He therefore could not wage a just war against the Portuguese. His only hope was to await orders from New Spain, and these never came. On November 4, 1545, Villalobos concluded an agreement with Fernao de Sousa de Tavora who had been placed in charge of an expedition against the Spaniards. Villalobos was to evacuate Tidore with all his men and go to Ternate. For a guarantee he agreed to hand over all his men and go to Ternate. For a guarantee he agreed to hand over all his artillery and some hostages. Any of the Spaniards who wished to go to Portugal could

do so free of charge by the first trading ships leaving India in 1547. Likewise, any Castilian soldier who wished to remain in India in the service of the king of Portugal could do so, and he was guaranteed passage to India. After handing his standard over to the Portuguese and fighting on their side against the natives of Gilolo, Villalobos marked died on April 25, 1546, the victim of a tropical fever. He was buried in a town called Zozanibe.

The death of Villalobos marked the end of the expedition. The other Spaniards were sent back to Spain, via Goa and Lisbon, where they arrived in August of 1549. the discouragingly negative reports of the enterprise must have irked Charles V considerably, for he ordered the immediate residensia, or investigation, of the role played by Viceroy Mendoza in the affair. He appeared to be particularly put out that Villalobos had sailed into the Portuguese waters. But Mendoza ably defended himself and was not sent back to Spain in a ship provided by the king for that purpose. He continued in his post as viceroy for another four years.

The results of the Villalobos expedition were, on the face of it, like those of Loaysa and Saavedra, discourangingly negative. No settlement had been made, the return route to New Spain was still unsailed, the people of the Philippines seemed unfriendly, and the Portuguese were now alerted to Spanish designs to the north. But fortunately, St. Francis Xaier’s advice, written to Simao Rodrigues, was not heeded. The Jesuit wrote to his friend, “to tell the king and queen that for the peace of their conscience they should advise the emperor of Kings of Castile not to send any more expeditions by way of New Spain to discover the Silver Islands (Japan), for as many as come will surely be lost.”

But the valuable experience and information picked up by Loaysa, Saavedra, and now Villalobos was enough, just possibly enough, to keep alive a spark of hope. Both Loaysa and Villalobos made a landfall in Mindanao and were trapped in a lower latitude where a vessel could not climb north all year. It was only when the San Juan set sail from the Visayas that t almost assured, by the northern route followed by Hernandez in the San Juan. There remained only the problems of hitting the archipelago at a higher latitude and then immediately sending the expedition supplies and reinforcements. If these two conditions could be fulfilled, a gateway to the Orient would be in Spanish hands.

More than thirteen years separated the expedition of Villalobos from the next attempt to establish the Spanish standard in the Philippines. A partial reason for the gap, supposing that Spain’s interest was both serious and permanent, can be found in the contemporary European political scene. War between Spain and France was carried on through the greater part of Charles V’s reign,

and not even his abdication in 1556 ended the fighting. War raged from 1552 until the peace of Cateau-Cambresis in 1559. here the struggle was brought to a momentary freedom from war which established a sense of security in the commercial markets of Seville. New exploits and financial ventures received a ready hearing.

Ever since the voyage of Magellan, Spanish kings had shown an intersest in establishing a foothold in the East. From the time of Magellan’s death in Cebu in 1521 up to Legazpi’s expedition in 1564 no less than eight expeditions had the islands of the South Seas for their objective. All except Legazpi’s in 1564 were frustrated in one way or another. The reason for this continued interest is probably twofold: Spain wished a slice of the coveted spice market and if possible, a direct link with that legendary and elusive wealth of the Orient. When Charles V pawned his claim to the Moluccas in 1529, he committed his interest to the Islas del Poniente, the Western Islands, renamed by Villalobos the Philippines. When Philp became king, interest in the islands which bore his name did not flag. In fact, in increased. One stimulus might have been the gradual rise in pepper prices which spanned the 1560s. in New Castille, for example, an ounce of pepper in the 1550s sold for about 10 maravedis (8 in 1557).

In 1561, however, the price rose to 13.5 maravedis; in 1562 to 1519; in 1563 to 19.8; in 1564 to 21.5, until in 1565 pepper reached the record price of 23.9 an ounce. Then the price declined. It fell from 16.0 in 1566 to 10 maravedis in 1572, and the crisis passed. Can a definite cause-effect relationship be established between pepper prices in Spain and the expedition of Legaspi to the Philippines? It is difficult, if not impossible, to say. It is certainly true that the religious motive of retaining the Philippines for the Catholic Church was uppermost in Philip II’s mind when proposals were later and repeatedly made for abandoning the unproductive colony. But the principal motive for the initial steps taken to occupy the islands seems to have been economic. The words canela (cinnamon) and specie (spice) are so often repeated both I the instructions of the audiencia of New Spain to Legazpi and in the king’s own correspondence on the expedition that one strongly suspects that Philip II hoped to find in the Philippines a spice producer to rival the Moluccas and the Portuguese.

On September 14, 1559, Philip II wrote to his viceroy in New Spain, Luis de Velasco, concerning the future enterprise to the South Seas. Three points were emphasized by the king. First, the two vessels which were to be sent to the Philippines were to bring back samples of the spices grown there; second, they would attempt to discover the return route to New Spain; and third, the expedition was under no circumstances to touch at the Moluccas, since this would be contrary to the agreement made with the king of

Portugal in 1529. on the same day a letter was sent to Fray Andres de Urdaneta requesting his participation in the intended expedition. The answer which Philip II received from both of these letters must have come as something of a bombshell. Both Velasco and Urdaneta replied that inasmuch as the Philippines fell within the jurisdiction of Portugal, an expedition of discovery could not be undertaken without breaking the agreement made with the Portuguese king. Uradaneta, the former pilot who had become an Augustian friar, wrote:

It is evident and clear that not only is the Island of Felipina within the Portuguese zone, but the eastern tip of the Island is n the very meridian of the Islands of Maluco…. Therefore, it seems that some trouble could develop if your Majesty order that vessels and people go to Samar without showing some legitimate or pious cause for doing so.Urdaneta, seconded by Velasco, accepted the invitation to participate and suggested that the motive for the voyage should rather be a search for members of the Villalobos expedition who were known to be still somewhere in the Philippines, probably held as captives. Only with a motive or excuse such as this could the enterprise be legitimized. The old seaman in Urdaneta then breaks out and he recommends that the best pilots available should be sent on the voyage in order that an accurate charting of the navigation could be recorded. The king answered Uradaneta on March 5, 1562, thanking him for his acceptance. Regarding the advice on motivation, Philip repeated that time-honored official phrase, “It has been passed on the Viceroy so that he may take necessary measures in conformity with what has already been ordered.” In other words, Philip II did not particularly care whether the islands were on the Portuguese side of the line of demarcation, as they actually were. That the expedition be made and the Philippines occupied was his only concern. He would take possession of the Islands first, and with this initial advantage, then discuss the legitimacy of his act. He would present the king of Portugal with a fait accompli. However, Philip and the audiencia of Mexico shrewdly kept the expedition’s objective secret, to be revealed to the crew only after the voyage was underway; in this manner any premature diplomatic repercussions could be avoided.

Interest in the proposed expedition ran high. Andres de Urdaneta wrote a lengthy memorial to the king on how the whole jornada, or enterprise, should proceed. First, he recommended that the vessels leave from Acapulco, not Navidad. The latter was in a poor location, causing prices of necessary articles to rise, while Acapulco had one of the best ports in the Indies – large, safe, and healthy. The surrounding forest provided deposits of timber for ship construction. Never-thereless, a large quantity of supplies had to be brought from Spain. Artillery, arms, thread for sails, compasses, and sailing charts were all on his list. One difficulty he spoke of was

finding capable men to act as ship’s officers. Both ordinary deckhands and skilled seamen simply refused to sail to the South Pacific. Urdaneta’s solution was rather extreme: force them to go, but pay them a just salary.

Of the actual navigation, the Augustinian wrote that it could probably get underway by the beginning of October 1562. if it did, then they would follow the ordinary southern course through the Mar de Damas, the ladies’ Sea or South Pacific. If the expedition were delayed beyond November 10, they would head southeast, directly for New Guinea, then north-northwest to the Philippines. The third alternative of Urdaneta, and most interesting of all, was to go into operation of sailing was delayed until February. Then they would not depart until March, in which case the expedition would strike a west-northwest course, in the path of Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, to 34 degrees or more where they would try to hit land along the North American coast. What Cabrillo’s untimely death left undone, Urdaneta intended to complete by exploring the great bay which Cabrillo’s chronicler described. After this slight diversion, apparently with a Northwest Passage in mind, the fleetwould then head west at 35 or 36 degrees, exploring what lay between California and China. At this point Urdaneta’s calculations go a bit awry, for he says that in case they could not follow the northern coast of New Spain, then they would climb to 36 degrees, head west and put into the Isla de Botana, one of the Ladrones. From there they would move south to the Philippines. Urdaneta concludes his memorial by mentioning that rumors had been circulating in New Spain to the effect that the French had discovered the long-sought Northwest Passage to the Pacific. This was an added stimulus to get the Philippine project underway as quickly as possible.

About the same time Urdaneta was composing his memorial to the king, Viceroy Velasco was busy choosing a man to head the expedition. On February 9, 1561, he recommended that Miguel Lopez de Legazpi lead the second attempt to plant a Spanish settlement in the Philippines. The king approved. The choice of Legazpi must have delighted Urdaneta since both were from the province of Guipuzcoa. Final preparations for the undertaking, however, took much longer than anticipated, even by Spanish standards. Only in June 1564, did the timber arrive for the ships, masts. It took two weeks were sufficiently provisioned to depart.

Exactly two months before Legazpi’s fleet lifted anchor in Navidad, the audiencia of Mexico issued a detailed instruction on the object of the expedition and the manner in which it was to proceed. The instruction is deeply significant since it was to proceed. The instruction is deeply significant since it embodies in its clauses and recommendations almost a century of experience in New World conquest. We can roughly divided the instruction into

three sections. The first deals with the preparations for the expedition, the second with the voyage, and the third, conduct in the Philippines.

The contingent of 300 to 350 soldiers and sailors were to depart from Navidad. Legazpi was to go to the port to receive the fleet in the presence of the royal officials – Guido de Lavezaris (treasurer), Andres Cauchela ( auditor), and Andres de Miranda ( factor ). The official transfer of the capitana or flagship, the San Pedro, the almiranta, San Pablo, and the two pinnaces, San Juan de Letran and San Lucia, was to be performed by Bachiller Martinez, the alcalde mayor of Michoacam, and also chief buyer for the fleet. Pilots were then to be approved by Legaspi and all armaments and provisions checked. Among the stores was included ship’s biscuit, bacon, wine, cooking oil, vinegar, fish, cheese, fowl, and beans. The master-of-camp, Mateo de Saz, was to sail in the capitana. The larger pinnace was under the command of Juan de la Isla, while Hernan Sanchez Munon was to captain the smaller one. However, Sanchez was unable to go, and he was replaced by Alonso de Arellano. Forbidden to go on the, and he was replaced by Alonso de Arellano. Forbidden to go on the expedition were Indians, male and female, and Negro women, either married or single. However, a dozen Negro males could be brought as servants. Religious of the Order of Saint Augustine were to accompany the expedition and they were “ to bring the knowledge of our holy Catholic faith to the natives of those parts.” The Augustinians were to travel in the San Pedro and the San Pablo, the larger and safer vessels. In order that God might give them a prosperous and safe crossing, all were to confess their sins and receive Holy Communion. The Holy sacrifice of the Mass was to be said and all were to attend. Also in the religious vein, Legaspi was exhorted to take special care that all blasphemies and public sins were punished with the utmost rigor. Their conduct as Christians was to be exemplary if they were to give an of their Christianity to the natives.

After treating of the preparations for the expedition, the audiencia turned to the voyage itself. First and foremost, Legaspi was forbidden to enter the Moluccas. He was to make for the Philippines and deal only with those islands” which they say also contain spices.” In one of the most important passages of the instruction, the audiencia says that the object that natives spices and other riches be brought back to New Spain once the return route was found. It was this undiscovered route getting to the Philippines, but how to return was the problem.

Once the expedition arrived in the Philippines, Legaspi was to examine the ports and to learn of settlements and their wealth, the nature and mode of life of the natives, trade and barter procedures used among them, with nations they traded, the value and prices of

spices, the different varieties of the same, and their exchange value with merchandise and articles. The instruction continued “ And you may exchange the articles of barter and the merchandise you carry, for spice, drugs, gold and other articles of value and esteem… And if, in your judgment the land is so rich and of such quality that you should colonize therein, you shall establish a colony in that part and district that appears suitable to you, and where the firmest friendship shall have been made with you; and you shall affirm and observe inviolably this friendship. After you have mode this settlement, if you should deem advantageous to the service of God, our Lord, and of his Majesty, to remain in those districts where you have settled, together with some of your people and religious, until you have given advice of it to His Majesty and this Royal Audiencia in his name , you shall send immediately to this Nueva Espana, one or more trustworthy persons… with the news and relation of what you have accomplished and where you halted.”

The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803: Spanish Establishments in the Philippines 38

From the beginning the Spanish establishments in the Philippines were a mission and not in the proper sense of the term a colony.  They were founded and administered in the interests of religion rather than of commerce or industry.  They were an advanced outpost of Christianity whence the missionary forces could be deployed through the great empires of China and Japan, and hardly had the natives of the islands begun to yield to the labors of the friars when some of the latter pressed on adventurously into China and found martyrs’ deaths in Japan.  In examining the political administration of the Philippines, then, we must be prepared to find it a sort of outer garment under which the living body is ecclesiastical.  Against this subjection to the influence and interests of the Church energetic governors rebelled, and the history of the Spanish domination is checkered with struggles between the civil and religious powers which reproduce on a small scale the mediæval contests of Popes and Emperors.

A. Spanish Colonial Government: Audiencia and Residencia

Colonial governments are of necessity adaptations of familiar domestic institutions to new functions.  The government of Spain in the sixteenth century was not that of a modern centralized monarchy but rather of a group of kingdoms only partially welded together by the possession of the same sovereign, the same language, and the same religion.  The King of Spain was also the ruler of other kingdoms outside of the peninsula.  Consequently when the New World was given a political organization it was subdivided for convenience into kingdoms and captaincies general

in each of which the administrative machinery was an adaptation of the administrative machinery of Spain.  In accordance with this procedure the Philippine islands were constituted a kingdom and placed under the charge of a governor and captain general, whose powers were truly royal and limited only by the check imposed by the Supreme Court (the Audiencia) and by the ordeal of the residencia at the expiration of his term of office.  Among his extensive prerogatives was his appointing power which embraced all branches of the civil service in the islands.  He also was ex officio the President of the Audiencia. His salary was $8,000 a year, but his income might be largely augmented by gifts or bribes. The limitations upon the power of the Governor imposed by the Audiencia, in the opinion of the French astronomer Le Gentil, were the only safeguard against an arbitrary despotism, yet Zúñiga, a generation later pronounced its efforts in this direction generally ineffectual.

The residencia to which reference has been made was an institution peculiar in modern times to the Spanish colonial system, it was designed to provide a method by which officials could be held to strict accountability for all acts during their term of office.  Today reliance is placed upon the force of public opinion inspired and formulated by the press and, in self-governing communities, upon the holding of frequent elections.  The strength of modern party cohesion both infuses vigor into these agencies and neutralizes their effectiveness as the case may be.  But in the days of the formation of the Spanish Empire beyond the sea there were neither free elections, nor public press, and the criticism of the government was sedition.  To allow a contest in the courts involving the governor’s powers during his term of office would be subversive of his authority.  He was then to be kept within bounds by realizing that a day of judgment was impending, when everyone, even the poorest Indian, might in perfect security bring forward his accusation. In the Philippines the residencia for a governor lasted six months and was conducted by his successor and all the charges made were forwarded to Spain. [58] The Italian traveler Gemelli Careri who visited Manila in 1696 characterizes the governor’s residencia as a “dreadful Trial,” the strain of which would sometimes “break their hearts.”

On the other hand, an acute observer of Spanish-American institutions of the olden time intimates that the severities of the residencia could be mitigated and no doubt such was the case in the Philippines. By the end of the eighteenth century the residencia seems to have lost its efficacy. The governorship was certainly a difficult post to fill and the remoteness from Europe, the isolation, and the vexations of the residencia made it no easy task to get good men for the place.  An official of thirty years experience, lay and ecclesiastical, assures us in the early seventeenth century that he

had known of only one governor really fitted for the position, Gomez Perez Dasmariñas. 

He had done more for the happiness of the natives in three years than all his predecessors or successors.  Some governors had been without previous political experience while others were deficient in the qualities required in a successful colonial ruler.

The supreme court or Audiencia was composed of four judges (oidores, auditors) an attorney-general (fiscal) a constable, etc.  The governor who acted as president had no vote. Besides the functions of this body as the highest court of appeal for criminal and civil cases it served as has been said as a check upon the governor.  Down to 1715 the Audiencia took charge of the civil administration in the interim between the death of a governor and the arrival of his successor, and the senior auditor assumed the military command. Attached to the court were advocates for the accused, a defender of the Indians, and other minor officials.  In affairs of public importance the Audiencia was to be consulted by the governor for the opinions of the auditors.

B. Local Administration of Spanish Colonial Government: Alcalde Mayor, Gobernadorcillo and Cabeza de Barangay

For the purposes of local administration the islands were subdivided into or constituted Provinces under alcaldes mayores who exercised both executive and judicial functions, and superintended the collection of tribute. The alcaldes mayores were allowed to engage in trade on their own account which resulted too frequently in enlisting their interest chiefly in money making and in fleecing the Indians.

The provincial court consisted of the alcalde mayor, an assessor who was a lawyer, and a notary.  The favoritism and corruption that honeycombed the civil service of Spain in the colonies in the days of her decline often placed utterly unfit persons in these positions of responsibility.  A most competent observer, Tomás de Comyn, many years the factor of the Philippine Commercial Company, has depicted in dark colors, and perhaps somewhat overdrawn the evils of the system.

The subdivision of the provinces was into pueblos each under its petty governor or gobernadorcillo. The gobernadorcillo was an Indian and was elected annually.  In Morga’s time the right of suffrage seems to have been enjoyed by all married Indians, but in the last century it was restricted to thirteen electors. The gobernadorcillo was commonly called the “captain.”  Within the pueblos the people formed little groups of from forty to fifty tributes called barangays under the supervision of cabezas de barangay. 

These heads of barangay represent the survival of the earlier clan organization and were held responsible for the tributes of their groups.  Originally the office of cabeza de barangay was no doubt hereditary, but it became generally elective. The electors of the gobernadorcillo were made up of those, who were or had been cabezas de barangay and they after three years of service became eligible to the office of petty governor.

In the few Spanish towns in the islands the local government was similar to that which prevailed in America, which in turn was derived from Spain.  That of Manila may be taken as an example.  The corporation, El Cabildo (chapter) consisted of two ordinary alcaldes, eight regidores, a registrar, and a constable.  The alcaldes were justices, and were elected annually from the householders by the corporation.  The regidores were aldermen and with the registrar and constable held office permanently as a proprietary right.  These permanent positions in the cabildo could be bought and sold or inherited.

C. The Ecclesiastical System

Turning now to the ecclesiastical administration, we find there the real vital organs of the Philippine governmental system.  To the modern eye the islands would have seemed, as they did to the French scientist Le Gentil, priest-ridden.  Yet it was only through the Friars that Spain retained her hold at all. A corrupt civil service and a futile and decrepit commercial system were through their efforts rendered relatively harmless, because circumscribed in their effects.  The continuous fatherly interest of the clergy more than counterbalanced the burden of the tribute. They supervised the tilling of the soil, as well as the religious life of the people; and it was through them that the works of education and charity were administered.

The head of the ecclesiastical system was the Archbishop of Manila, who in a certain sense was the Patriarch of the Indies. The other high ecclesiastical digntaries were the three bishops of Cebú, of Segovia in Cagayán, and of Cazeres in Camarines; and the provincials of the four great orders of friars, the Dominicans, Augustinians, the Franciscans, the barefooted Augustinians, and the Jesuits. In the earlier days the regular clergy (members of the orders) greatly outnumbered the seculars, and refused to acknowledge that they were subject to the visitation of bishop or archbishop.  This contention gave rise, at times, to violent struggles.  During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the proportionate number of seculars increased.  In 1750 the total number of parishes was 569, of which 142, embracing 147,269 persons, were under secular priests.  The numbers in charge of the orders were as follows: 

Villages.   Souls. Augustinians, 115 252,963Franciscans, 63 141,193Jesuits, 93 209,527Dominicans, 51 99,780Recollects, 105 53,384

making a total of 569 parishes and 904,116 souls.

These proportions, however, fail to give a correct idea of the enormous preponderance of the religious orders; for the secular priests were mostly Indians and could exercise nothing like the influence of the Friars upon their cures. In these hundreds of villages the friars bore sway with the mild despotism of the shepherd of the flock.  Spanish officials entered these precincts only on occasion.  Soldiers were not to be seen save to suppress disorders.  Spaniards were not allowed to live in these communities, and visitors were carefully watched. [80] As Spanish was little known in the provinces, the curate was the natural intermediary in all communications between the natives and the officials or outsiders.  In some provinces there were no white persons besides the alcalde mayor and the friars.  Without soldiers the alcalde mayor must needs rely upon the influence of the friars to enable him to execute his duties as provincial governor.  In contemplating their services for civilization and good order Tomas de Comyn rises to enthusiasm.  “Let us visit,” he writes, “the Philippine Islands, and with astonishment shall we there behold extended ranges, studded with temples and spacious convents, the Divine worship celebrated with pomp and splendour; regularity in the streets, and even luxury in the houses and dress; schools of the first rudiments in all the towns, and the inhabitants well versed in the art of writing.  We shall see there causeways raised, bridges of good architecture built, and, in short, all the measures of good government and police, in the greatest part of the country, carried into effect; yet the whole is due to the exertions, apostolic labours, and pure patriotism of the ministers of religion.  Let us travel over the provinces, and we shall see towns of 5, 10, and 20,000 Indians, peacefully governed by one weak old man, who, with his doors open at all hours, sleeps quiet and secure in his dwelling, without any other magic, or any other guards, than the love and respect with which he has known how to inspire his flock.”

If this seems too rosy a picture, it still must not be forgotten that at this time the ratio of whites to Indians in the islands was only about one to sixteen hundred, that most of these lived in Manila, and that the entire military force was not more than two thousand regular troops. As has been intimated this condition lasted down until a comparatively recent period.  As late as 1864 the total number of Spaniards amounted to but 4,050 of whom 3,280 were

government officials, etc., 500 clergy, 200 landed proprietors, and 70 merchants; and in the provinces the same conditions prevailed that are described by Comyn. In more than half of the twelve hundred villages in the islands “there was no other Spaniard, no other national authority, nor any other force to maintain public order save only the friars.”

Recurring for a moment to the higher ecclesiastical organization, the judicial functions of the church were represented by the archbishop’s court and the commissioner of the Inquisition.  The Episcopal court, which was made up of the archbishop, the vicar-general, and a notary, tried cases coming under the canon law, such as those relating to matrimony and all cases involving the clergy.  Idolatry on the part of the Indians or Chinese might be punished by this court. The Holy Inquisition transplanted to New Spain in 1569 stretched its long arm across the great ocean to the Philippines, in the person of a commissioner, for the preservation of the true faith.  The Indians and Chinese were exempted from its jurisdiction.  Its processes were roundabout, and must have given a considerable proportion of its accused a chance to die a natural death.  The Commissioner must first report the offense to the Court in New Spain; if a trial was ordered, the accused must be sent to Mexico, and, if convicted, must be returned to the Philippines to receive punishment.

D. Foreign Trade and Commerce

The most peculiar feature of the old regime in the Philippines is to be found in the regulations of the commerce of the islands.  In the Recopilacion de leyes de los reinos de las Indias, the code of Spanish colonial legislation, a whole title comprising seventy-nine laws is devoted to this subject.  For thirty years after the conquest the commerce of the islands was unrestricted and their prosperity advanced with great rapidity. [88] Then came a system of restrictions, demanded by the protectionists in Spain, which limited the commerce of the islands with America to a fixed annual amount, and effectively checked their economic development.  All the old travelers marvel at the possibilities of the islands and at the blindness of Spain, but the policy absurd as it may seem was but a logical application of the protective system not essentially different from the forms which it assumes today in our own relations to Porto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines.

The Seville merchants through whose hands the Spanish export trade to the New World passed looked with apprehension upon the importation of Chinese fabrics into America and the exportation of American silver to pay for them.  The silks of China undersold those of Spain in Mexico and Peru, and the larger the export of silver to the East the smaller to Spain.  Consequently to

protect Spanish industry and to preserve to Spanish producers the American market, the shipment of Chinese cloths from Mexico to Peru was prohibited in 1587.  In 1591 came the prohibition of all direct trade between Peru or other parts of South America and China or the Philippines, [90] and in 1593 a decree—not rigorously enforced till 1604—which absolutely limited the trade between Mexico and the Philippines to $250,000 annually for the exports to Mexico, and to $500,000 for the imports from Mexico, to be carried in two ships not to exceed three hundred tons burden. No Spanish subject was allowed to trade in or with China, and the Chinese trade was restricted to the merchants of that nation.

All Chinese goods shipped to New Spain must be consumed there and the shipping of Chinese cloths to Peru in any amount whatever even for a gift, charitable endowment, or for use in divine worship was absolutely prohibited. As these regulations were evaded, in 1636 all commerce was interdicted between New Spain and Peru. A commerce naturally so lucrative as that between the Philippines and New Spain when confined within such narrow limits yielded monopoly profits.  It was like a lottery in which every ticket drew a prize.  In these great profits every Spaniard was entitled to share in proportion to his capital or standing in the community. [95] The assurance of this largess, from the beginnings of the system, discouraged individual industry and enterprise, and retarded the growth of Spanish population. Le Gentil and Zúñiga give detailed descriptions of the method of conducting this state enterprise after the limits had been raised to $500,000 and $1,000,000 respectively for the outgoing and return voyage.  The capacity of the vessel was measured taking as a unit a bale about two and one-half feet long, sixteen inches broad and two feet high.  If then the vessel could carry four thousand of these bales, each bale might be packed with goods up to a value of one hundred and twenty-five dollars.  The right to ship was known as a boleta or ticket.  The distribution of these tickets was determined at the town hall by a board made up of the governor, attorney-general, the dean of the audiencia, one alcalde, one regidor and eight citizens.

To facilitate the allotment and the sale of tickets they were divided into sixths.  Tickets were ordinarily worth in the later eighteenth century in times of peace eighty dollars to one hundred dollars, and in war time they rose to upwards of three hundred dollars. Le Gentil tells us that in 1766 they sold for two hundred dollars and more, and that the galleon that year went loaded beyond the limit. Each official as the perquisite of his office had tickets.  The regidores and alcaldes had eight.

The small holders who did not care to take a venture in the voyage disposed of their tickets to merchants or speculators, who borrowed money, usually of the religious corporations, at twenty-

five to thirty per cent per annum to buy them up and who sometimes bought as many as two or three hundred.The command of the Acapulco galleon was the fattest office within the gift of the Governor, who bestowed it upon “whomsoever he desired to make happy for the commission,” and was equivalent to a gift of from $50,000 to $100,000. This was made up from commissions, part of the passage-money of passengers, from the sale of his freight tickets, and from the gifts of the merchants.  Captain Arguelles told Careri in 1696 that his commissions would amount to $25,000 or $30,000, and that in all he would make $40,000; that the pilot would clear $20,000 and the mates $9,000 each. The pay of the sailors was three hundred and fifty dollars, of which seventy-five dollars was advanced before the start.  The merchants expected to clear one hundred and fifty to two hundred per cent.  The passenger fare at the end of the eighteenth century was $1,000 for the voyage to Acapulco, which was the hardest, and $500 for the return. Careri’s voyage to Acapulco lasted two hundred and four days.  The ordinary time for the voyage to Manila was seventy-five to ninety days. Careri’s description of his voyage is a vivid picture of the hardships of early ocean travel, when cabin passengers fared infinitely worse than cattle today.  It was a voyage “which is enough to destroy a man, or make him unfit for anything as long as he lives;” yet there were those who “ventured through it, four, six and some ten times.”

Acapulco in New Spain had little reason for existence, save for the annual fair at the time of the arrival of the Manila ship, and the silver fleet from Peru.  That event transformed what might more properly be called “a poor village of fishermen” into “a populous city,” for the space of about two weeks.

The commerce between the Philippines and Mexico was conducted in this manner from 1604 to 1718, when the silk manufacturers of Spain secured the prohibition of the importation of Chinese silk goods into New Spain on account of the decline of their industry.  A prolonged struggle before the Council of the Indies ensued, and in 1734 the prohibition was revoked and the east and west cargoes fixed at $500,000 and $1,000,000 respectively. The last nao, as the Manila-Acapulco galleon was called, sailed from Manila in 1811, and the final return voyage was made in 1815.  After that the commerce fell into private hands, the annual exports were limited to $750,000 and the ports of San Blas (Mexico), Guayaquil (Ecuador), and Callao (Peru) were opened to it.

Other changes were the establishment of direct communication with Spain and trade with Europe by a national vessel in 1766. These expeditions lasted till 1783 and their place was taken in 1785 by the Royal Philippine Company, organized with a capital of $8,000,000, and granted the monopoly of the trade between Spain and the islands. The Manila merchants resented the

invasion of their monopoly of the export trade, and embarrassed the operations of the company as much as they could. It ceased to exist in 1830.

By this system for two centuries the South American market for manufactures was reserved exclusively for Spain, but the protection did not prevent Spanish industry from decay and did retard the well-being and progress of South America.  Between Mexico and the Philippines a limited trade was allowed, the profits of which were the perquisites of the Spaniards living in the Philippines and contributed to the religious endowments.  But this monopoly was of no permanent advantage to the Spanish residents.  It was too much like stock-jobbing, and sapped all spirit of industry. 

Zúñiga says that the commerce made a few rich in a short time and with little labor, but they were very few; that there were hardly five Spaniards in Manila worth $100,000, nor a hundred worth $40,000, the rest either lived on the King’s pay or in poverty. “Every morning one could see in the streets of Manila, in the greatest poverty and asking alms, the sons of men who had made a fine show and left much money, which their sons had squandered because they had not been well trained in youth.” The great possibilities of Manila as an entrepot of the Asiatic trade were unrealized; for although the city enjoyed open trade with the Chinese, Japanese, and other orientals, it was denied to Europeans and the growth of that conducted by the Chinese and others was always obstructed by the lack of return cargoes owing to the limitations placed upon the trade with America and to the disinclination of the Filipinos to work to produce more than was enough to insure them a comfortable living and pay their tributes.  That the system was detrimental to the economic progress of the islands was always obvious and its evils were repeatedly demonstrated by Spanish officials.  Further it was not only detrimental to the prosperity of the islands but it obstructed the development of Mexico.

Grau y Monfalcon in 1637 reported that there were fourteen thousand people employed in Mexico in manufacturing the raw silk imported from China.  This industry might be promoted by the relaxation of the restrictions on trade.  It would also be for the advantage of the Indians of Peru to be able to buy for five pence a yard linen from the Philippines, rather than to be compelled to purchase that of Rouen at ten times the price.But such reasoning was received then as it often is now, and no great change was made for nearly two centuries.

Trade with Europe and America

As long as the Spanish empire on the eastern rim of the Pacific remained intact and the galleons sailed to and from Acapulco, there was little incentive on the part of colonial authorities to promote the development of the Philippines, despite the initiatives of José Basco y Vargas during his career as governor in Manila. After his departure, the Economic Society was allowed to fall on hard times, and the Royal Company showed decreasing profits. The independence of Spain's Latin American colonies, particularly Mexico in 1821, forced a fundamental reorientation of policy. Cut off from the Mexican subsidies and protected Latin American markets, the islands had to pay for themselves. As a result, in the late eighteenth century commercial isolation became less feasible.

Growing numbers of foreign merchants in Manila spurred the integration of the Philippines into an international commercial system linking industrialized Europe and North America with sources of raw materials and markets in the Americas and Asia. In principle, non-Spanish Europeans were not allowed to reside in Manila or elsewhere in the islands, but in fact British, American, French, and other foreign merchants circumvented this prohibition by flying the flags of Asian states or conniving with local officials. In 1834 the crown abolished the Royal Company of the Philippines and formally recognized free trade, opening the port of Manila to unrestricted foreign commerce.

By 1856 there were thirteen foreign trading firms in Manila, of which seven were British and two American; between 1855 and 1873 the Spanish opened new ports to foreign trade, including Iloilo on Panay, Zamboanga in the western portion of Mindanao, Cebu on Cebu, and Legaspi in the Bicol area of southern Luzon. The growing prominence of steam over sail navigation and the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 contributed to spectacular increases in the volume of trade. In 1851 exports and imports totaled some US$8.2 million; ten years later, they had risen to US$18.9 million and by 1870 were US$53.3 million. Exports alone grew by US$20 million between 1861 and 1870. British and United States merchants dominated Philippine commerce, the former in an especially favored position because of their bases in Singapore, Hong Kong, and the island of Borneo.

By the late nineteenth century, three crops--tobacco, abaca, and sugar--dominated Philippine exports. The government monopoly on tobacco had been abolished in 1880, but Philippine cigars maintained their high reputation, popular throughout Victorian parlors in Britain, the European continent, and North America. Because of the growth of worldwide shipping, Philippine abaca, which was considered the best material for ropes and cordage, grew in importance and after 1850 alternated with sugar as the islands'

most important export. Americans dominated the abaca trade; raw material was made into rope, first at plants in New England and then in the Philippines. Principal regions for the growing of abaca were the Bicol areas of southeastern Luzon and the eastern portions of the Visayan Islands.

Sugarcane had been produced and refined using crude methods at least as early as the beginning of the eighteenth century. The opening of the port of Iloilo on Panay in 1855 and the encouragement of the British vice consul in that town, Nicholas Loney (described by a modern writer as "a one-man whirlwind of entrepreneurial and technical innovation"), led to the development of the previously unsettled island of Negros as the center of the Philippine sugar industry, exporting its product to Britain and Australia. Loney arranged liberal credit terms for local landlords to invest in the new crop, encouraged the migration of labor from the neighboring and overpopulated island of Panay, and introduced stream-driven sugar refineries that replaced the traditional method of producing low-grade sugar in loaves. The population of Negros tripled. Local "sugar barons"--- the owners of the sugar plantations--became a potent political and economic force by the end of the nineteenth century.

Chinese and Chinese Mestizos

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, deep-seated Spanish suspicion of the Chinese gave way to recognition of their potentially constructive role in economic development. Chinese expulsion orders issued in 1755 and 1766 were repealed in 1788. Nevertheless, the Chinese remained concentrated in towns around Manila, particularly Binondo and Santa Cruz. In 1839 the government issued a decree granting them freedom of occupation and residence.

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, immigration into the archipelago, largely from the maritime province of Fujian on the southeastern coast of China, increased, and a growing proportion of Chinese settled in outlying areas. In 1849 more than 90 percent of the approximately 6,000 Chinese lived in or around Manila, whereas in 1886 this proportion decreased to 77 percent of the 66,000 Chinese in the Philippines at that time, declining still further in the 1890s. The Chinese presence in the hinterland went hand in hand with the transformation of the insular economy. Spanish policy encouraged immigrants to become agricultural laborers. Some became gardeners, supplying vegetables to the towns, but most shunned the fields and set themselves up as small retailers and moneylenders. The Chinese soon gained a central position in the cash-crop economy on the provincial and local levels.

Of equal, if not greater, significance for subsequent political, cultural, and economic developments were the Chinese mantises . At the beginning of the nineteenth century, they composed about 5 percent of the total population of around 2.5 million and were concentrated in the most developed provinces of Central Luzon and in Manila and its environs. A much smaller number lived in the more important towns of the Visayan Islands, such as Cebu and Iloilo, and on Mindanao. Converts to Catholicism and speakers of Filipino languages or Spanish rather than Chinese dialects, the mestizos enjoyed a legal status as subjects of Spain that was denied the Chinese. In the words of historian Edgar Vickberg, they were considered, unlike the mixed-Chinese of other Southeast Asian countries, not "a special kind of local Chinese" but "a special kind of Filipino."

The eighteenth-century expulsion edicts had given the Chinese mestizos the opportunity to enter retailing and the skilled craft occupations formerly dominated by the Chinese. The removal of legal restrictions on Chinese economic activity and the competition of new Chinese immigrants, however, drove a large number of mestizos out of the commercial sector in mid-nineteenth century. As a result, many Chinese mestizos invested in land, particularly in Central Luzon. The estates of the religious orders were concentrated in this region, and mestizos became inquilinos (lessees) of these lands, subletting them to cultivators; a portion of the rent was given by the inquilino to the friary estate. Like the Chinese, the mestizos were moneylenders and acquired land when debtors defaulted.

By the late nineteenth century, prominent mestizo families, despite the inroads of the Chinese, were noted for their wealth and formed the major component of a Filipino elite. As the export economy grew and foreign contact increased, the mestizos and other members of this Filipino elite, known collectively as ilustrados (see Glossary), obtained higher education (in some cases abroad), entered professions such as law or medicine, and were particularly receptive to the liberal and democratic ideas that were beginning to reach the Philippines despite the efforts of the generally reactionary--and friar-dominated--Spanish establishment.

E. Oppression and Exploitation of the Spanish Colonial System

We have now passed in review the political, ecclesiastical, and commercial administration of the Philippines in the olden time; and a general survey of some of the more striking results of the system as a whole may now be made.  This is especially necessary on

account of the traditional and widely prevalent opinion that the Spanish colonial system was always and everywhere a system of oppression and exploitation; whereas, as a matter of fact, the Spanish system, as a system of laws, always impeded the effectual exploitation of the resources of their colonies, and was far more humane in its treatment of dependent peoples than either the French or English systems.

If, on the one hand, the early conquistadores treated the natives with hideous cruelty, the Spanish government legislated more systematically and benevolently to protect them than any other colonizing power.  In the time of the first conquests things moved too rapidly for the home government in those days of slow communication, and the horrors of the clash between ruthless gold-seekers and the simple children of nature, as depicted by the impassioned pen of Las Casas and spread broadcast over Europe, came to be the traditional and accepted characteristic of Spanish rule. The Spanish colonial empire lasted four hundred years and it is simple historical justice that it should not be judged by its beginnings or by its collapse.

The remoteness of the Philippines, and the absence of rich deposits of gold and silver, made it comparatively easy for the government to secure the execution of its humane legislation, and for the church to dominate the colony and guide its development as a great mission for the benefit of the inhabitants. To the same result contributed the unenlightened protectionism of the Seville merchants, for the studied impediments to the development of the Philippine-American trade effectually blocked the exploitation of the islands.  In view of the history of our own Southern States, not less than of the history of the West Indies it should never be forgotten that although the Philippine islands are in the Tropics, they have never been the scene of the horrors of the African slave trade or of the life-wasting labors of the old plantation system.

Whether we compare the condition of the natives of the other islands in the Eastern Archipelago or of the peasants of Europe at the same time the general well-being of the Philippine mission villagers was to be envied.  A few quotations from unimpeachable witnesses, travelers of wide knowledge of the Orient, may be given in illustration and proof of this view. 

The famous French explorer of the Pacific, La Pérouse, who was in Manila in 1787, wrote:  “Three million people inhabit these different islands and that of Luzon contains nearly a third of them.  These people seemed to me no way inferior to those of Europe; they cultivate the soil with intelligence, they are carpenters, cabinet-makers, smiths, jewelers, weavers, masons, etc.  I have gone through their villages and I have found them kind, hospitable,

affable,” etc. Coming down a generation later the Englishman Crawfurd, the historian of the Indian Archipelago, who lived at the court of the Sultan of Java as British resident, draws a comparison between the condition of the Philippines and that of the other islands of the East that deserves careful reflection.

“It is remarkable, that the Indian administration of one of the worst governments of Europe, and that in which the general principles of legislation and good government are least understood,—one too, which has never been skillfully executed, should, upon the whole, have proved the least injurious to the happiness and prosperity of the native inhabitants of the country.  This, undoubtedly, has been the character of the Spanish connection with the Philippines, with all its vices, follies, and illiberalities; and the present condition of these islands affords an unquestionable proof of the fact.  Almost every other country of the Archipelago is, at this day, in point of wealth, power, and civilization, in a worse state than when Europeans connected themselves with them three centuries back.  The Philippines alone have improved in civilization, wealth, and populousness.  When discovered most of the tribes were a race of half-naked savages, inferior to all the great tribes, who were pushing, at the same time, an active commerce, and enjoying a respectable share of the necessaries and comforts of a civilized state.  Upon the whole, they are at present superior in almost everything to any of the other races.  This is a valuable and instructive fact.”

This judgment of Crawfurd in 1820 was echoed by Mallat (who was for a time in charge of the principal hospital in Manila), in 1846, when he expressed his belief that the inhabitants of the Philippines enjoyed a freer, happier, and more placid life than was to be found in the colonies of any other nation.

Sir John Bowring, who was long Governor of Hong Kong, was impressed with the absence of caste:  “Generally speaking, I found a kind and generous urbanity prevailing,—friendly intercourse where that intercourse had been sought,—the lines of demarcation and separation less marked and impassable than in most oriental countries.  I have seen at the same table Spaniard, Mestizo and Indian—priest, civilian, and soldier.  No doubt a common religion forms a common bond; but to him who has observed the alienations and repulsions of caste in many parts of the eastern world—caste, the great social curse—the binding and free intercourse of man with man in the Philippines is a contrast worth admiring.” Not less striking in its general bearing than Crawfurd’s verdict is that of the German naturalist Jagor who visited the islands in 1859-1860.

“To Spain belongs the glory of having raised to a relatively high grade of civilization, improving greatly their condition, a people

which she found on a lower stage of culture distracted by petty wars and despotic rule.  Protected from outside enemies, governed by mild laws, the inhabitants of those splendid islands, taken as a whole, have no doubt passed a more comfortable life during recent centuries than the people of any tropical country whether under their own or European rule.  This is to be accounted for in part by the peculiar conditions which protected the natives from ruthless exploitation.  Yet the monks contributed an essential part to this result.  Coming from among the common people, used to poverty and self-denial, their duties led them into intimate relations with the natives and they were naturally fitted to adapt the foreign religion and morals to practical use.  So, too, in later times, when they came to possess rich livings, and their pious zeal, in general, relaxed as their revenues increased, they still contributed most essentially to bring about conditions, both good and bad, which we have described, since, without families of their own and without refined culture, intimate association with the children of the soil was a necessity to them. “

Even their haughty opposition to the secular authorities was generally for the advantage of the natives.” Similar testimony from a widely different source is contained in the charming sketch “Malay Life in the Philippines” by William Gifford Palgrave, whose profound knowledge of oriental life and character and his experience in such divergent walks in life as soldier and Jesuit missionary in India, pilgrim to Mecca, and English consul in Manila, give his opinion more than ordinary value.“To clerical government,” he writes “paradoxical as the statement may sound in modern European ears, the Philippine islands owe, more than to anything else, their internal prosperity, the Malay population its sufficiency and happiness.  This it is that again and again has stood a barrier of mercy and justice between the weaker and stronger race, the vanquished and the victor; this has been the steady protector of the native inhabitants, this their faithful benefactor, their sufficient leader and guide.  With the ‘Cura’ for father, and the ‘Capitan’ for his adjutant, a Philippine hamlet feels and knows little of the vexations inseparable from direct and foreign official administration; and if under such a rule ‘progress,’ as we love to term it, be rare, disaffection and want are rarer still.”

As compared with India, the absence of famines is significant; and this he attributes in part to the prevalence of small holdings.  “Not so much what they have, but rather what they have not, makes the good fortune of the Philippines, the absence of European Enterprise, the absence of European Capital.  A few European capitalist settlers, a few giant estates, a few central factories, a few colossal money-making combinations of organized labour and gainful produce, and all the equable balance of property and production, of ownership and labour that now leaves to the poorest

cottager enough, and yet to the total colony abundance to spare, would be disorganized, displaced, upset; to be succeeded by day labour, pauperism, government relief, subscriptions, starvation.  Europe, gainful, insatiate Europe would reap the harvest; but to the now happy, contented, satiate Philippine Archipelago, what would remain but the stubble, but leanness, want, unrest, misery?” The latest witness to the average well-being of the natives under the old system whom I shall quote is Mr. Sawyer.  “If the natives fared badly at the hands of recent authors, the Spanish Administration fared worse, for it has been painted in the darkest tints, and unsparingly condemned.  It was indeed corrupt and defective, and what government is not?  More than anything else it was behind the age, yet it was not without its good points.

“Until an inept bureaucracy was substituted for the old paternal rule, and the revenue quadrupled by increased taxation, the Filipinos were as happy a community as could be found in any colony.  The population greatly multiplied; they lived in competence, if not in affluence; cultivation was extended, and the exports steadily increased.—Let us be just; what British, French, or Dutch colony, populated by natives can compare with the Philippines as they were until 1895?”

These striking judgments, derived from such a variety of sources, are a sufficient proof that our popular ideas of the Spanish colonial system are quite as much in need of revision as popular ideas usually are.Yet one must not forget that the Spanish mission system, however useful and benevolent as an agency in bringing a barbarous people within the pale of Christian civilization, could not be regarded as permanent unless this life is looked upon simply as a preparation for heaven.  As an educative system it had its bounds and limits; it could train to a certain point and no farther.  To prolong it beyond that stage would be to prolong carefully nurtured childhood to the grave, never allowing it to be displaced by self-reliant manhood.  The legal status of the Indians before the law was that of minors, and no provision was made for their arriving at their majority.  The clergy looked upon these wards of the State as the school-children of the church, and compelled the observance of her ordinances even with the rod. 

La Pérouse says:  “The only thought was to make Christians and never citizens.  This people was divided into parishes, and subjected to the most minute and extravagant observances.  Each fault, each sin is still punished by the rod.  Failure to attend prayers and mass has its fixed penalty, and punishment is administered to men and women at the door of the church by order of the pastor.” Le Gentil describes such a scene in a little village a few miles from Manila, where one Sunday afternoon he saw a crowd, chiefly Indian

women, following a woman who was to be whipped at the church door for not having been to mass.

The prevalence of a supervision and discipline so parental for the mass of the people in the colony could but react upon the ruling class, and La Pérouse remarks upon the absence of individual liberty in the islands:  “No liberty is enjoyed:  inquisitors and monks watch the consciences; the oidors (judges of the Audiencia) all private affairs; the governor, the most innocent movements; an excursion to the interior, a conversation come before his jurisdiction; in fine, the most beautiful and charming country in the world is certainly the last that a free man would choose to live in.”

Intellectual apathy, one would naturally suppose, must be the consequence of such sedulous oversight, and intellectual progress impossible.  Progress in scientific knowledge was, indeed, quite effectually blocked.The French astronomer Le Gentil gives an interesting account of the conditions of scientific knowledge at the two Universities in Manila.  These institutions seemed to be the last refuge of the scholastic ideas and methods that had been discarded in Europe.  A Spanish engineer frankly confessed to him that “in the sciences Spain was a hundred years behind France, and that in Manila they were a hundred years behind Spain.”  Nothing of electricity was known but the name, and making experiments in it had been forbidden by the Inquisition.  Le Gentil also strongly suspected that the professor of Mathematics at the Jesuit College still held to the Ptolemaic system.

But when we keep in mind the small number of ecclesiastics in the islands we must clear them of the charge of intellectual idleness.  Their activity, on the other hand, considering the climate was remarkable. An examination of J.T.  Medina’s monumental work on printing in Manila and of Retana’s supplement reveals nearly five hundred titles of works printed in the islands before 1800.  This of course takes no account of the works sent or brought to Spain for publication, which would necessarily comprise a large proportion of those of general rather than local interest, including of course the most important histories.  To these should be added no small number of grammars and dictionaries of the native languages, and missionary histories, that have never been printed. The monastic presses in the islands naturally were chiefly used for the production of works of religious edification, such as catechisms, narratives of missions, martyrdoms, lives of saints, religious histories, and hand-books to the native languages.  Simpler manuals of devotion, rosaries, catechisms, outlines of Christian doctrine, stories of martyrdoms, etc., were translated for the Indians.  Of these there were about sixty in the Tagal, and from three to ten or twelve each in the Visayan, Vicol, Pampanga, Ilocan, Panayan, and Pangasinán languages.

If, as is credibly asserted, the knowledge of reading and writing was more generally diffused in the Philippines than among the common people of Europe, we have the singular result that the islands contained relatively more people who could read, and less reading matter of any but purely religious interest, than any other community in the world.  Yet it would not be altogether safe to assume that in the eighteenth century the list of printed translations into the native languages comprised everything of European literature available for reading; for the Spanish government, in order to promote the learning of Spanish, had prohibited at times the printing of books in Tagal. Furthermore, Zúñiga says explicitly that “after the coming of the Spaniards they (i.e. the people in Luzon) have had comedies, interludes, tragedies, poems, and every kind of literary work translated from the Spanish, without producing a native poet who has composed even an interlude.”

Again, Zúñiga describes a eulogistic poem of welcome addressed by a Filipino villager to Commodore Alava.  This loa, as this species of composition was called, was replete with references to the voyages of Ulysses, the travels of Aristotle, the unfortunate death of Pliny, and other incidents in ancient history.  The allusions indicate some knowledge at any rate outside the field of Christian doctrine, even if it was so slight as not to make it seem beyond the limits of poetic license to have Aristotle drown himself in chagrin at not being able to measure the depths of the sea, or to have Pliny throw himself into Vesuvius in his zeal to investigate the causes of its eruption.  The literary interests of the Indians found their chief expression however in the adaptation of Spanish plays for presentation on religious holidays.  Zúñiga gives an entertaining description of these plays.  They were usually made up from three or four Spanish tragedies, the materials of which were so ingeniously interwoven that the mosaic seemed a single piece.  The characters were always Moors and Christians, and the action centered in the desire of Moors to marry Christian princesses or of Christians to marry Moorish princesses.  The Christian appears at a Moorish tournament or vice versa.  The hero and heroine fall in love but their parents oppose obstacles to the match.  To overcome the difficulties in case of a Moor and Christian princess was comparatively easy.  A war opportunely breaks out in which, after prodigies of valor, the Moor is converted and baptized, and the wedding follows.  The case is not so easy when a Christian prince loves a Moorish lady.  Since he can never forsake his religion his tribulations are many.  He is imprisoned, and his princess aids in his attempt to escape, which sometimes costs him his life; or if the scene is laid in war time either the princess is converted and escapes to the Christian army, or the prince dies a tragic death.  The hero is usually provided with a Christ, or other image or relic, given him by his dying mother, which extricates him from his many plights.  He meets lions and bears, and highwaymen attack him; but

from all he escapes by a miracle.  If, however, some principal personage is not taken off by a tragic end, the Indians find the play insipid.  During the intermission one or two clowns come out and raise a laugh by jests that are frigid enough “to freeze hot water in the tropics.”  After the play is over a clown appears again and criticizes the play and makes satirical comments on the village officials.  These plays usually lasted three days. Le Gentil attended one of them and says that he does not believe any one in the world was ever so bored as he was. Yet the Indians were passionately fond of these performances.

If one may judge from Retana’s catalogue of his Philippine collection arranged in chronological order, the sketch we have given of the literature accessible to Filipinos who could not read Spanish in the eighteenth century would serve not unfairly for much of the nineteenth.  The first example of secular prose fiction I have noted in his lists is Friar Bustamente’s pastoral novel depicting the quiet charms of country life as compared with the anxieties and tribulations of life in Manila. His collection did not contain so far as I noticed a single secular historical narrative in Tagal or anything in natural science.

Sufficient familiarity with Spanish to compensate for this lack of books of secular knowledge was enjoyed by very few Indians in the country districts and these had learned it mainly while servants of the curate.  It was the common opinion of the Spanish authorities that the Friars purposely neglected instructing the Indians in Spanish, in order to perpetuate their hold upon them; but Zúñiga repels this charge as unjust and untrue. It is obvious that it was impracticable for the Indians to learn Spanish under the mission system.  For the pastor of a pueblo of several hundred families to teach the children Spanish was an impossibility.  A few words or simple phrases might be learned, but the lack of opportunity for constant or even frequent practice of the language in general conversation would make their attainments in it far below those of American grammar-school children in German in cities where that has been a compulsory study. As long as the mission system isolated the pueblos from contact with the world at large, it of necessity followed that the knowledge of Spanish would be practically limited to such Indians as lived in Manila or the larger towns, or learned it in the households of the Friars.  Slavery with its forced transplanting has been the only means by which large masses of alien or lower races have been lifted into the circle of European thought and endowed with a European language. 

If such a result is secured in the future in any large measure for the Filipino, it can be accomplished only by the translation of English or Spanish literature into the Tagal and other languages, on a scale not less generous than the work of the Friars in supplying

the literature of religious edification.  This will be a work of not less than two or three generations, and of a truly missionary devotion.

We have now surveyed in its general aspects the old régime in the Philippines, and supplied the necessary material upon which to base a judgment of this contribution of Spain to the advancement of civilization.  In this survey certain things stand out in contrast to the conventional judgment of the Spanish colonial system.  The conquest was humane, and was effected by missionaries more than by warriors.  The sway of Spain was benevolent, although the administration was not free from the taint of financial corruption.  Neither the islands nor their inhabitants were exploited.  The colony in fact was a constant charge upon the treasury of New Spain.  The success of the enterprise was not measured by the exports and imports, but by the number of souls put in the way of salvation.  The people received the benefits of Christian civilization, as it was understood in Spain in the days of that religious revival which we call the Catholic Reaction.  This Christianity imposed the faith and the observances of the mediæval church, but it did for the Philippine islanders who received it just what it did for the Franks or Angles a thousand years earlier.  It tamed their lives, elevated the status of women, established the Christian family, and gave them the literature of the devotional life.

Nor did they pay heavily for these blessings.  The system of government was inexpensive, and the religious establishment was mainly supported by the landed estates of the orders.  Church fees may have been at times excessive, but the occasions for such fees were infrequent.  The tenants of the church estates found the friars easy landlords.  Zúñiga describes a great estate of the Augustinians near Manila of which the annual rental was not over $1,500, while the annual produce was estimated to be not less than $70,000, for it supported about four thousand people. The position of women was fully as good among the Christian Indians of the Philippines as among the Christian people of Europe.  But conspicuous among the achievements of the conquest and conversion of the islands in the field of humanitarian progress, when we consider the conditions in other European tropical colonies, have been the prohibition of slavery and the unremitting efforts to eradicate its disguised forms.  These alone are a sufficient proof that the dominating motives in the Spanish and clerical policies were humane and not commercial.  Not less striking proof of the comfortable prosperity of the natives on the whole under the old Spanish rule has been the steady growth of the population.  At the time of the conquest the population in all probability did not exceed a half-million.  In the first half of the eighteenth century according to the historian of the Franciscans, San Antonio, the Christian population was about 830,000.  At the opening of the nineteenth century Zúñiga estimated the total at a million and a half as over 300,000 tributes were paid.  The official

estimate in 1819 was just short of 2,600,000; by 1845 Buzeta calculates the number at a little short of four millions.  In the next half century it nearly doubled.

In view of all these facts one must readily accord assent to Zúñiga’s simple tribute to the work of Spain.  “The Spanish rule has imposed very few burdens upon these Indians, and has delivered them from many misfortunes which they suffered from the constant warfare waged by one district with another, whereby many died, and others lived wretched lives as slaves.  For this reason the population increased very slowly, as is now the case with the infidels of the mountain regions who do not acknowledge subjection to the King of Spain.  Since the conquest there has been an increase in well-being and in population.  Subjection to the King of Spain has been very advantageous in all that concerns the body.  I will not speak of the advantage of knowledge of the true God, and of the opportunity to obtain eternal happiness for the soul, for I write not as a missionary but as a philosopher.”

Christianity in the Philippines 39

In little more than a century, most lowland Filipinos were converted to Roman Catholicism. There are a number of reasons why Spanish missionaries were successful in this attempt:

1. Mass baptism - the initial practice of baptizing large numbers of Filipinos at one time enabled the initial conversion to Christianity. Otherwise, there is no way that such a small number of Spanish friars, or Catholic priests, could have accomplished this goal. It is said that many Filipinos associated baptism with their own indigenous 'healing rituals', which also rely on the symbolism of holy water--very typical of Southeast Asian societies.

2. Reduccion policies - in areas where Filipinos lived scattered across the landscape in small hamlets, the Spanish military employed a resettlement policy that they had used successful in Central and Latin America. This policy was called reduccion, and essentially meant a forced relocation of small, scattered settlements into one larger town. The policy was designed for the convenience of administration of the Spanish colony's population, a way for a small number of armed Spanish constabulary to control more easily the movements and actions of a large number of Filipinos. It was also designed to enable Spain to collect taxes from their Christianized converts. Throughout Spanish rule, Christianized Filipinos were forced to pay larger taxes than indios, or native, unChristianized peoples.

The reduccion policy also made it easier for a single Spanish Catholic friar to 'train' Filipinos in the basic principles of Christianity.

In reality, the policy was successful in some areas but impossible to enforce. Spanish archives are full of exasperated colonial officials complaining about how such settlements were 'all but abandoned' in many cases after only a few weeks.

3. Attitude of the Spanish clergy in the early phase - Spanish friars were forced to learn the native language of the peoples they sought to convert. Without schools that trained people in Spanish, the Spanish friars had no choice but to say Christian mass and otherwise communicate in the vernacular languages of the Philippines. There are over 200 native languages now; it is unknown how many existed in the beginning of Spanish rule.

In the first half, or 150 years of Spanish rule, friars often supported the plight of local peoples over the abuses of the Spanish military. In the late Spanish period, in contrast, Spanish priests enraged many Filipinos for failing to a) allow otherwise 'trained' Filipino priests to ascend into the higher echelons of the Catholic Church hierarchy in the Philippines; b) return much of the land they had claimed as 'friar estates' to the Philippine landless farmers; and c) recognizing nascent and emerging Filipino demands for more autonomy and a greater say in how the colony was to be managed.

4. Adaptation of Christianity to the local context - Filipinos were mostly animistic in their religious beliefs and practices prior to Spanish intervention. In most areas they revered the departed spirits of their ancestors through ritual offerings, and also believed in a variety of nature spirits. Such beliefs were central to healing practices, harvest rites, and to maintaining a cosmological balance between this world and the afterlife. Spirits were invisible, but also responsible for both good and bad events. Spirits could be blamed for poor harvests, illness, and bad luck generally. Yet Filipinos believed that proper ritual feasting of the spirits would appease them, and result in good harvests, healthy recovery of the ill, and the fertility of women.

The legacy of Spanish conquest and colonial rule in the Philippines, as is true of all colonial attempts to 'master' or manage indigenous populations, is mixed. On the one hand, Spanish clergy were very destructive of local religious practices. They systematically destroyed indigenous holy places and 'idols', or statues and representations of indigenous spirits, gods or goddesses. They also tried to stamp out all examples of native scripts and literature for fear that Filipinos were using exotic symbols to foment rebellion. The Spanish also imposed new 'moralities' on Filipinos by discouraging slave holding, polygamy, gambling, and alcohol consumption that were a natural part of the indigenous social and religious practices.At the same time, Hispanic rule left a legacy of syncretic, rather than totally destructive,

elements. Spanish clergy introduced some very European features of Catholic practice that blended well with indigenous ritual practices. Spanish Catholic priests relied on vivid, theatrical presentations of stories of the Bible in order to help Filipinos understand the central messages of Christianity. Today, this colonial legacy lives on whenever Filipino Catholics re-enact through religious dramas the passion of Christ, or Christ's martyrdom, during Holy Week.

Antonio de Morga’s Report on the Philippine Colony 40

  Report by the : What is to be said of the condition of affairs in these Philipinas Islands is as follows:Report by the senior auditor, Antonio de Morga on the Philippine Colony

 Instruction and instructors of the Indians

 1. The evil example set by the religious through their vices, indecent behavior, gambling, banquets, and festivities.

2. They trade and make a profit in their districts, from rice, wax, wine, gold, boats, fowls, cloth, and deerskins, to the great detriment of the Indians, as well as that of the entire country.

3. They deal openly in merchandise of the abovementioned articles, as well as in those of China, in the trade with Nueva España.

4. They usurp the royal jurisdiction, hearing, according to the due forms of law, suits among the Indians. They have stocks, prisons, and place of detention, where they vex, whip, and otherwise afflict the Indians, compelling these to obey the laws they themselves make, rather than those of the king's magistrates.

5. They distress the Indians by demanding their services as rowers; and contributions of rice, wine, fowls, and other things, with but slight payment, or even none.

6. They employ many more Indians than are necessary, who serve in many capacities without pay.

7. They levy many excessive fees for baptisms, weddings, and funerals, and then neglect to reserve the episcopal tax.

8. They erect large churches, houses, and monasteries for only one friar, or at the most for two. They often remodel and rebuild these edifices at a great expense to the royal treasury, encomenderos, and Indians.

9. They put forth strenuous efforts to oblige the Indians to bequeath at least a third of their gold and wealth to the monasteries, for which gifts they receive more honor at their death, so that others may be roused to do likewise. Those who do not thus give are buried like beasts.

10. In the churches alms-boxes and chests are placed, in which they compel both men and women alike to drop their offering each one singly, diminishing their property.

11. They insist on the continual formation of brotherhoods and erection of shrines, so that these may be endowed and adorned and may receive new alms—the Indians understanding no more of the matter than the display and ostentation of the offering.

12. Every monastery has, usually, a great many festivities, which are all attended by the friars throughout the whole province. These are accompanied by many Indians, for the purpose of bearing their hammocks, rowing for them, and acting in other capacities. Thus, year after year, the friars go from one village to another, dragging the Indians after them, and causing great expense.

13. The religious levy many contributions on the Indians for the expense of their festivities, for triumphal arches, castles, and dances. These entertainments are receptions which they compel the Indians to tender, as a welcome, to their provincials and priors, to whom breakfasts and dinners are given also. These festivities occur frequently, and are conducted with much worldly show and expense.

14. They are very careful to exact that all the Indian girls, especially the young and most beautiful, appear at the gates of the monastery every day. They converse with them, showing partiality to the handsomest among them. When a new prior arrives or any other person for whom the religious wish to make a special display, these Indian girls dress themselves carefully and call to see them. Besides this, there are other things which it would be offensive to tell.

15. The superiors commonly send young friars of but little education and no very good example to these curacies. Their conduct is such that the Indians hate them as enemies. Thus the Indians profit but little by the instruction, and acquire a distaste for the law of God and His gospel.

16. They generally spend their time disputing with the alcaldes-mayor. Especially if the latter do not coincide in all their opinions, they persecute and harass them, until they even compel them to leave the country.

17. They accept and encourage complaints and tales by private persons, even though they may be false and unjust; for this enables them to preach to and reprove the people and also the ministers of justice, so that they themselves may be feared and respected. And they do this with great indecorum and license.

18. By means of special study and persistent effort, they strive to participate in government affairs. They desire to have a hand in everything, and to take part in all matters, through the medium of conscience and theology, by means of which they interpret and pick flaws in his Majesty's ordinances. But rarely do they allow his orders to be executed, unless quite to their taste and liking.

19. Many of them undeniably have contracts with the factors, encomenderos, and known capitalists in the trade with España.

20. They are attended by a great following of Indian boys, who serve as pages and servants. These are well dressed, wearing liveries and gold chains. They carry their hats for them in the streets, while in the monastery they assist them in the cells. Each one, however, has his own special servant.

21. These servants, together with other Indians whom they have with them, who are taught to play on the guitar and other instruments, are made to dance, execute lively songs and dances, and to sing profane and immodest tunes. Thus they entertain their guests, setting a bad example to the Indians, without profiting anyone.

22. When they find themselves gainers in wealth, their principal thought is to try to return to España with their profits. This disturbs many here, for by diverse ways and means they endeavor to obtain permission to carry out their design.

23. The orders send many each year, under the pretext that they are going on business for the order. They do not take into consideration that they are needed here, nor the expense to his Majesty in sending them.

24. The more spiritual among them try to go to China, Xapon, Camboxa, and other kingdoms, in order to preach the gospel, unmindful of their duties here, for which they were brought. This anxiety makes them restless, and they invent journeys and conquests which disturb the rulers and the Spaniards. All this gives rise to other objectionable things.

25. They will accept no curacy in any province, unless rich enough to suit them. They abandon the rest, so that there are many islands and provinces whose people ask for baptism but are unable to

obtain it, for the lack of persons to administer it as well as to impart instruction and to live with the Indians to see that they do not apostatize.

26. Many of the religious treat the Indians very cruelly, just as if they were slaves or dogs. On failure to please, they are beaten, or subjected to any penalty that presents itself, on the pretext that they were remiss in attention to religious instruction.

Ecclesiastical judges and prelates

27. They meddle with the royal jurisdiction. Hitherto they have not been restrained, for they would immediately pronounce excommunication and offer other insults

28. In the cases tried by them, they practice notorious coercion, insulting the parties to the case, executing all that they decide and determine, whether right or wrong—and all this without having any education, or having any person to guide them.

29. The religious have attorneys who speak both languages, and interpreters, whom they invest with authority, and from whom the Indians suffer innumerable offenses and many grievances.

30. Their officials and clerks collect excessive fees and do not keep to the fixed rate.

31. Although his Majesty had ordered no pecuniary fines to be imposed on the Indians for any cause or pretext whatsoever, they are compelled to pay fines of gold and reals, which decrease their property and estate.

32. Some of the judges are quite at variance with others, especially in regard to conservators; and they excommunicate one another and the town, with considerable offense and scandal. Bulls and briefs have been published, unknown to, and not passed or received by, the council.

33. When complaint is made of the excesses and crimes of any ecclesiastic or religious, their superiors do not punish them. On the contrary, saying that it does not befit the dignity of religion to say that they have committed crimes and that they have received punishment, they let the matter drop.

34. The ecclesiastics and religious quietly take away from and add to the instruction at will, and without the supervision of the governor and the ecclesiastical superior, contrary to his Majesty's orders. This occasions many difficulties. They do not allow the bishop to visit

their curacies, for fear that the injustice of their action will be discovered.

 Secular government

 35. Negligence and carelessness exist in making the laws, and more in enforcing them, in regard to matters pertaining to the care and advancement of this kingdom, and its good government—and especially to the royal decrees sent by his Majesty, most of which are suspended or not effectively observed.

36. Concerning provisions and all other necessities for human existence, each one is a law unto himself, does what he pleases, and sells as he wishes, without any fixed price, measure, or system. Hence provisions are growing steadily worse and dearer. The natives and Chinese trade, bartering and retailing, which, as above stated, results in the injury and high price of provisions, while the merchandise is adulterated or counterfeited.

37. The thorough efforts which are needed are not made to prevent the natives from becoming vagabonds and idlers; and to make them cease to be peddlers and traders for gain. They must be induced to cultivate the soil, make their cloth, and occupy themselves with their different kinds of work, as they did formerly. Then the land was more productive and they were better off.

38. It is necessary rigorously to restrict the Chinese from going about as they now do among these islands for trade and profit, without any system, robbing the country, enhancing the value of articles, and imparting many bad habits and sins to the natives. They also explore the ports and harbor entrances, and reconnoiter the country, that they may be able to work some injury when occasion offers.

39. It would be very advantageous forcibly to eject all the Sangleys who are scattered throughout the islands—namely, those who are protected by the alcaldes-mayor and the religious—because of the money that they take out of the country, and the injury they cause to it.

40. These Sangleys should not be allowed to have parians in certain towns of the islands, where there are but few Spaniards. The justices harbor them there for their own profit, and the harvests that they gather from them and their ships, as in Manila. This might prove very harmful and injurious, and renders it necessary that, at the very least, the ship coming to trade shall dispose of its cargo as quickly as possible, and return to China with all those who came in it.

41. It is only just that, when the Sangleys arrive with their ships, they should observe the proclamations issued which prohibit them from bringing many people. Penalties should be exacted, and when the Sangleys return they should take as many people as they can, thus relieving the country from the many here who are an injury to it.

42. We must endeavor to have them sell the merchandise brought by them from China freely to any person who wishes to buy; and we must see that no advantage is taken of anyone, either in their ships or on land, under severe penalties intended to prevent such acts—from which arise obvious injustice, and the increase of the price of their wares.

43. An order must be given to the Chinese to sail early for these islands, so that, during the month of May, their goods shall be sold, and their ships go on the return voyage. This is the best thing, both for the safety of their voyage, and the prevention of so excessive prices on their goods.

44. We must endeavor to have them bring good merchandise, not defective or spurious. As they are an unscrupulous race, they adulterate the goods, which they would not do if they saw that notice was taken of their action, and that the goods that were not up to the standard were burned.

45. All possible care must be taken to prevent their trusting their goods to Spaniards, for without knowing them, the Sangleys let them have the goods at an enhanced price, without personal security; and afterward the Sangleys tire themselves and us in trying to collect the money, so that credit is lost.

46. Action should be taken, so that these Sangleys should not be afflicted as at present by any judges, constables, and interpreters—who, by various pretexts and calumnies, cheat and rob them, and perpetrate much fraud, coercion, and bribery.

47. The great number of Sangley interpreters must be decreased. These serve for no other purpose than to commit innumerable acts of bribery, corruption, and fraud with the Chinese.

48. It would be much better for the Chinese who become Christians not to dress like Spaniards. The latter should resume their accustomed labors so that it might not be necessary for many Sangleys to remain in the country to perform the needful service. They should cultivate and till the soil, which they do not do at present, because of which arise many bad results.

49. Measures must be taken to enforce his Majesty's decree, under severe penalties, so that the royal officials, clerks, and guards who register and appraise the merchandise of the Sangleys in their vessels, shall not take the goods for themselves, or pick out the best, or give promissory notes. This is very unjust and oppressive.

50. The Chinese captains and merchants should be ordered, under penalty of being imprisoned and fined, to bring saltpeter, iron, and other metals, which they have refused to bring of later years, and of which there is great need.

51. When the Sangley ships are about to depart, they are ballasted and loaded with lumber. This should be prohibited, for they fell the trees for this, and in a short time there will be a lack of wood here.

52. All the Japanese coming hither in their vessels would better be sent back to Xapon. Not one should be allowed to settle in this kingdom.

53. Those already here should be banished to their own country, for they are of no benefit or utility; but, on the contrary, very harmful.

54. On departing, the Japanese are wont to take cargoes of silk and gold, which are merchandise intended for Xapon. This should not be allowed until the Spaniards have made their purchases, for it increases the price of silk.

55. The Japanese and Chinese strive to take many deerskins as merchandise from these islands to Xapon. They hunt for these, and buy them from the Indians and even the religious, who give and sell them. This traffic must be stopped, for it is very injurious to the country, as the animals are killed solely for their skins, and thus the supply of game will become exhausted.

56. The flour, biscuits, and wax brought from Xapon are suitable commodities for this country. Some persons have already become so keen in their plans to dispose of these goods that they buy them by wholesale, store them, and retail them. This must be prohibited, and an order issued to the effect that this state shall be provided and supplied with them at moderate rates.

57. It does not appear that the alcaldes and regidors of Manila use their offices to the good of the state, but each for his own private interests. They must be instructed in their duties, and punished for any negligence.

58. There is no system in regard to the provision of beef, for there is no one who is compelled to provide it. What there is, is not properly cleaned. It is not cut, divided, or weighed with equality and fairness.

As the regidors and people in authority are the owners of the cattle, they weigh and sell them as they please, without observing any system.

59. There is likely to be a scarcity of rice, for the city does not make the necessary provision for it. Those who have this grain—the encomenderos—hoard it and make a profit from it, selling it to the Sangleys at high rates; and thus it becomes dear. The same thing is true of fowls. The rate fixed is not observed, and no one takes any pains to enforce it.

60. Fish is the most abundant and most general food supply. The Indians do not occupy themselves, as formerly, in fishing, but leave this work to the Chinese. These avaricious and interested people have raised the prices, an evil that must be restrained and checked.

61. The fishing is done with salambaos, 7 and with fine-meshed nets; with which they block up the bay and kill the small fish. These nets ought not be employed, and the size of the mesh should be regulated so that the supply of fish will not be exhausted; for already experience has demonstrated that they are not so abundant as formerly.

62. We have gardeners and kitchen-gardens now. Although there were none before, yet the price of vegetables has increased beyond any former price. This occurs because of the lack of fixed rates, and because a man is kept on guard in the market-place to prevent robbery by the soldiers and other people. Now this man allows whatever price the Sangleys may name, which results to his profit; for they pay him for it, while he strives only to keep them satisfied.

63. Considerable trouble exists here in regard to the current silver money, because the Sangleys generally cut and clip it, and because they cut into many pieces the single reals for the trade in small articles, for which formerly they bartered with rice. This truly serious abuse must be corrected by an ordinance.

64. In both the conduct and dress of men and women, unwarrantable extravagance and license exist. Rich and poor, and chiefs and common people alike, all wish to dress in fine garments, have their wives carried in chairs attended by pages, have carpets in the churches, and many other unwarrantable luxuries, from which arise many difficulties. As far as possible this condition of affairs must be remedied.

65. In Manila the men are accustomed to gamble for enormous and excessive stakes; whatever of this sort is especially objectionable should be corrected. During the visits and intercourse of the women, their chief diversion is to play cards, and more commonly than is

becoming to their station. Men are admitted to these games, from which might arise greater evils. This matter requires attention.

66. For very just and necessary considerations, the Sangleys have not been allowed to sleep in the city. This measure should still be enforced rigorously.

67. There are a great number of Indians, both men and women, in the city of Manila, who are vagabonds of evil life, living in the houses of the Spaniards. Their own houses they use for receiving the goods stolen by their slaves, and for their revelries. The Spaniards aid them, and thus waste the provisions. They are retailers and secretly buy up the provisions at wholesale. They commit other sins and do much harm, as is notorious. Therefore it is necessary that they be expelled from the city and sent to their villages and parishes, and made to work.

68. The country is becoming filled with black slaves and Cafres,8

brought by the Portuguese, and these are the worst that the Portuguese have. They do a great deal of damage, transgress the law, and will cause the ruin of this city and country; for they rebel at least every year, seize vessels, and take flight, committing many outrages and thefts. It is contrary to the law to bring these slaves, unless very young, but this law is poorly observed. It is advisable to take the measures necessary in this matter.

69. Large fires have occurred in the city of Manila, and are constantly occurring. Although many of the buildings and houses are of stone, still many are made of wood, or of bamboo thatched with leaves, of the nipa palm. It was decreed that all be covered with roof tiles, but this law is not rigorously enforced. It is advisable to have this law observed, both to diminish the danger, and for the well-being of the city.

70. The streets of the city are in poor condition, and are very uneven. During the rainy season, they are almost impassable, and should be repaired.

71. In regard to the public works of the city—the cabildo's hall, the prison, and the slaughter-house—they should be constructed as soon as possible, for their absence causes great hardship.

72. The Sangleys are buying gardens, estates, and other country property, which may prove harmful. They are also establishing themselves in these lands, and in the houses of some of the orders, contrary to his Majesty's ordinance. The small size of this country may render this more harmful than in other countries.

73. Monasteries have occupied several of the streets of the city, and a portion of the space between the fortifications and the houses. This needs investigation.

74. In the offices and places of gain belonging to the country, the men employed should be selected with regard to merit and skill, and for no other reason. Especially if they are incapable, or excluded by royal decrees, should they be refused employment.

75. The same with regard to the provision for repartimientos and encomiendas of the Indians.

76. The people of the country wish to be maintained in peace and justice. They desire the punishment of all crimes, but object, on account of the newness of the country, to penalties which affect property, in the case of insignificant offenses.

77. It is requisite that, in the treatment of their persons, and especially of those who merit consideration, those who are in authority show the people respect, courtesy, and affability.

78. Those in authority must avoid having a great following of servants and retainers; and those that they do have they must pay and recompense from their own pockets, and must not bestow on them the offices or profits of the country. This is a very unjust proceeding, as there is not sufficient even for those who serve, because of the small extent of this country.

79. Those in authority must refuse to allow such servants and friends to trade and make contracts, and to buy goods at wholesale and to embark in commercial enterprises; because they exercise much coercion and inflict many wrongs—spreading the report that it is on behalf of those in authority. No one, therefore, dares to institute a suit against them.

80. The said relations, servants, and friends of those in authority ought not to be permitted to become regidors or city officials; for besides being incapable of filling such positions, and having no experience in the ways of this country, they only serve to deprive the others who fill these offices of freedom of action, so that no necessary measures can be enacted in their cabildos, if it is at all against the will of those in authority.

81. His Majesty's orders, contained in many decrees, to the effect that none but inhabitants of these islands should engage in trade here, must be put into rigid execution, as well as all else in them concerning the inhabitants, for this is the only salvation for the country.

82. In regard to the weight and cargo in the vessels sailing to Nueva España, it is essential that those in authority protect the citizens, since there is but one August and one harvest. They should strive to allow the citizens to pursue their occupations freely and leisurely, and to have the cargo loaded by those only who can justly do so.

83. Just as it is requisite to use restraint sometimes, in order to prevent the troops in this land from going on some enterprises, so likewise expeditions and pacifications must be arranged as a means of employing them; for as idlers they gain nothing, nor does the country receive any profit. At other times it is necessary to allow some to return to España, for thus others will lose their fear of coming to this country.

84. The hospitals, especially that for the Spaniards, ought to be greatly favored, as they are the asylums for all the needy. The same is true of the house of Santa Potenciana.

 Affairs of war

 85. Those in authority must not give the companies or other garrisons into the charge of their relatives, friends, or servants, especially if they are mere youths and of but little experience. This is a notorious wrong, since there are so many deserving men who are suffering and dying from hunger.

86. Every man in the royal garrison must serve in case of war, and none should be excused because of being a relative, servant, or friend, or for any other reason. There are many who are thus excused.

87. The captains and officers ought to be more painstaking in disciplining and drilling their soldiers, and in knowing what arms they possess, and whether they are in good condition. The men should be well treated, disciplined, and thoroughly under control. They should not gamble away or sell their clothes or arms.

88. When a soldier commits any crime for which he merits punishment, his captain must not hide or palliate the offense, in order to save him from prison or from being punished—as is done quite commonly, to the great injury of all.

89. It is indispensable that the walls and fort should be always kept in repair and garrisoned.

90. The same is true in regard to the artillery, of which there should be a good supply, but of which there is at present a great lack.

91. Warships ready for any emergency are needed, but at present we have none.

92. There are but few arms in the armory, and those few are rotten and out of order. This need is notorious; and all classes of weapons, especially muskets and arquebuses, must be made.

93. Carrying arms out of the country must be prohibited. This is done quite commonly by the Portuguese and by the natives, and is a proceeding which causes great injury.

94. Gunners are greatly needed, as we have but few of them, and these few do not understand artillery.

95. The artillery is badly mounted, and left exposed to sun and rain. The caissons and wheels are rotted and of no use. Balls and cartridges are all mixed up; besides, none of the other supplies are laid out so that they can be used when occasion (much more a sudden emergency) may require.

96. The gunpowder should always be well refined, and stored in different places, and not in one house, in order to prevent accidents. This should be done with the other ammunition.

97. The soldiers' lodgings at the garrison need rebuilding, as they are inadequate to the needs of the men, who will not then suffer their present necessities. Also this will do away with their disorderly conduct in the city by day, and especially that at night.

98. It is extremely necessary to adopt some system with regard to payment, so that the soldiers would not squander it in gambling. A portion should be retained and paid out each day for food and clothing. Through this lack of system much suffering has resulted, and many soldiers have died. Consequently many are unfit to serve.

99. The soldiers should be kept as busy as possible, for in Manila they give themselves up to laziness and vice. When most needed, they are found to be undrilled, and so unfit for their work. Especially should they be made to go aboard the vessels as often as possible, for in these islands it is very necessary that they go to sea and know how to fight on the water. In fact, this is generally the kind of fighting to be done here.

100. In the other cities and places of these islands, it is necessary that the magistrates and the officers of war should always be on the alert, ready themselves, and their Indians also, for any emergency that should arise. They should have ships that would inspire respect; because enemies or corsairs are apt to attack them, with whom they lose time and reputation by not hurrying to encounter them.

101. Expeditions and enterprises for pacification or conquest outside of the islands must be scrutinized very carefully. Before going on them, it must be understood and determined that those sent on such expeditions must give account and residencia of their duties and methods of procedure.

102. In respect to crimes committed by the soldiers, when these are slight offenses there is but little to register, or little judicial procedure to be observed; but when they are of greater import, and the penalty therefore is severe, it is just that the case be registered and substantiated so that the proper course of justice may be observed, and so that they may be prosecuted in due form of law.

 Justice

 103. As for justice, there has been much negligence in punishing public excesses and faults. Many things—and some of them of great importance—have been overlooked or covered up. This has led to other irregularities, such as reckless, continual, and fraudulent gambling, and concubinage.

104. From Nueva España many disreputable men, condemned to the galleys, are brought here, and allowed to disembark and go where they will, dressed and armed like the rest of the people. They are not often tried; and not only do they not pay the penalty for their crimes, but even commit other atrocities and crimes here.

105. The ordinary judges are lax in their duties, are not prompt in finishing the business of the advocates, and in fact, neglect this duty greatly. They do not patrol or visit suspected places, nor watch over the government, supplies, and civil affairs of their districts.

106. The chief aim of the alcaldes-mayor, corregidors, and assistants, is trade. They buy up by wholesale the products of the land, especially rice and other food supplies, exactly as is said above concerning the religious of certain curacies, and their interpreters and helpers.

107. They try old suits of which they cannot know the details, and stir up many suits and processes among the Indians, at great expense to the latter.

108. Neither they nor their clerks observe the schedule when levying the fees. In their own behalf they afflict and trouble the Indians with outrageous requirements, making them cut wood, serve as rowers, and perform other services.

109. The first thing that they do, on entering their provinces, is to lay hands immediately on all the property of the communities, and

to use it for their own advantage. When their offices expire, they seldom return the property to the community.

110. If they collect any fines belonging to the royal treasury, or to expenses of justice, they conceal them, keeping no book or account sufficient to enable such fines to be demanded from them. The same is true of the tenths of gold.

111. It is not advantageous for these acaldes-mayor and corregidors, or their assistants or friends, to receive the royal collections, for they perpetrate numberless frauds and cheats, both against the royal treasury and against the Indians; and there is no remedy for this, as they themselves administer justice. They hold the collections in their possession for a long time, trading with them, and the royal treasury is the loser.

112. They leave their provinces when and how they please, without permission of those in authority; and when others are appointed to their offices, they immediately depart, in order not to have their residencia taken. Thus they are not to be found in office, and escape being made to give satisfaction for the injuries that they have committed, and being prosecuted by justice.

113. They are not accustomed to obey the commands and orders sent them by their superiors unless these suit them; for this they must be severely rebuked.

114. Hitherto their residencias have been decided and taken with all mildness and little investigation, so that they have lost all fear, and dare to lead lives of carelessness and hypocrisy. Therefore it would be advantageous to take their residencias more strictly, so that they should live hereafter with care.

115. They do not watch carefully so that the religious shall not usurp their jurisdiction or meddle in matters that do not pertain to them; they do this in order not to have disputes and quarrels with the religious, lest they themselves should not be allowed to live and buy and sell as they please. This is a detriment to the public service.

116. Those in authority ought to refrain from asking or requiring the alcaldes-mayor, corregidors, etc., to supply them with provisions, or other things from their provinces, even when they pay for them; for, in the name of those in authority, they do the same for themselves, much more and with greater freedom, and to the greater loss of the country. Then they lay the blame on the one who ordered it, thus excusing themselves.

117. Many are haughty and disrespectful to the religious and ministers of instruction, always inclined to contend and disagree

with them. This is also disgraceful and of little profit for any. Severe measures must be adopted in this regard.

 Encomenderos

 118. They pay no attention to the schedule in the collection of their tributes, and usually practice frauds to violate it.

119. They collect tribute from minor Indians, and from the aged, the lame, the poor, the dead, and the fugitive—their oppressions in this respect being well known.

120. They employ the Indians in building houses and large vessels, grinding rice, cutting wood, and carrying it all to their houses and to Manila; and then pay them little or nothing for their labor. They use them also for their own work for many days without pay.

121. They themselves administer justice in their village, arresting and whipping their Indians during the collection of the tribute, besides committing other notorious acts of violence.

122. They pay but little attention to the instruction of the Indians or anything pertaining to it. They pay grudgingly the stipends of their curacies, as well as the money for the building and adornment of churches. In this regard they are at continual variance with the ministers, and the Indians are the losers by it.

123. Although not authorized to remain in their villages longer than to collect the tribute, they go to and live in them at many other times. This proves a great burden to the Indians; because of the annoyances, and the requirements of services and contributions with which they afflict them, and which constitute the only purpose of their going.

124. At other times they send collectors, who are very unworthy and have no compassion on the cause of the Indians, whom they afflict and maltreat worse even than do their masters, and do them more harm. In most cases, these collectors are not approved by those in authority, nor do they bear permission from them.

125. They dispute and quarrel with the magistrates on slight pretexts, and incite their Indians not to obey them or listen to their summons. This they do quite commonly, whenever they fail to find the judges unwilling to shield them in whatever they choose to do in their encomiendas. If they act in harmony, it generally means more injury to the wretched Indians.

 The Royal Estate

 126. These encomenderos conceal in great part the amount of the tributes collected by them, and show only partial lists of the collections. Usually they retain the amount in their own hands for a long time, before bringing it to the treasury.

127. The most important thing here is the royal treasury, for on it all the people of the islands depend; yet it receives the least care and the poorest management.

128. There is little thought given to ensure its increase, or to prevent its decrease. There has been a great falling off in the matter of tributes, tenths of gold, and other taxes that belong to it. Some excellent provisions for its management were ordered in the past, but are neither carried out nor even considered.

129. The royal officials have no statutes for their guidance, beyond some decrees of the governors, which do not cover all the requirements of their offices.

130. The royal books are not kept with the requisite clearness and system. Entries are not set down with exactness, or at the right time. The officials commonly use loose memoranda, which may give rise to much loss, although it may not be fraudulent.

131. All the officials do not go over the work. On the contrary, many different matters are put in charge of one alone, such as the collections of the duties and other things, account of which is rendered to the treasury after a long time. In the meantime the treasury is the loser.

132. The officials very often receive royal property at their residences without passing it in to the treasury. They use it to suit themselves.

133. The notary of the exchequer is not present when money is paid to or from the treasury, and it is done without him, contrary to his Majesty's commands. This may give opportunity for wrong and fraud.

134. In order to accommodate individual debtors to the treasury, orders and notes are often received on account for the payment, and then they try to realize on them.

135. They have been seen to receive into their houses, from collectors and others who were bringing goods to the treasury, great amounts thereof, which they employ in their own affairs and needs; not depositing them in the treasury for a long time.

136. They have used the royal tributes of rice, wine, gold, and cloth in the same way.

137. The royal warehouses were entirely under the control of the factor for a long time, with less assurance of safety than if they were under the control of all three officials. Some time ago, they were put under control of all three, but these have entrusted the keys to three servants or followers. This arrangement, far from increasing the royal estate, is an excuse for them to draw pay from the royal treasury; and it does not satisfactorily fulfil the royal intention—namely, that these officials should carry the keys on their own persons, in order to avoid all damage and loss to the royal stores.

138. There is little interest taken in selling and administrating the goods in the storehouses before they are spoiled, as has been the case with much of their contents.

139. The timely use of rice and other supplies, and the cutting of wood for the ships is not considered. This necessitates greater cost and damage afterwards.

140. In the expenditure for repairing ships and other royal vessels made in Cavite, there has been spent much more than appears by Master de Ribera's statement, which was verified only by his word and oath. This is a very extensive scheme, in which there may have been considerable loss and fraud between the factor and Master de Ribera, because the expense has been very heavy and is not clearly stated.

141. Galleys, vireys, caracoas, fragatas, and other royal vessels have been lost because of inadequate shelter.

142. There are many places in which are employed sailors, gunners, calkers, coopers, and other seafaring men, who are superfluous, unnecessary, and of no service. They create notorious expense and are maintained in these employments on account of being servants, relatives, and friends of those in authority.

143. There are many sinecures and gratuities given by those in authority, which are enjoyed by officials, clerks, officials of the accounts, and royal officials—all without his Majesty's orders and contrary to his intention.

144. Many soldiers enlisted are excused from service for private reasons.

145. There are many more captains and their officers in the camp than is necessary. These cause a useless expense and waste, and this is a matter requiring reform.

146. Many draw salaries as commanders and captains of galleys, when there are no galleys; and some as knights of the city, who do not serve in its defense, and of whom there is no necessity.

147. The governors of the forts of Nuestra Señora de Guia and Santiago draw larger salaries than his Majesty ordered.

148. The consignments made by the king to his treasury are confused with other payments.

149. But little care is exercised in collecting all the royal dues from the vessels coming from España, because they are always laden beyond the appraisal. The same is true in regard to freight and the dues on the money coming from España, more of which always comes than the register shows.

150. The collectors sent to make the collections for the royal treasury and those of the tributes do not usually bring them in promptly; and they perpetrate many frauds and injuries, so that each time the collections are smaller. Sometimes it has been observed that they retain the money collected, and that with the knowledge of the officials themselves, because they are favorites of the latter.

151. Many times they delay making the final account of the debtors to the royal treasury, and fail to collect the balance of their debts, on account of private considerations.

152. There are many old debts that the treasury owes, the payment of which is unavoidably suspended. To cancel these it will be necessary to send to the treasury of Mexico for the deficiency, with the required authorization.

153. Likewise, as the salaries and expenses have already accumulated to a considerable sum, we must perforce send, each year, to the said treasury of Mexico for the means to pay it all when due.

The Navigation to España

 154. The giving of positions on the trading ships of the Nueva España route is a great detriment to the country. In the first place this advantage is enjoyed by those who have not served in this land, thus depriving of it those who have served.

155. As persons who have no compassion on the citizens of this country, they busy themselves only for their own interests, and not for the good of the country.

156. Many of those in the naval and military service come here who are useless and troublesome. This is a great expense to the king, and all to no purpose.

157. The soldiers come naked, unarmed, and starving, because their captains have only tried to cheat them.

158. The ships return loaded with the investments of the officers of the ships. Besides their own goods, they have been entrusted with large commissions and trusts in Mexico, which they execute and fulfil to the great deprivation of this country. They receive excessive salaries all the time until their return to España, which might be dispensed with if they were officials of these islands.

159. After they depart for Nueva España with their vessels, then for greater comfort and the better stowing of their merchandise, they throw overboard the goods of our citizens, without any necessity. This they do without any feeling of compassion for the many whom they ruin. It makes no difference to them, for they are going where they cannot be proceeded against, and where it is impossible to follow them.

160. Usually those who come in those positions are relatives and servants of the viceroy of Nueva España. They are mere youths and have no experience in their duties. Innumerable frauds and injuries are perpetrated in the despatch of the vessels at Acapulco, of which I shall not speak in detail, for that one point alone would require a great deal of paper. Manila, June 8, 1598.

THE DECLINE OF SPANISH RULE, 1762-1898 In 1762

Spain became involved in the Seven Years' War (1756-63) on the side of France against Britain; in October 1762, forces of the British East India Company captured Manila after fierce fighting. Spanish resistance continued under Lieutenant Governor Simón de Anda, based at Bacolor in Pampanga Province, and Manila was returned to the Spanish in May 1764 in conformity with the Treaty of Paris, which formally ended the war. The British occupation nonetheless marked, in a very significant sense, the beginning of the end of the old order.

Spanish prestige suffered irreparable damage because of the defeat at British hands. A number of rebellions broke out, of which the most notable was that of Diego Silang in the Ilocos area of northern Luzon. In December 1762, Silang expelled the Spanish from the coastal city of Vigan and set up an independent government. He established friendly relations with the British and was able to repulse Spanish attacks on Vigan, but he was assassinated in May 1763. The Spanish, tied down by fighting with

the British and the rebels, were unable to control the raids of the Moros of the south on the Christian communities of the Visayan Islands and Luzon. Thousands of Christian Filipinos were captured as slaves, and Moro raids continued to be a serious problem through the remainder of the century. The Chinese community, resentful of Spanish discrimination, for the most part enthusiastically supported the British, providing them with laborers and armed men who fought de Anda in Pampanga.

After Spanish rule was restored, José Basco y Vargas one of the ablest of Spanish administrators, was the governor from 1778 to 1787, and he implemented a series of reforms designed to promote the economic development of the islands and make them independent of the subsidy from New Spain. In 1781 he established the Economic Society of Friends of the Country, which, throughout its checkered history extending over the next century, encouraged the growth of new crops for export--such as indigo, tea, silk, opium poppies, and abaca (hemp)--and the development of local industry. A government tobacco monopoly was established in 1782. The monopoly brought in large profits for the government and made the Philippines a leader in world tobacco production.

The venerable galleon trade between the Philippines and Mexico continued as a government monopoly until 1815, when the last official galleon from Acapulco docked at Manila. The Royal Company of the Philippines, chartered by the Spanish king in 1785, promoted direct trade from that year on between the islands and Spain. All Philippine goods were given tariff-free status, and the company, together with Basco's Economic Society, encouraged the growth of a cash-crop economy by investing a portion of its early profits in the cultivation of sugar, indigo, peppers, and mulberry trees for silk, as well as in textile factories.

Notes:

32Robinson, James Harvey, Breasted, James Henry and Smith, Peters Emma “ History of Civilization: Earlier Ages.BostonGinn and Company. 1937. p.624-625)

33 Ibid.pp.556-60034 Morga ,p 2-335 Wikipedia Encylopedia,” Voyage of Ferdinand Magellan”36 Ibid, “Lapu-Lapu”37Cushner, Nicholas P., Spain in the Philippines: From Conquest to Revolution. Institute of Philippine Culture. Ateneo de Manila University. Quezon City, Philippines in cooperation with Charles E. Tuttle Co. Inc. Rutland, Vermont and Tokyo , Japan38 Emma Blair, Blair and Robertson. Philippine Islands39 Susan Russell, Christianity in the Philippines Department of Anthropology

40 Blair & Robertson, The Philippine Islands, volume 10, pp. 75-102.Translation from the Spanish by Rachel King