A History of the Philippines

by David P. Barrows

The City of Nueva Segovia, at the mouth of the Cagayan, was founded in the governorship of Ronquillo, when the valley of the Cagayan was first occupied and the Japanese colonists, who had settled there, were expelled. It had at the beginning of the seventeenth century two hundred Spaniards, living in houses of wood. There was a fort of stone, where some artillery was mounted. Besides the two hundred Spanish inhabitants there were one hundred regular Spanish soldiers, with their officers and the alcalde mayor of the province. Nueva Segovia was also the seat of a bishopric which included all northern Luzon. The importance of the then promising city has long ago disappeared, and the pueblo of Lallo, which marks its site, is an insignificant native town.

The City of Nueva Caceres, in the Camarines, was founded by Governor La-Sande. It, too, was the seat of a bishopric, and had one hundred Spanish inhabitants.

The Cities of Cebu and Iloilo.—In the Bisayas were the Cities of the Holy Name of God (Cebu), and on the island of Panay, Arévalo (or Iloilo). The first maintained something of the importance attaching to the first Spanish settlement. It had its stone fort and was also the seat of a bishopric. It was visited by trading-vessels from the Moluccas, and by permit of the king enjoyed for a time the unusual privilege of sending annually a ship loaded with merchandise to New Spain. Arévalo had about eighty Spanish inhabitants, and a monastery of the Augustinians.

The City of Fernandina, or Vigan, which Salcedo had founded, was nearly without Spanish inhabitants. Still, it was the political center of the great Ilocano coast, and it has held this position to the present day.

Manila.—But all of these cities were far surpassed in importance by the capital on the banks of the Pasig. The wisdom of Legaspi’s choice had been more than justified. Manila, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, was unquestionably the most important European city of the East. As we have already seen, in 1580 Portugal had been annexed by Spain and with her had come all the Portuguese possessions in India, China, and Malaysia. After 1610, the Dutch were almost annually warring for this colonial empire, and Portugal regained her independence in 1640. But for the first few years of the seventeenth century, Manila was the political mistress of an empire that stretched from Goa to Formosa and embraced all those coveted lands which for a century and a half had been the desire of European states.

The governor of the Philippines was almost an independent king. Nominally, he was subordinate to the viceroy of Mexico, but practically he waged wars, concluded peaces, and received and sent embassies at his own discretion. The kingdom of Cambodia was his ally, and the states of China and Japan were his friends.

The Commercial Importance of Manila.—Manila was also the commercial center of the Far East, and the entrepôt through which the kingdoms of eastern Asia exchanged their wares. Here came great fleets of junks from China laden with stores. Morga fills nearly two pages with an enumeration of their merchandise, which included all manner of silks, brocades, furniture, pearls and gems, fruits, nuts, tame buffalo, geese, horses and mules, all kinds of animals, “even to birds in cages, some of which talk and others sing, and which they make perform a thousand tricks; there are innumerable other gew-gaws and knickknacks, which among Spaniards are in much esteem.”[18]

Each year a fleet of thirty to forty vessels sailed with the new moon in March. The voyage across the China Sea, rough with the monsoons, occupied fifteen or twenty days, and the fleet returned at the end of May or the beginning of June. Between October and March there came, each year, Japanese ships from Nagasaki which brought wheat, silks, objects of art, and weapons, and took away from Manila the raw silk of China, gold, deer horns, woods, honey, wax, palm-wine, and wine of Castile.

From Malacca and India came fleets of the Portuguese subjects of Spain, with spices, slaves, Negroes and Kafirs, and the rich productions of Bengal, India, Persia, and Turkey. From Borneo, too, came the smaller craft of the Malays, who from their boats sold the fine palm mats, the best of which still come from Cagayan de Sulu and Borneo, slaves, sago, water-pots and glazed earthenware, black and fine. From Siam and Cambodia also, but less often, there came trading-ships. Manila was thus a great emporium for all the countries of the East, the trade of which seems to have been conducted largely by and through the merchants of Manila.

Trade with Mexico and Spain Restricted.—The commerce between the Philippines, and Mexico and Spain, though it was of vast importance, was limited by action of the crown. It was a commerce which apparently admitted of infinite expansion, but the shortsighted merchants and manufacturers of the Peninsula clamored against its development, and it was subjected to the severest limitations. Four galleons were at first maintained for this trade, which were dispatched two at a time in successive years from Manila to the port of Acapulco, Mexico. The letter on the Philippine trade, already quoted, states that these galleons were great ships of six hundred and eight hundred tons apiece.[19] They went “very strong with soldiers,” and they carried the annual mail, reinforcements, and supplies of Mexican silver for trade with China, which has remained the commercial currency of the East to the present day. Later the number of galleons was reduced to one.