SPANISH

PHILIPPINES
The Magellan expedition’s
celebration of a Catholic Mass soon
after arriving at Limasawa was
deeply symbolic, even though
Spanish colonization did not begin
for another forty years. While the
earlier Portuguese and the later
Dutch and English interlopers in the
region sought mostly trade and
profit, the implantation of
Catholicism was to be Spain’s main
purpose and achievement.
The Portuguese had been in Melaka since 1511 and
had a fort as far southeast as Tidore in the Malukus,
the spice centre, by 1522. Only one Magellan’s
fleet’s ships made it home to Cadiz but with such a
valuable cargo of cloves and other spices as to pay
for the whole expedition. So, Spain decided to
challenge the Portuguese grip on the Malukus with
the seven-ship Loaisa expedition which set out in
1525 via the south Atlantic and Pacific. Although
named after its nominal leader Jofre de Loaisa, in
practice it was headed by Juan Sebastian Elcano The Loaisa Expedition
who had taken charge of the Magellan expedition a.k.a.
after his death. It met with a series of disasters, its Magellan’s Expedition
remnants ending in the captivity of the Portuguese.
 Spain, though the dominant power in Europe, could
not compete effectively in the highly profitable
spice trade because it approaches the region the
long way round, from Mexico and Peru rather than
via the southern tip of Africa. The Pacific route
involved the hazardous passage of what is now the
Strait of Magellan, so it was from New Spain
(Mexico) that Spain made its next attempt at the
conquest in Asia. The fleet of Ruy Lopez de
Villalobos came to Samar and Leyte in 1544 and
named the archipelago Islas Filipinas in honour of
Ruy Lopez the heir to the Spanish throne, but the expedition
de Villalobos failed and Villalobos died in Portuguese captivity.
Spain was deterred by the fact that though sailing
from Mexico to the Philippines was straightforward,
the return journey was extremely difficult. It was not
until 1558 that an expedition under Antonio de
Urdaneta, a survivor and chronicler of the Loaisa
expedition, was persuaded because of his
navigational skills to take part in an exploratory
expedition which found a return route to Mexico.
This involved sailing northeast from Luzon to about
the 38th parallel, picking up westerly winds and,
followings the North Pacific Drift, sailing due east to
the coast of northern California then southeast along Antonio
the coast to Acapulco. Even this route could take
twice as long as the outbound journey. The distance de Urdaneta
involved in Spain’s impact on the Philippines.
 It was not until the expedition of Miguel
Lopez de Legazpi landed in Cebu in 1565
that the conquest of the islands begin,
starting with the Visayas, and a bigger effort
only became possible after Urdaneta’s
discovery. In 1570, Legazpi extended Spain’s
rule to the kingdom of Maynila, then subject
to the Sultan of Brunei and known as Kota
Seludong in Malay. Its Sultan Suleiman
resisted strongly and gathered some local
Miguel Lopez datus in support, but Spanish force
de Legazpi
eventually succeeded.
 Manila, far more developed than Cebu, became
Legazpi’s capital and Luzon the main centre, of
Spanish attention. The biggest threat to its hold on
Manila came not from the ruler but by the 1574
invasion by a Chinese pirate name Lim Hong
(Limahong to the Spanish) whose fleet of large
junks had been driven from the Guangdong coast
and attempted to set up in Manila. However, his
several thousand strong force was beaten back.
Lim Hong escaped but the new rulers of Manila
were acknowledged by official dealings with the Lim Hong
Ming emperor. (Limahong)
By the late sixteenth century, Spain had a large Asian possession but it was
cut from much Asian trade by the dominance of the Portuguese then the
Dutch and English. Focused on their rich American territories, the Spanish
were in practice excluded from the Asia-Europe trade. Around 1600, Spain
was the world’s first global power but it did not have the resources to
compete with others for the Asian trade while maintaining the trans-Pacific
route and fighting the Ottomans in the Mediterranean.

It created and sustained the first trans-Pacific route between Asia and the
Americans and the eastward flow of silver from its mines in Peru and
Mexico gave a huge boost to trade in general and China which used silver as
its currency, but trade was not in its blood as it was for the Portuguese,
Dutch, British and the seafaring peoples of maritime southeast Asia.
16th century Portuguese Spanish trade routes

This map shows the main Portuguese (blue) and Spanish (white)
oceanic trade routes in the 16th century,
For those living in the 19th century, “savage” was a romantic and highly charged word.
The myth of the savage harks back to the earlier 17th and 18th centuries, the era of
colonization when colonial powers justified their violent conquest and exploitation of
inhabitants and unchartered land by branding them as savages. It lent the aura of
legitimacy to violent predation. Because such humans were deemed uncivilized, their
lands could then be taken by force or they could be slaughtered or treated as chattels
or coerced into slavery without a twinge of conscience. It was even argued by some
that savages could be sold as slaves because they had no souls.
For the Portuguese, conversion to Christianity was
always secondary to the development of trade.
Imperial Spain, on the other hand, saw no obvious
trade possibilities in the Philippines, which lay
north of the Spice Islands, but a huge opportunity
to acquire territory and heathen souls to be
brought to the one true faith. From a missionary
perspective they were a much easier target than
most lands already converted to Islam.
 Conquest mostly proved to be relatively easy
but was far from complete in that it barely
touched Mindanao and Sulu, or indeed the
highland areas of Luzon. There was sporadic
local resistance in which Spanish official were
killed, resulting in harsh retribution. Spanish
official Antonio de Morga wrote of the people
of Cagayan. ‘They have been in insurrection and
rebellion twice since they were first reduced to
submission’. Some groups retreated to the
forest and uplands to maintain their autonomy,
Antonio but local leaders mostly came to deals with the
de Morga invaders, in particular accepting conversion.
In Mindanao, Caldera Fort, near Zamboanga, had to be abandoned in
the face of attacks by the Moros (the word given by Spain to their
Muslim foes in Europe which was transplanted to Asia and has
survived today) and Spain was long on the defensive in the western
Visayas which were the subject of raids.

De Morga reported that a force from Mindanao and Sulu came ‘with a
large fleet of more than seventy vessels with more than four thousand
fighting men’. Raids into the southern Luzon occurred sporadically in
the early seventeenth century, including the sacking of Tayabas in
southwest Luzon in 1635. The raids were focused on the seizing
captives for sale. Meanwhile, as a big problem for the government
was the challenge of marauding Dutch and later English ships.
Officials had very limited resources for governing the
territory. Madrid was a year away, wrestling with its even
bigger new acquisition in the Americas and its wars in
Europe, including its catastrophic attempt to invade England
in 1588. Spain turned to two very different agents for its rule
– military/civilian and clerical. Military/civilian rule followed
the example set in its American territories – parcelling out
territory known as encomiendas to soldiers, officials and
others who had taken part in the conquest or Spaniards who
had otherwise assisted the crown.

The encomienderos were given the right to tax the people

and demand labour in return for providing law, order, justice
and development, and funding the spread of Christianity by
the friars. It was a system ripe for exploitation, made worse
by the fact that the encomienderos were mostly a rough
bunch of soldiers and fortune seekers.
The clerical arm of the conquerors were the friars, of which there were four
orders, Augustine, Dominican, Franciscan and Recollects. Mostly recruited
from lower social ranks then other clergy, the friars’ missionary zeal made up
for any lack of learning. They were obliged to work among the people so were
the spearhead of conversion. In addition, the newly-founded Jesuit order also
contributed an intellectual heft to the Christianizing effort and were given the
diocese of Cebu – hence the presence of Alcina.

The orders of friars each received a specific territory which were into doctrinas,
effectively parishes where they were responsible for conversions, church
building and trying to ensure attendance at mass. They were given land but
later came to charge churchgoers for their services.
The State divided the country into pueblos,
administrative areas based on towns.
Barangays were sometimes forced to join
together to form pueblos, but civil
administration tended to be weaker than
either encomenderos or the doctrinas. Towns
were ruled by alcaldes who reported directly
to the governor. To complicate the power
structure further was that the religious orders
reported to their superiors in their respective
orders, not to the bishops, who in practice
were chosen by the State as a papal decree
had acknowledged the Spanish king’s rights of
appointment of clerical positions.
Christianity appears to have taken root quite easily, if mainly
because its ceremonies and signing had popular appeal and
saints’ days provided opportunities for feasts and merriment
after Mass. Divorce was ended for converts and abortion
probably declined although old social practices, whether
related to sexual relations, drinking, gambling or cockfighting,
appear to have been little affected. Early missionaries
learned the local scripts and translated some Christian texts,
but such education as was imparted was Spanish and Roman
script gradually came to replace Baybayin.