A History of the Philippines

by David P. Barrows

The tall, straight-haired, copper-colored natives, whom Columbus met on the islands, he naturally called “Indians”; and this name they still bear. Afterwards the islands were called the “West Indies.” Columbus made three more voyages for Spain. On the fourth, in 1498, he touched on the coast of South America. Here he discovered the great Orinoco River. Because of its large size, he must have realized that a large body of land opposed the passage to the Orient. He died in 1506, disappointed at his failure to find India, but never knowing what he had found, nor that the history of a new hemisphere had begun with him.

The Voyage of the Cabots.—In the same year that Columbus discovered the Orinoco, Sebastian Cabot, of Italian parentage, like Columbus, secured ships from the king of England, hoping to reach China and Japan by sailing west on a northern route. What he did discover was a rugged and uninviting coast, with stormy headlands, cold climate, and gloomy forests of pine reaching down to the sandy shores. For nine hundred miles he sailed southward, but everywhere this unprofitable coast closed the passage to China. It was the coast of Labrador and the United States. Yet for years and years it was not known that a continent three thousand miles wide and the greatest of all oceans lay between Cathay and the shore visited by Cabot’s ships. This land was thought to be a long peninsula, an island, or series of islands, belonging to Asia. No one supposed or could suppose that there was a continent here.

Naming the New World.—But in a few years Europe did realize that a new continent had been discovered in South America. If you will look at your maps, you will see that South America lies far to the eastward of North America and in Brazil approaches very close to Africa. This Brazilian coast was visited by a Portuguese fleet on the African route in 1499, and two years later an Italian fleet traversed the coast from the Orinoco to the harbor of Rio Janeiro. Their voyage was a veritable revelation. They entered the mighty current of the Amazon, the greatest river of the earth. They saw the wondrous tropical forests, full of monkeys, great snakes, and stranger animals. They dealt and fought with the wild and ferocious inhabitants, whose ways startled and appalled the European. All that they saw filled them with greatest wonder. This evidently was not Asia, nor was it the Indies. Here, in fact, was a new continent, a veritable “Mundus Novus.”

The pilot of this expedition was an Italian, named Amerigo Vespucci. On the return this man wrote a very interesting letter or little pamphlet, describing this new world, which was widely read, and brought the writer fame. A few years later a German cosmographer, in preparing a new edition of Ptolemy’s geography, proposed to give to this new continent the name of the man who had made known its wonders in Europe, So it was called “America.” Long after, when the northern shores were also proved to be those of a continent, this great land was named “North America.” No injustice was intended to Columbus when America was so named. It was not then supposed that Columbus had discovered a continent. The people then believed that Columbus had found a new route to India and had discovered some new islands that lay off the coast of Asia.

Spain Takes Possession of the New Lands.—Of these newly found islands and whatever wealth they might be found to contain, Spain claimed the possession by right of discovery. And of the European nations, it was Spain which first began the exploration and colonization of America. Spain was now free from her long Mohammedan wars, and the nation was being united under Ferdinand and Isabella. The Spaniards were brave, adventurous, and too proud to engage in commerce or agriculture, but ready enough to risk life and treasure in quest of riches abroad. The Spaniards were devotedly religious, and the Church encouraged conquest, that missionary work might be extended. So Spain began her career that was soon to make her the foremost power of Europe and one of the greatest colonial empires the world has seen. It is amazing what the Spaniards accomplished in the fifty years following Columbus’s first voyage.

Hispaniola was made the center from which the Spaniards extended their explorations to the continents of both North and South America. On these islands of the West Indies they found a great tribe of Indians,—the Caribs. They were fierce and cruel. The Spaniards waged a warfare of extermination against them, killing many, and enslaving others for work in the mines. The Indian proved unable to exist as a slave. And his sufferings drew the attention of a Spanish priest, Las Casas, who by vigorous efforts at the court succeeded in having Indian slavery abolished and African slavery introduced to take its place. This remedy was in the end worse than the disease, for it gave an immense impetus to the African slave-trade and peopled America with a race of Africans in bondage.

Other Spanish Explorations and Discoveries.—Meanwhile, the Spanish soldier, with incredible energy, courage, and daring, pushed his conquests. In 1513, Florida was discovered, and in the same year, Balboa crossed the narrow isthmus of Panama and saw the Pacific Ocean. Contrary to what is often supposed, he did not dream of its vast extent, but supposed it to be a narrow body of water lying between Panama, and the Asian islands. He named it the “South Sea,” a name that survived after its true character was revealed by Magellan. Then followed the two most romantic and surprising conquests of colonial history,—that of Mexico by Cortes in 1521, and of Peru by Pizarro in 1533–34. These great countries were inhabited by Indians, the most advanced and cultured on the American continents. And here the Spaniards found enormous treasures of gold and silver. Then, the discovery of the mines of Bogota opened the greatest source of the precious metal that Europe had ever known. Spaniards flocked to the New World, and in New Spain, as Mexico was called, was established a great vice-royalty. Year after year enormous wealth was poured into Spain from these American possessions.

Emperor Charles V.—Meanwhile great political power had been added to Spain in Europe. In 1520 the throne of Spain fell to a young man, Charles, the grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella. His mother was Juana, the Spanish princess, and his father was Philip the Handsome, of Burgundy. Philip the Handsome was the son of Maximilian, the Archduke of Austria. Now it curiously happened that the thrones of each of these three countries was left without other heirs than Charles, and in 1520 he was King of Spain, Archduke of Austria, and Duke of Burgundy and the Low Countries, including the rich commercial cities of Holland and Belgium. In addition to all this, the German princes elected him German emperor, and although he was King Charles the First of Spain, he is better known in history as Emperor Charles the Fifth.[2]

He was then an untried boy of twenty years, and no one expected to find in him a man of resolute energy, cold persistence, and great executive ability. But so it proved, and this was the man that made of Spain the greatest power of the time. He was in constant warfare. He fought four wars with King Francis I. of France, five wars with the Turks, both in the Danube valley and in Africa, and an unending succession of contests with the Protestant princes of Germany. For Charles, besides many other important changes, saw the rise of Protestantism, and the revolt of Germany, Switzerland, and England from Catholicism. The first event in his emperorship was the assembling of the famous German Diet at Worms, where was tried and condemned the real founder of the Protestant religion, Martin Luther.

The Voyage of Hernando Magellan.—In the mean time a way had at last been found to reach the Orient from Europe by sailing west. This discovery, the greatest voyage ever made by man, was accomplished, in 1521, by the fleet of Hernando Magellan. Magellan was a Portuguese, who had been in the East with Albuquerque. He had fought with the Malays in Malacca, and had helped to establish the Portuguese power in India.