Philippines

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Philippines

The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines (Republika ng Pilipinas; RP), is an island nation located in Southeast Asia, with Manila as its capital city. The Philippine Islands comprise 7,107 islands in the western Pacific Ocean. The country reflects diverse Austronesian cultures from its many islands, as well as European and American influence from Spain, Latin America, and the United States.

Filipinos are mostly of Austronesian descent. Some Filipinos, however, are partly of American, Spanish, Chinese, and Arab ancestry.

Based on the Census of Population and Housing conducted decennially by the National Statistics Office, the total population of the Philippines as of May 1, 2000 was 76,504,077 persons. This was higher by 7,887,541 persons, or about 10.31 percent, from the 1995 census. It was ten times the Philippine population in 1903, when the first census was undertaken.

DISCOVERY AND CONQUEST

In his circumnavigation of the world, Ferdinand Magellan landed at Suluan Island in the Philippines in 1521. Three subsequent Spanish expeditions led by Juan García Jofre de Loaysa (1526), Alvaro de Saavedra Cerón (1528), and Ruy López de Villalobos (1543) tried unsuccessfully to launch a colony in the archipelago. It was not until 1565 that Miguel Lopez De Legazpi succeeded. In 1571 he moved his settlement from Cebu to Manila on Luzon. Except for the British occupation of Manila in 1761–1763, Spain retained its Far Eastern colony bordering China for the next three hundred years.

ADMINISTRATIONS

The colony was governed by a captain-general dependent on the viceroy of Mexico. He possessed legislative, administrative, and, as president of the audiencia (court and adviser to the captain-general), judicial control. He was commander of the army (when one existed), upholder of the laws from Spain, vice patron of the church, and finance overseer (until the intendant system was inaugurated in the late eighteenth century). Governors in the Philippines often used their office to increase their own wealth. In the latter half of the eighteenth century, a succession of extraordinarily competent governors (Pedro Manuel de Arandía, 1754–1759; Simón de Anda y Salazar, 1770–1776; and José Basco y Vargas, 1778–1787) did much to raise the economic level of the colony.

EVANGELIZATION

The first missionaries in the archipelago were the five Augustinians who arrived with Legazpi in 1565. Fifteen Franciscans arrived in 1578, and the Jesuits and Dominicans began mission work in 1581. Augustinian Recollects arrived in 1606. The major motive for retaining the economically unproductive colony was religious. The missionaries appealed to the king's obligation to evangelize the archipelago. The Spaniards arrived just as Islam was making headway in the archipelago and had already converted the southern Philippines. The islands were divided into mission jurisdictions, and missionaries began to evangelize their regions by creating parishes, mission stations, and outlying vistas. Missionaries used native languages for instruction rather than Spanish. Within a relatively short period of time, major indigenous groups were Christian. The Dominicans staffed the College of Santo Tomás in Manila, which became a university, and the Jesuits opened the College of Manila (1595) and six others throughout the islands.

TRIBUTE, LABOR, AND COMMERCE

Tribute, either in specie or in kind, was exacted from Filipinos to help defray the costs of colonization and to acknowledge their vassalage to the king of Spain. It was paid to an encomendero, who was assigned to accept the payment from a specific town or cluster of villages. In return, the encomendero was supposed to protect the inhabitants of his villages and make sure that they were instructed in Christian doctrine. Exemptions were made for age and sex. In 1779, in the archdiocese of Manila, an estimated 68,000 paid tribute while 178,000 did not. Filipinos also provided labor for the shipyards of Cavite, where warships were constructed. Only a few of the famed Manila Galleons were constructed in the Philippines. Most were built in Mexico.

The Manila galleon was a massively large vessel that between 1565 and 1815 made one round trip a year between Manila and Acapulco, Mexico. On the outward trip from Manila, the ship was loaded with silks, spices, and Oriental luxury items. Ports from India through Southeast Asia to China shipped goods to Manila, where they were processed and stored by Manila's Chinese colony, then transshipped by a handful of Spanish merchants who were allotted a specific amount of space each year on the galleon. On the return from Mexico, the galleon carried silver, which paid for the next shipment of luxury items. With these cargoes, the Manila galleon was a sought-after prize of pirates and enemies of Spain, but only one was captured at sea, the Covadonga, by George Anson in 1743. He found 1,313,843 pieces of eight aboard, and at Canton a thorough search of the galleon revealed more silver hidden in rinds of cheese, in the ship's timbers, and in other places—clear indication of the smuggling going on.

Taxes were collected on the galleon trade but were never enough to pay for the administration of the colony. A yearly subsidy, called the situado, was sent from Spain or Mexico. In the nineteenth century, exports of Manila hemp (used for ships' rigging), sugar, and tobacco spurred the colony's economic development and helped to create an emerging middle class.

INDEPENDENCE

In the latter nineteenth century, Filipinos began to demand assimilation with Spain, representation in the Spanish Cortes, and freedom of speech. Led by José Rizal and Marcelo H. del Pilar, the propaganda movement, as it came to be called, especially attacked the Spanish friars as the visible manifestation of Spanish domination. José Rizal's novel Noli Me Tangere (1884) was a biting attack on the Spanish colonial mentality in the Philippines. The movement helped instill a sense of nationalism. Rizal was executed on 30 December 1896 for alleged participation in armed insurrection. In 1897 a war for independence broke out under Filipino General Emilio Aguinaldo. The Filipino revolutionaries signed the Treaty of Biak-na-Bato, in which they agreed to leave the archipelago in return for 1.5 million pesos. Aguinaldo went to Hong Kong. The Spaniards never paid the full amount, however, so the revolution continued. On 25 April the United States declared war on Spain. On 1 May 1898, Commodore George Dewey left Hong Kong for Manila Bay, where he wrecked the Spanish fleet, blockaded the harbor, and awaited the arrival of American troops. Spanish rule ended in the Philippines with the signing of the Treaty of Paris on 10 December 1898.

Today most Filipinos are aware of their Spanish heritage but few speak Spanish.