The Philippine colony was governed by Spaniards, by laws made in Spain, and for the sole good of the homeland and its representatives in the colony. Filipinos held only minor positions. They have not enjoyed the benefits of public education and their rights and desires have been almost completely ignored. The laws that existed to protect them were not enforced. Manila ruled the islands not only as a political capital. The galleon trade with Acapulco, Mex., also ensured Manila`s commercial primacy. The exchange of Chinese silk for Mexican silver not only kept the Spaniards, looking for quick profits, in Manila, but also attracted a large Chinese community. The Chinese, although they were victims of periodic massacres by suspicious Spaniards, persisted and quickly established a dominance of trade that survived through the centuries. If we judge Spain by modern standards of colonization, we could praise it if it had simply adopted the social structure it had found and built its government on it, modifying and destroying only where its tendencies were anti-progressive, using the already constituted sources of authority over the people to achieve peace. introduce better tillage and living methods. When Spain instead decided to reject the old social structure because it was perceived as anti-Christian in order to introduce the Filipino people not only to European religion, but also to the customs and laws of Europe, it adopted a much more ambitious program that penetrates deeper into the essence of the life of a colonized people.
than the policy which England pursues today, for example, on the Malay peninsula. “Colonial experts” may disagree on the results of such a policy, may be convinced that the goals for which a colonial power should at least intentionally and consciously work should only be material. But we must recognize that Spain, inspired partly by material ambitions, but even more by spiritual goals, accomplished in the Philippines in the first part of its reign what no other European nation has ever done in the East, without crushing the people under its heel. We can say that the conditions and especially the attitude of the people themselves were particularly favorable to such a performance in the Philippines. Whichever way we look at the issue on this page, we must admit that this is a people who have turned almost en masse to the Christian religion; whereas together with Christianity, if not the old semi-feudal social institutions or their semi-developed languages, they have at least adopted the European customs, laws and village methods appropriate to a tropical climate; have largely adopted European social mores and customs; have, as far as their social and political leaders are concerned, adopted European notions of politics, literature and art; have practically adopted a European language; and have lost their original spelling and write their own European-style dialects. This distinguishes for us the Filipino problem (apart from the Moros and pagans) from the problem of the English on the Malay Peninsula, in Burma or India, or from the Dutch in Java, and distinguishes it to an extent that our self-proclaimed mentors, the “colonial experts,” do not seem to understand at all. There is something of the British and American incomprehension and contempt for the Spaniards, this short-sightedness; Little justice is done to the Spanish colonial regime by writers in English, and it seems somehow obvious that Spain, of course, has never changed or favored the institutions or peoples with which it has come into contact. Spain changed Filipinos and their society for the better, despite how they seem to have lost their moral strength since the conquest. Let us be historically fair enough to admit this and do justice to Spain. Let us also exercise sufficient discernment to see that Spain`s partial progress, which was interrupted before its regime was only half finished, but which the Filipinos themselves began to pursue in the nineteenth century, allows, not, absolutely necessary, to go further, faster and differently from those who undertook the task. only to promote the material well-being of the Mohammedans.
or at least the non-Christian populations in the East. The very fact that Filipinos themselves have already been involved in planning and working for their own progress as a community, as an emerging nation, makes such an approach not only imperative in the political sense, but reasonably successful in the face of warnings from “experts” who have compiled their precedents under different conditions and atmosphere. The Spanish colonial period in the Philippines was the period when the Philippines was part of the Spanish Empire from 1565 to 1898 as the Captaincy General of the Philippines. The islands were part of the largest Spanish East Indies. Forty-four years after Ferdinand Magellan landed in the Philippines and fell at the Battle of Mactan in 1521, the Spanish explored and colonized the islands, beginning with the founding of Cebu by Miguel Lopez de Legazpi in 1565. Manila was named the capital of the Philippines in 1571. It was the time of the reign of King Philip II of Spain, whose name remained attached to the country. The Spanish colonial period ended in 1898 with the Philippine Revolution and the Spanish-American War, which marked the beginning of the American colonization of the Philippines. The European population of the archipelago has grown steadily, although indigenous Filipinos have remained in the majority. During the first period of colonization, Manila was settled by 1200 Spanish families.
[8] In the city of Cebu, near the Visayas, the colony received a total of 2,100 soldier-settlers from New Spain (Mexico). [9] Immediately south of Manila, Mexicans were present at Ermita[10] and Cavite,[11] where they were stationed as guard posts. In addition, men recruited from Peru were also sent to settle in the town of Zamboanga in Mindanao to wage war against Muslim defenders. [12] There were also communities of Spanish mestizos that developed in Iloilo,[13] Negros,[14] and Vigan. [15] Interactions between indigenous Filipinos and Spanish and Latin American immigrants eventually led to the formation of a new language, Chavacano, a creole of Mexican Spanish, which depended on the galleon trade for a living. In the last years of the 18th century, Governor General Basco introduced economic reforms that gave the colony its first significant internal income from tobacco production and other agricultural exports. In this latter period, agriculture was finally opened to the European population, which had previously been reserved only for indigenous Filipinos.