political & economic development

Spanish Colonization Period

 The recurring dilemma of state-society relations

Enduring
Incapability suspicion of
to provide a superior
state

State Horns
Hispanic Era
Reshaping the economy to pay for the colony
Hispanic Era
Reshaping the economy to pay for the colony

“By the 1590s, the breakup of the indigenous economy of the barangay was
completed” (Alonso, Luis)

“The new state … was determined to collect tributes now owed to the Spanish
king in compensation for conquest, conversion, and rule of the Philippines”

- Leading to an influx of Spanish settlers, missionaries, soldiers, and traders

resulting to a greater demand for food production
- Resettlement therefore included a new land-tenure and land-use system
Hispanic Era
Reshaping the economy to pay for the colony

Elements that differ from pre and post colonial practices

● First - Land ownership was stripped away since everything is now deemed
as a property of the Spanish Monarch
● Second - Socio-Religious control and increased agricultural production
demanded a sedentary population.
● Third and Fourth - design to increase food production through more
intensive land use
Hispanic Era II
Origins of the Weak State - Balance of Power in the Clerical-Secular State
Hispanic Era
Origins of the Weak State - Balance of Power in the Clerical-Secular State

Order was maintained in the Colonial Philippines by the interdependence of

secular and clerical state officials. (body and soul)
- but it was neither a cooperative nor equal division

Secular rule was fairly weak due to the shortage of lay Spaniards willing to serve
the new colony
- 1624 to 1634 only 26 non clerical Spaniards were present outside Manila and Cebu
- 1677 the crown offered full pardon to criminals in the Spanish America who would enlist for
service in the Philippines

Thus in much of the Philippines, the friars were the state

Hispanic Era
Origins of the Weak State - Balance of Power in the Clerical-Secular State

Governor of the Colony -

(theoretically) held tremendous

executive, legislative, and judiciary
power. As captain-general he
commanded the armed forces, as
crown representative, he
controlled the assignment of
priests to indio parishes.
Hispanic Era
Origins of the Weak State - Balance of Power in the Clerical-Secular State

Friar Power -
Religious Orders simply refused to submit to his authority.
When occasionally a governor tried to enforce his authority, the
orders’ threat to desert parishes en masse exposed the state’s
dependence and ended the attempt.

“Visitations” inspections by bishops answerable to Rome via

Madrid were also resisted - thus avoiding correction of friar
abuses.

Haciendas managed by lay administrators of the order in a

setting in which church and local government were fully
meshed
Nation & States 1872 - 1913
Final years of the Spanish Rule
Nation & States 1872 - 1913
Final years of the Spanish Rule

Spain’s weakened grasp to its colony is hindered further through

● The Philippines liberalization of its economy

Economic growth led to:

○ domination by the British capital

○ Chinese distribution networks
○ Filipino-led export growth
Nation & States 1872 - 1913
Final years of the Spanish Rule
Conflict within the Church

● 177os “Secularization of Parishes

○ Transfer of parishes from religious to diocesan
○ Diocesan seminaries welcomed the sons and indios and mestizo families
(Diocesan Seminaries in Mabolo Cebu are heritage to this)
○ Liberal governors also attacked friar abuses directly:

“An absorever sent from Spain to Filipinas reported in 1842 that “during the last years” officials newly
arrived in Manila issued anti-friar measures. One of these forbade the friars’ practice of whipping
their parishioners for not religiously observing church requirements. The friars petitioned to be
allowed to continue the practice, explaining that the lashing would be done in front of the church door.
The governor general not only dismissed the petition but also circulated his decision among the natives.
This caused ‘the greatest grief to the parish priests.’” - O.D. Corpuz
Nation & States 1872 - 1913
Final years of the Spanish Rule
Conflict within the Church

● Secularization of parishes were stalled by the friars

● Visitation of bishops was resisted by parish friars but not secular priests
● Secular priests were used as pawns, assigned by the bishops to subordinate posts
in order-controlled parishes where they became targets of friar anger.
● By the late 19th century Filipino priests were among the most intellectually able
men of the colony, and Spanish friars of the Philippines were mainly poor
provincials of limited education and experience.
● Friars ceased to be representatives of a ruling race and were seen as they were -
men with faults and errors
● This confrontation between the liberal government, secular priests versus the
spanish friars led to the execution of the GomBurZa Fathers
Nation & States 1872 - 1913
Final years of the Spanish Rule
Conflict within the Church

This confrontation between the liberal government, secular priests versus the spanish
friars led to the execution of the GomBurZa Fathers
Nation & States 1872 - 1913 II
Struggle Against Church and State
Nation & States 1872 - 1913
Struggle Against Church and State
Interests between the friars and the elites resulted to tension

Principal Site of conflict was mainly through education

● Orders clung to reactionary curricula and resisted making the Spanish

language intrinsic to Philippine learning
● From this, and through the European enlightenment, emerged a group of
self-proclaimed ilustrados

Ilustrados abandoned the Catholic Church for the Anticlerical Freemasons

La Solidaridad - what was their purpose again?

Nation & States 1872 - 1913
Struggle Against Church and State
The Propaganda Movement and La Solidaridad

- Administrative reform
- Eradication of corruption
- Recognition of Filipino rights as loyal Spaniards
- Extension of Spanish laws to the Philippines
- Assertion of dignity of the Filipino

“If then, the Philippines is considered part of the Spanish nation and is therefore
a Spanish province and not a tributary colony”
- Pedro Sanciangco
Nation & States 1872 - 1913
Struggle Against Church and State
Rizal, the First Filipino

- The highly accomplished, well travelled, and best known for writing two
incomparable novels expressing the absurdities of life in the colony.

“The central figure in the revolutionary generation was José Rizal, poet, novelist, ophthalmologist,
historian, doctor, polemical essayist, moralist and political dreamer. … Thirty-five years later he
was arrested on false charges of inciting Andrés Bonifacio’s uprising of August 1896, and executed
by a firing squad composed of native soldiers led by Spanish officers. ... At the time of Rizal’s
death, Lenin had just been sentenced to exile in Siberia, Sun Yat-sen had begun organising for
Chinese nationalism outside China, and Gandhi was conducting his early experiments in
anti-colonial resistance in South Africa.”

-Benedict Anderson, “the First Filipino,”

Nation & States 1872 - 1913
Struggle Against Church and State
Rizal, the First Filipino

● Noli Me Tangere - written in Spanish, German and smuggled in the

Philippines, translated and circulated, was first of its kind anti-colonial novel
in Asia.

“The two most astonishing features of Noli Me Tangere are its scale and its style. Its characters
come from every stratum of late colonial society, from the liberal-minded peninsular
Captain-General down through the racial tiers of colonial society – creoles, mestizos, chinos
(‘pure’ Chinese) to the illiterate indio masses. ... This restriction made it clear to Rizal’s first
readers that ‘The Philippines’ was a society in itself, even though those who lived in it had as yet
no common name. That he was the first to imagine this ‘social whole’ explains why he is
remembered today as the ‘First Filipino’.
-Benedict Anderson, “the First Filipino,”
Nation & States 1872 - 1913 III
The Philippine Revolution and the First Republic
Nation & States 1872 - 1913 III
The Philippine Revolution and the First Republic
The Katipunan - a secret society committed to overthrowing Spanish rule .
Rizal’s Spanish - elite reformism
Bonifacio’s Tagalog - lower class radicalism
Nation & States 1872 - 1913 III
The Philippine Revolution and the First Republic
contradictions of the Filipino revolutionaries and Catholicism

The Pasyon - Reading and dramatizing the story of Jesus Christ especially during his
remaining days before crucifiction.

First, Catholicism was by the Spanish colonizers to inculcate among indios loyalty
to Spain and the Church

Second, to provide lowland Philippine society with a language for articulating its
own values, ideals, and even hopes of liberation.

“Filipinos nevertheless continued to maintain a coherent image of the world and their place
in it through their familiarity with the pasyon, an epic that appears to be alien in content,
but upon closer examination … reveals the vitality of the Filipino mind.”
- Reynaldo Clemena Ileto, Pasyon and Revolution
Trivia: When did the Philippines gain
independence colonial powers?
JULY 4, 1946
Nation & States 1872 - 1913 III
The Philippine Revolution and the First Republic

The Malolos Republic -

● On February 15, 1898 the United States declared war on Spain, having the
Philippine Revolution embroiled in between.
● June 12 Philippine independence was not recognized by neither Spain
nor U.S. upon the end of the war
● Treaty of Paris purchased the Philippines for $20 million
● U.S. as the Philippine’s second colonial power
Nation & States 1872 - 1913 III
The Philippine Revolution and the First Republic
The Malolos Republic - cont’

● As a state - shaped society over the centuries in ways ranging from religion,
gender norms, and family naming to the spatial definitions of civil life and
economic livelihood
● As a nation - one that tried to speak to the colonial state through the reform
movement but ultimately rejected it in a radical revolution of self-definition

“A reaction of an emerging nation-state in defense of its imagined community”

- Later on realized as the Constitutional Republic of the Philippines on

January 23, 1899