The History of Manila

Durante el siglo XVII, la Gobernación de Filipinas desarrolló una estrecha relación de dependencia mutua con el clan de los Zheng que incidió en el ámbito comercial, pero también en el económico y el social. Esta simbiosis, basada en la colaboración, pero también en la competencia, no estuvo exenta de fricciones, como la originada en 1662 por la amenaza de conquista de Luzón por parte de Zheng Chenggong. En el presente artículo, estudiaremos cómo se generó y afianzó esta relación de dependencia y como los cambios surgidos tanto en el interior de ambos territorios como en otros enclaves de Asia forzaron una rápida recuperación de los vínculos perdidos tras la ruptura de 1662.

During the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, countless slaves from culturally diverse communities in the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia journeyed to Mexico on the ships of the Manila Galleon. Upon arrival in Mexico, they were grouped together and categorized as chinos. Their experience illustrates the interconnectedness of Spain's colonies and the reach of the crown, which brought people together from Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe in a historically unprecedented way. In time, chinos in Mexico came to be treated under the law as Indians, becoming indigenous vassals of the Spanish crown after 1672. The implications of this legal change were enormous: as Indians, rather than chinos, they could no longer be held as slaves. Tatiana Seijas tracks chinos’ complex journey from the slave market in Manila to the streets of Mexico City, and from bondage to liberty. In doing so, she challenges commonly held assumptions about the uniformity of the slave experience in the Americas.

The Most Holy Trinity Church of Balic-Balic, Sampaloc, Manila, stands on the former sacred ground of Cementerio Balic-Balic (1890-1918) built by Friar Ramon Caviedas OFM (*1849-1918). This book, the first of a two book project, attempts to situate the history of the Most Holy Trinity Church within the context of Fr. Ramon's life and Sampaloc's Franciscan heritage. This study includes archival, photographic, and cartographic materials about Sampaloc's beginnings as a Franciscan convent in 1613 climaxing with the Battle of Balic-Balic during the Philippine American War (1899) and the closure of Manila's Spanish colonial cemeteries (1913-1918).

The Republic of the Philippines as one of the South-East Asia countries has both its own peculiarities and similarities with its neighbors. Whether it is about Filipino nature and climate or its unusual history or the Filipino people - friendly and mostly helpful, the only way to get to know the country is to go and visit it. Here comes my own view of the Philippines and mostly Manila, I got after a short one-week stay in September 2018. Speaking of Manila historic districts, its problems and its most typical characteristics, of its dwellers and a bit of political situation and comparing most of the things with other South-East Asian countries, I would like to create kind of an image of the Philippines.

This paper contemplates the seemingly immutable privacy of the city of Manila, and the paradoxical character of its publicity. Manila is our prime exemplar of the twenty-first century mega-city whose apparent disorder discloses a coherent order which we here call 'neopatrimonial urbanism'. Manila is a city where poor and rich alike have their own government, infrastructure, and armies, the shopping malls are the simulacra of public congregations once found in cathedrals and plazas, and where household order is matched by streetside chaos, and personal cleanliness wars with public dirt. We nominate the key characteristics of this uncanny approximation of chaotic and discordant ordera polyphonous and polyrhythmic social order but one lacking harmonyand offer a historical sociology, a genealogy that traces an emblematic pattern across the colonizing periods of its emergent urban forms into the contemporary impositions of gated zones and territories. The enduring legacy of patrimonial power to Manila is to be found in the households and on the streets that undermine and devalue public forms of social power in favour of the patriarch and his householders ( now relabeled as 'shareholders' in 'public companies') at the cost of harmonious, peaceable and just public order. Such a state of affairs is not only destructive of the historic built environment of the city, especially its public parks and plazas and heritage districts, its streets, footpaths, public transport and utilities, but is directly injurious of its citizens. To address the question of Manila's private order and public chaos is to reopen the quest for the good city as the just polis. It is also to takes us beyond arguments of indigenous versus colonial forms of urbanism that are mired in nationalist and modernization ideologies respectively, and it is to reject the reductive logics of globalization arguments that Asian mega-cities are but variations of American logics of urbanism.

(MODERN AMBIVALENCES: WAR, COMMERCE, AND PIRACY IN THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE PHILIPPINES AND THE NEIGHBORING SULTANATES AT THE END OF THE 18th CENTURY) // Eberhard Crailsheim, “Ambivalencias modernas. Guerra, comercio y ‘piratería’ en las relaciones entre Filipinas y los sultanatos colindantes a finales del siglo XVIII,” in: María Dolores Elizalde and Xavier Huetz de Lemps (eds.), Anhelos de cambio. Reformas y modernisación en las Filipinas del siglo XIX (Madrid, Polifemo, 2021) (ISBN: 9788416335756), pp. 513–542.

"Ang tesis na ito ay patungkol sa heritage sites ng Pilipinas sa anyo ng mga sinaunang istruktura at iba pang pook sa mga distrito ng Binondo at San Nicolas sa Lungsod ng Maynila (Sa riserts na ito, ang Binondo at San Nicolas ay ituturin bilang iisang Binondo.), gamit ang konseptuwal na balangkas ni Dr. Fernando Zialcita tungkol sa district studies. Ang mga distritong ito ay tahanan sa maraming pook na itinatayo bago sumapit ang Ikalawang Digmaang Daigdig, at sila ay tahimik na saksi sa mayamang nakaraan hindi lamang ng Binondo, kundi maging ng lungsod na siyang Kabisera ng bansa. Sa kasamaang palad, patuloy ang paggiba sa mga ito at ang madalas na ipinapalit ay mga modernong gusali na masasabing mas mababa ang kalidad o ang gamit kumpara sa pinagpalitan nito.

Kaya naman nagsawa ng komprehensibong sarbey at pag-iimbentaryo sa lahat ng potensyal at tukoy na pre-war heritage sites sa Binondo ng sa gayon ay makita ang magnityud ng kanilang pananatili sa lugar at magamit din ang nagawang tala bilang referens sa hinaharap at alinsunod din sa hangad ng gobyerno na masuri ang mga ito. Makikita ang baryasyon ng mga estilo ng arkitektura ng mga istruktura sa distrito, na nagpapakita ng natatanging karakter ng mga ito na makikita lamang sa naturang lugar.

Kaugnay rito, titingnan din ang papel ng gobyerno sa pangangalaga ng mga heritage site na ito, gaya ng tungkulin ng partikular na mga personalidad sa pamahalaan, at batas na naglalaman ng polisya at pamantayan sa pagtukoy at pagprotekta sa mga nasabing istruktura. Sa tulong ng mga bagay na ito, mahihinuha ang mga bagay na dapat gawin sa hinaharap upang matanto ang potensyal ng mga heritage sites sa Binondo, at makagawa ng plan tungo sa sustainable development ng distrito.
"

POLITEKNIKONG UNIBERSIDAD NG PILIPINAS 2 KABANATA I ANG SULIRANIN AT KALIGIRANG PANGKASAYSAYAN Panimula Masasalamin sa ating kasaysayan ang buhay na nakaraan na siyang nabuo ilang libong taon na ang nakakalipas. Marami sa mga pamanang ito, dala-dala pa natin sa kasalukuyan ngunit mayroon din namang nagmistulan ng abo kasama sa hukay ng mga namayapa nating ninuno at hindi na nagkaroon pa ng pagkakataon na ipamlita sa madla kung kaya't hindi na napagyaman at tuluyan ng nakalimutan. Gaya na lamang ng mga pangalan ng lugar , lalong lalo na ang mga barangay na kinabibilangan mo. Araw-araw mong nakikita pero oras ba na tanungin ka kung saan ito nagmula, may maisasagot ka? At ito ang pokus ng pag-aaral ng mga mananaliksik, ang malaman ang kasaysayan ng isang lugar, partikular ng mga barangay sa Lungsod ng Tondo, Maynila. Batay sa isang Philippine National Artist na si Nick Joaquin, hango daw ang sallitang Tondo sa isang mataas na lupa (tundok). Sinasabi namang nagmula ito bakawan o Aegiceras corniculatum na tinatawag ding tundok ngunit mas kilala na ngayong (tinduk-tindukan) na mula sa isang Pranses na si Jean-Paul Potet.

A native of Bruges (now part of Belgium), Jacques de Coutre was a gem trader who spent nearly a decade in Southeast Asia in the early 17th century. In addition to a substantial autobiography written in Spanish and preserved in the National Library of Spain in Madrid, he wrote a series of memorials to the united crown of Spain and Portugal that contain recommendations designed to reverse the decline in the fortunes of the Iberian powers in Southeast Asia, particularly against the backdrop of early Dutch political and commercial penetration into the region. Translated into English for the first time, these materials provide a valuable first-hand account of the bigger issues confronting the early colonial powers in Southeast Asia, and deep insights into the societies De Coutre encountered in the territory that today makes up Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines.

Estudio de la política talasocrática del sultanato de Brunéi en el archipiélago filipina y su influencia cultural en la bahía de Manila. La introducción de la cultura islámica supondrá una transformación de la comunidad tagala, sugiriendo e identificando datos que demuestren el uso de la escritura yawi para redactar textos en tagalo a la llegada de los españoles.

El presente trabajo aborda el estudio del viaje de la fragata Santa Rita (alias Mercante), uno de los navíos que cubrió la ruta entre Manila y Acapulco tras el fin del Galeón de Manila. La trascendencia del viaje reside en que en 1821, antes de su regreso, Agustín de Iturbide incautó su carga para el pago de tropas. Este hecho justificó las amargas quejas de los cargadores implicados en la expedición y sentó las bases del mito historiográfico de la quiebra del comercio manileño. Este colapso explicaría el fin de las expediciones transpacíficas.
A través del análisis del contexto histórico y de otras expediciones similares, nos proponemos desmontar las exageraciones vertidas sobre esta expedición y conjeturar los intereses detrás de la construcción del mito.

The present paper presents the study of the travel of the frigate Santa Rita (alias Mercante), one of the vessels en route between Manila and Acapulco, after the end of the Manila Galleon. The significance of the journey lies in the appropriation of its charge by Agustín de Iturbide in 1821, before its return, in order to pay the troops. This fact justified the bitter complaints of the involved chargers in the expedition and laid the groundwork of the historiographic myth of the bankruptcy of the Manila trade. This collapse would explain the end of the transpacific expeditions.
By means of the analysis of the historical context and similar expeditions, we try to dismantle created excessiveness about this expedition and conjecture the hidden interests on the myth construction.

“Luis Eduardo Aute y Filipinas”, en Revista Filipina, Invierno 2016, vol. 3, núm. 2, pp. 15-43.

Estudio del elemento filipino en la vida y obra de Luis Eduardo Aute, desde su nacimiento en Manila, hasta su último álbum "El niño que miraba el mar", alegoría de toda una vida desde las vivencias de la II Guerra Mundial.

Real people, not mechanical processes, make segregation, and the ideas, interests and practices people mobilize for and against segregation are complex. The political dramas that result never stop to rest in one spot; they are always dynamic, shape-shifting, unpredictable, and internally contradictory. 1 ate seventeenth-century Manila was a colorful, cosmopolitan but segregated port city. Manila's large Chinese population was made to live beyond the high walls that enclosed the Spanish quarter known as Intramuros, and apart from the city's negro (blacks) and indio (indigenous) residents. As Carl Nightingale observes in his seminal history of urban segregation, the division of cities is a "dynamic, shape-shifting, unpredictable" process. 2 Segregation in early modern Manila was shaped by concerns about mestizaje (the biological and social mixing of distinct ethnic groups) and tensions over the spiritual landscape that were most visible and antagonistic during the overlapping Chinese Lunar Festival and Lent.

Tracing the entangled genealogies of spaces of media spectatorship, modes of visual perception, and practices of capitalist consumption, this article explores how the shift in Manila's main commercial street from Calle Escolta in the 1930s to Avenida Rizal in the 1960s reveals changes in the imagination and experience of capitalism and modernity. Previously embodied in the infrastructure, architecture, and technology of the cityscape, which only government and business were perceived as having the capacity to produce, modernity became reconfigured as a dynamic force that ordinary residents came to believe they could harness. The article comparatively analyzes variations and dissonances in the print and audiovisual media of the two periods, particularly in the contrasting representations of awkward vaudeville comedians and youthful movie antiheroes. Instead of treating consumer and media culture as a source of docility and atomization, it sees the collective spectatorship of mass entertainment as generating the potential for self-transcendence and revolution.

Ocupación Británica de Manila, 1762-64 por Peter Borschberg Sumario I. Introducción II. El ataque y la toma de Manila III. Los problemas de la ocupación británica de Manila III.i Cuestiones de permanencia y legitimidad III.ii. Restricciones financieras III.iii. Provisiones de alimentos IV. Acusaciones de cooperación china con los británicos V. Pruebas de la cooperación china con los británicos V.i. Hacer «negocio como de costumbre» V.ii. La venta de concesiones monopolísticas V.iii. Reclutamiento de culíes en Manila: cooperación de los británicos con el Gobernadorcillo de los Sangleyes V.iv. ¿Hubo una «milicia china»?

Manila is one of the world's most fragmented, privatized and un-public of cities. Why is this so? This paper contemplates the seemingly immutable privacy of the city of Manila, and the paradoxical character of its publicity. Manila is our prime exemplar of the 21st-century mega-city whose apparent disorder discloses a coherent order which we here call 'neo-patrimonial urbanism'. Manila is a city where poor and rich alike have their own government, infrastructure, and armies, the shopping malls are the simulacra of public congregations once found in cathedrals and plazas, and where household order is matched by streetside chaos, and personal cleanliness wars with public dirt. We nominate the key characteristics of this uncanny approximation of chaotic and discordant order – a polyphonous and polyrhythmic social order but one lacking harmony – and offer a historical sociology, a genealogy that traces an emblematic pattern across the colonizing periods of its emergent urban forms into the contemporary impositions of gated zones and territories. The enduring legacy of patrimonial power to Manila is to be found in the households and on the streets that undermine and devalue public forms of social power in favour of the patriarch and his householders (now relabelled as 'shareholders' in 'public companies') at the cost of harmonious, peaceable and just public order. Such a state of affairs is not only destructive of the historic built environment of the city, especially its public parks and plazas and heritage districts, its streets, footpaths, public transport and utilities, but is directly injurious of its citizens. To address the question of Manila's private order and public chaos is to reopen the quest for the good city as the just polis. It is also to take us beyond arguments of indigenous versus colonial forms of urbanism that are mired in nationalist and modernization ideologies respectively, and it is to reject the reductive logics of globalization arguments that Asian mega-cities are but variations of American logics of urbanism.

Intramuros, núcleo original sobre el que se fundó la ciudad de Manila en 1571, se convirtió desde el primer momento en la punta de lanza de la conquista española de Filipinas. Centro de gobierno, educación y comercio de las Filipinas española durante los siguientes trescientos años, se convirtió en una ciudad fortificada siguiendo los principios del desarrollo urbano español en las colonias y su diseño como área destinada a garantizar la seguridad de los gobernantes coloniales y de la población española. Mientras en el exterior, en la zona llamada Extramuros, surgía una urbe multirracial cuyo desarrollo fue también objeto de control por parte de las autoridades coloniales con el fin de asegurar que no se convirtiera en una amenaza.

Durante más de tres siglos la corona española se esforzó por mantener su presencia en lo que fueron las posesiones imperiales más alejadas de la metrópoli, las Islas Filipinas.
Las particularidades de aquellas remotas tierras hicieron que la evangelización supusiese una de las principales justificaciones, si no la principal, para explicar el interés del rey en conservarlas en el imperio.  Debido a esto las órdenes religiosas ejercieron una especial influencia en las posesiones asiáticas de la corona, actuando en muchas ocasiones como intermediarias entre los distintos grupos de población que habitaban las islas y que eran principalmente españoles, indios filipinos y chinos sangleyes. Pero las órdenes religiosas también actuaron como grupos de presión frente a esta compleja población produciéndose situaciones de conflictividad.
A pesar de los más de tres siglos de presencia española en el archipiélago filipino, el imperio hispánico nunca fue capaz de crear un sistema efectivo de colonización en las islas ante la diversidad de situaciones tanto económicas como sociales y culturales que unos y otros grupos de población no supieron o quisieron entender, presos de los prejuicios, la ignorancia, la avaricia, etc.
Con este breve estudio, que es parte de uno más amplio, me propongo analizar cómo el desconocimiento antropológico del otro, el desinterés por la cultura de un importante sector de la población como eran los chinos sangleyes, y la intransigencia religiosa de las órdenes, pudieron poner en jaque a la colonia entera por un problema tan aparentemente trivial como es el cabello.
Para llevar a cabo este estudio me he servido tanto de las investigaciones de expertos filipinistas y sinólogos como de documentación de primera mano procedente del Archivo General de Indias, consultado el fondo de la Audiencia de Filipinas, y del Archivo Histórico Nacional, para la documentación perteneciente a la Colección Documentos de Indias.

La noche del 12 de marzo de 1670, un grupo de marineros que se dirigían al galeón de Manila San Diego asaltaron el barangay o poblado filipino de Santa Ana en busca de comida. Este hecho, aunque aislado y a simple vista sin gran transcendencia, nos permite vislumbrar ciertos aspectos de la vida del medio agrícola filipino. A partir de este caso, se aprecia cómo este pequeño poblado no era una pieza aislada del resto de globo, sino que se encontraba interconectado con diversas redes comerciales y culturales, siendo participe de la conocida como «primera globalización».

The Republic of the Philippines as one of the South-East Asia countries has both its own peculiarities and similarities with its neighbors. Whether it is about Filipino nature and climate or its unusual history or the Filipino people - friendly and mostly helpful, the only way to get to know the country is to go and visit it. Here comes my own view of the Philippines and mostly Manila, I got after a short one-week stay in September 2018. Speaking of Manila historic districts, its problems and its most typical characteristics, of its dwellers and a bit of political situation and comparing most of the things with other South-East Asian countries, I would like to create kind of an image of the Philippines.

El presente trabajo analiza el impacto de las independencias americanas en las islas Filipinas durante el período de la oleada revolucionaria atlántica. En 1808, se desata un proceso revolucionario que traerá consigo la formación de los primeros sistemas representativos en España, América y Asia. Del mismo modo, 1808 es el punto de partida de las independencias americanas y del fin de la presencia española en la América continental.
Este proceso ha sido examinado desde una perspectiva atlántica, centrada en la relación entre los acontecimientos de la España peninsular y los desarrollos en la América Hispana. De esta manera, Filipinas ha quedado fuera del análisis ignorándose su participación de las dinámicas generales del imperio y el secular vínculo que une a las islas con América, especialmente Nueva España, a través del Pacífico.
Nuestro objetivo es estudiar nexos de unión y dependencias entre los procesos a ambos lados del Océano Pacífico. En este sentido, interpretamos el Mar del Sur como un canal de circulación de ideas, imaginarios y proyectos entre América y Asia. Estos elementos influyen de manera decisiva en los acontecimientos en las islas debido a las problemáticas compartidas y los profundos nexos humanos, políticos, económicos, sociales y culturales que atan a las Indias Orientales con las Indias Occidentales.

Isabel II was the unique Spanish monarch, together with his grandfather Carlos IV, who was honoured in the Manila's urban landscape with the erection of a statue. In the following pages we are going to analyse the context in which this tribute was proposed, its artistic features and the message that it entailed, as well as, the place that this monument occupied in the symbolic geography of the city.
What we propose, therefore, is the study of this Royal statue according to the perspectives that have been employed by the historiography in the analysis of public monuments in other historical contexts. To achieve this end, paying attention to art piece itself is still absolutely required; from to its technical, formal and aesthetic components to its iconography (dress, pose of the figure, etc). But at the same time, it is essential contextualizing the monument, inquire in its primitive meaning, what involves the reasons of its conceiving, the urban landscaping in where it was inserted, etc. Only in that way we will able to understand the truly spirit and significance that the memorial had in its own time.

La edición de esta obra ha sido posible gracias al apoyo del Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, a través del proyecto de investigación «Mediaciones culturales en los imperios ibéricos: diplomacia intercultural y misiones en Asia y el Pacífico (siglos xvi-xviii)»

“Il rapporto conflittuale tra Macao e Manila durante il Periodo delle Corone Unite: i casi di Cina e Giappone (secoli XVI-XVII)” [The Conflicting Relationship between Macau and Manila during the Iberian Union: the Cases of China and Japan (16th-17th Centuries)], in Rosaria de Marco (ed.), L’Orientalistica a Napoli (Napoli: Università degli Studi Suor Orsola Benincasa, 2017), pp. 245-258. ISBN: 978-88-96055

This paper analyzes how the embedding and reshaping mechanisms of the diasporic South Fujianese worked or failed in the context of local authorities in two Southeast Asian host societies, Batavia and Manila, beyond the border of the Chinese empire. The discussion of the mechanisms is a weakness in previous studies since they mostly focus on the description of adaptation, however, the core issue is not simply different strategies South Fujianese applied to host societies, but to reveal the process and systematic intertwinement of multiple groups. This issue was not simply the acculturation, but more the actual practice over the segregation in the daily lives. Except the broad phenomena such as local marriage and official service by and large in these two host societies, one of the notable embedding and the reshaping mechanisms in Batavia was autonomous administrative and juridical systems, while in Manila was merging a market by supplying the daily utilities and commodities, with limited daily juridical negotiation. This paper uses Gong An Bu (Minutes of the Board Meetings of the Chinese Council) and some Spanish colonial records (e.g. Recopilación) to reveal different mechanisms in these two diasporic communities. Only when we recognized these mechanisms could we evaluate the success and fail of the South Fujianese or even Chinese communities in pre-modern Southeast Asia, and understand segregation in a deeper way: there were not only different types of segregation, but also mosaic and multi-layers of segregation that reveal the diasporic communities in terms of transplantation, fragmentation, and isolation.

An extended meditation on the encounter between the native and the foreign, More Hispanic Than We Admit is a compilation of scholarly essays on Philippine culture and history. The book provokes discussion on the fascinating and sometimes uneasy hybridity that is the Philippines.

Presenting significant work by Philippine and international scholars spanning an eclectic range of disciplines, including anthropology, religion, sociology, philology, literary criticism, historiography, film and art studies, political science, and economics, the compilation traces the manifestations and paradoxes of hybridity by exploring the processes of cultural interaction and transformation. The book argues that, although subjects of the colonial enterprise, indios criollos had primacy of agency. The hegemonic cultural discourse invited a counter-discourse that was subtly crafted by emergent Philippine culture. More Hispanic Than We Admit recuperates our Hispanic past and inspires a continued and lasting engagement with Hispanic Philippine studies.

More Hispanic Than We Admit was edited by Isaac Donoso, with introduction by Fr. José Arcilla, SJ and features essays from these notable historians and writers:
##Isaac Donoso (Al-Andalus and Asia: Ibero-Asian Relations Before Magellan)
##Julkipli M. Wadi (Rajah Sulayman, Spain and the Transformation of Islamic Manila)
##Fernando N. Zialcita (Devout Yet Extravagant: the Filipinization of Christianity)
##José Eugenio Borao Mateo (Filipinos in the Spanish Colonial Army during the Dutch Wars, 1600-1648)
##Regalado Trota José (Baroque and Revolt in Bohol)
##Marya Svetlana T. Camacho (Woman’s Worth: The Concept of Virtue in the Education of Women in Spanish)
##Julián Go (Governmentality and Political Meaning in the Late Nineteenth-century Philippines)
##Celestina P. Boncan (Eagles in the Land of Castles and Lions: Mexican Money in Spanish Colonial Philippines)
##Ambeth R. Ocampo (Rotten Beef and Stinking Fish: Rizal and the Writing of Philippine History)
##Gloria Cano (Wenceslao Retana Revisited: A New Historical Assessment)
##Resil B. Mojares (Claiming “Malayness”: Civilizational Discourse in colonial Philippines)
##Reuben R. Cañete (Hispanic Strains in Philippine Modern and Contemporary Art)
##Nick Deocampo (Hispanic Influences on Tagalog Cinema: The Battle for Hegemony on the Native Screen)
##Andrea Gallo (Contemporary Hispano-Philippine Literature)
##Pedro Aullón de Haro (Asia and the West: A Universal Perspective in the Era of Globalization)
##Foreword by Reynaldo C. Ileto
##Afterword by Maria Dolores Elizalde