“How is it strange, then, that discouragement may have been infused into the spirit of the inhabitants of the Philippines, when in the midst of so many calamities they did not know whether they would see sprout the seed they were planting, whether their field was going to be their grave or their crop would go to feed their executioner? What is there strange in it, when we see the pious but impotent friars of that time trying to free their poor parishioners from the tyranny of the encomenderos by advising them to stop work in the mines, to abandon their commerce, to break up their looms, pointing out to them heaven for their whole hope, preparing them for death as their only consolation?”—(La Indolencia.—Rizal.)
[46] ”* * * Doubtless if we could see the whole character of the Spanish rule in those decades, we should see that the actual condition of the Filipino had improved and his grade of culture had risen. No one can estimate the actual good that comes to a people in being brought under the power of a government able to maintain peace and dispense justice. Taxation is sometimes grievous, corruption without excuse; but almost anything is better than anarchy.
“Before the coming of the Spaniards, it seems unquestionable that the Filipinos suffered greatly under two terrible grievances that afflict barbarous society—in the first place, warfare, with its murder, pillage, and destruction, not merely between tribe and tribe, but between town and town, such as even now prevail in the wild mountains of northern Luzon, among the primitive Malayan tribes; and in the second place, the weak and poor man was at the mercy of the strong and the rich.
“The establishment of Spanish sovereignty had certainly mitigated, if it did not wholly remedy, these conditions. ‘All of these provinces,’ Morga could write, ‘are pacified and are governed from Manila, having alcaldes mayores, corregidors, and lieutenants, and dispense justice. The chieftains (principales), who formerly held the other natives in subjection, no longer have power over them in the manner which they tyrannically employed, which is not the least benefit these natives have received in escaping from such slavery.’” (Dr. D. P. Barrows, History of the Philippines, p. 166.)
III. Trade and Commerce at the Time of Discovery and Conquest
Centuries before Spanish discovery the Filipinos were in regular intercourse with the neighboring countries of China, Japan, Borneo, and others. In the work of Chao Ju-kua, a Chinese geographer of the thirteenth century, there is a chapter on Philippine trade, from which we learn that the “foreign traders import porcelain, commercial gold, iron vases for perfumes, leaden objects, glass, pearls of all colors, iron needles,”[1] black damask, and other silk fabrics, fish nets, and tin, and also silk umbrellas, and a kind of basket woven from rattan. In exchange, the Filipinos exported cotton (perhaps the “kapok” or tree cotton), yellow wax, strange cloth (foreign cloth: sinamay, a light fabric made from abacá,—and other textiles of the country.—Blumentritt’s note), coconuts, onions, (camotes?—Blumentritt’s note), and fine mats; also pearls, shells (i. e., tortoise-shell.—Blumentritt’s note), betelnuts, and jute (yuta) textiles. (Yu-ta seems to be the abacá.—Blumentritt’s note).[2]
Domestic trade.
The first Spaniards who came to the Philippines observed a lively commercial intercourse, not only among the peoples of the different islands, but also with the near-by countries.[3] The chief method of exchange was by means of barter,[4] though oftentimes gold dust was used.