Republic of the Philippines

G

Defense

In 2004 the armed forces of the Philippines included an army of 66,000 members, a navy of 24,000, and an air force of 16,000. Military service is voluntary. The Philippine National Police (PNP) is divided into regional units under a provincial commander.

VII

History

Little is known of the early human settlement of the Philippines. Scientific evidence remains inconclusive. It is generally accepted that the first significant human settlement occurred sometime during the most recent ice age, the Pleistocene Epoch. At that time sea levels were lower, creating land bridges that connected the Southeast Asian mainland to some of the present-day islands of the Malay Archipelago, south of the Philippine Islands. Historians theorize that Paleolithic hunters from the mainland may have followed herds of wild animals across these land bridges, later finding their way to the Philippine Islands.

Some of these early migrations to the Philippine Islands were made by the ancestors of the present-day people of the Aeta and Agta tribes. These people continue to be primarily hunters and food gatherers, much as their ancestors were thousands of years ago. They are one of the world’s few remaining populations of Pygmies, who are characterized by shorter-than-average height. The Spanish colonizers of the 16th century called them Negritos, a term that is still widely used today.

People of Malay descent, who now make up the majority of the population, are believed to have settled in the Philippines in several waves of migration after the 3rd century bc. Their languages developed independently because they settled in widely scattered villages. Each village included from 30 to 100 families and was ruled by a datu, or chieftain. The economy was one of subsistence, with each village producing most of what it needed, and land was held in common. The villagers engaged in both shifting (slash-and-burn) and settled agriculture. Religion was animistic, or based on the worship of ancestors and other spirits, such as nature deities.

---

---

Communities in the islands eventually established trade contacts with states in East and Southeast Asia, particularly China. By the 12th century ad the powerful Sumatra-based Malay kingdom of Sri Vijaya had extended its considerable influence to the Philippines. In the 14th century traders and settlers from the Malay Peninsula and Borneo introduced Islam to the southern islands of the Sulu Archipelago. In the 15th century Islam was established on the island of Mindanao. By the 16th century the islands had several Muslim principalities, including one in the Manila area of Luzon. However, no major political entity—kingdom, sultanate, or empire—was established in the islands until the imposition of Spanish rule in the 16th century.

A

Arrival of Europeans

In 1521 a Spanish expedition led by explorer and navigator Ferdinand Magellan made the first recorded European contact with the Philippine Islands. Magellan was on a mission for Spanish king Charles I (also Holy Roman emperor as Charles V) to establish a westward route to the Moluccas, also known as the Spice Islands. Located south of the Philippines in present-day Indonesia, these islands were prized for their spices in the trade rivalry between Spain and Portugal, the foremost maritime powers of the time. Magellan’s ships reached the Philippine Islands on an intermediate leg of the voyage, which ultimately accomplished the first circumnavigation of the world. On the Philippine island of Zugbo (now Cebu), Magellan secured the baptism of the local chieftain, Humabon, and then supported Humabon in waging a battle against a rival chieftain, Lapulapu of Mactan. Lapulapu’s warriors, in defending their island, killed Magellan. Lapulapu is remembered as a national hero for successfully resisting the first European invasion of the Philippines.

Other expeditions followed as Spain sought to establish trade routes across the Pacific from its new colonies in the Americas. Ruy López de Villalobos, the commander of an expedition that sailed from New Spain (now Mexico) in 1542, claimed the islands for Spain and named them Islas Filipinas, in honor of Charles I’s son and heir Philip, who reigned as Philip II of Spain from 1556 to 1598.

B

Spanish Settlement and Rule

The first permanent Spanish settlement in the Philippines was established on Cebu in 1565 by Miguel López de Legazpi, a Spanish expedition commander. This settlement, at present-day Cebu City, became the capital of the new Spanish colony, with Legazpi as its first governor. In 1571 Spanish forces defeated the Muslim ruler Rajah Soliman, who controlled an area of Luzon that contained an ideal harbor for Spanish trade. There Legazpi named Manila as the new capital of the Spanish colony. Within a few years Spanish authority extended over much of Luzon and the central Visayan Islands. As a by-product of this conquest, Spain discovered the best route back to New Spain was via the Japan Current (see Kuroshio Current), which took sailing ships north past Japan and then south along the American coasts. This new route compelled the newly emergent power in Japan, the Tokugawa dynasty, to close Japan to outside contact for 250 years.

The Philippines was Spain’s only colony in Asia. It was ruled as a gobernación, a territory administered by a governor, and was officially subordinate to the Spanish viceroy of New Spain. Spain initially had three principal objectives in colonizing the islands: to secure a share of the spice trade in the Moluccas, to provide a base from which to convert Asians to Christianity, and to convert the people of the Philippine Islands. Spain never realized the first two objectives and only partially succeeded in the third. Most of the lowland population was rapidly converted to Christianity, while the upland tribes were only nominally converted. The Muslims of southern Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago were never baptized and actively resisted Spanish rule for more than 300 years.

As in Spanish America, the various Roman Catholic religious orders—Augustinians, Franciscans, Dominicans, and Jesuits—were in charge of the conversion of the population to Christianity. In accordance with the terms of the patronato real, or royal patronage of the Catholic Church, the government assumed the financial burden of evangelization, paying a stipend to each missionary and subsidizing missionary work. It acquired in return the privilege of nominating the occupants of all important ecclesiastical posts and regularly assigned to friars, or parish priests, civil as well as religious functions. Over time, the religious orders also gained large areas of land through donations from the Spanish colonial elite (the principalía, or “principal ones”), and many indigenous parishioners worked for the friars as tenant farmers.

B

1

Manila Galleons and Spanish Trade

Although Spain did not capture a share of the profitable Moluccas spice trade, it did use the Philippines as a base for trade between Asia and the Americas and as a way to challenge the Portuguese maritime monopoly. Manila played an important role as a port for the Manila galleons, huge Spanish trading ships that voyaged between Manila and Acapulco, on the west coast of New Spain. The galleons sailed from Manila with Chinese goods, mainly silk textiles and porcelain, and returned from Acapulco with silver bullion and minted coins, which purchased more Chinese goods. The galleon trade was a government monopoly that had exclusive trading rights with the Philippines, and no direct trade with Spain was allowed. The colonial treasury of the Philippines received a subsidy, consisting mainly of customs duties paid at Acapulco, that was the colony’s main source of income. The galleon trade presented new opportunities for Chinese merchants, who formed an economically important community in Manila by the 1590s. They outnumbered the Spanish and were subject to residence restrictions and periodic deportations.

In 1762, when Spain became involved in the Seven Years’ War on the side of France against Great Britain, the British East India Company captured Manila. The treaty that ended the war restored Manila to Spain in 1764. The British occupation, although brief, exposed the resentment of Spanish authority and discrimination felt by local peoples, especially the Chinese, some of whom openly supported the British. After Spanish rule was restored, the colonial government implemented a series of reforms to promote the economic development of the islands through commercial agriculture and household industries. The establishment of a state monopoly of the cultivation, manufacture, and sale of tobacco in 1782 enabled the colonial government to balance its budget and send substantial subsidies to Spain. The galleon trade, already much diminished, ended in 1815. Trade was opened to the world, and the links to Latin America weakened rapidly after Spain’s colonies there won independence.

	More from Encarta
	•  Presidential Myths Quiz •  Coffee break: Recharge your brain