The Spanish Philippines: Archaeological Perspectives on Colonial Economics and Society

Author(s): Russell K. Skowronek

Source: International Journal of Historical Archaeology , March 1998, Vol. 2, No. 1
(March 1998), pp. 45-71
Published by: Springer

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20852896

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 International Journal of Historical Archaeology, VoL 2, No. /, 1998

The Spanish Philippines: Archaeological

Perspectives on Colonial Economics and Society
Russell K. Skowronek1

When scholars consider Spanish colonialism in the Philippines their

impressions are based largely on documentary evidence of their 377-year
colonial presence and on romanticized impressions of the larger Spanish
empire. In the New World, wherever Europeans settled, there is a clear break
in the archaeological sequence of pre-Columbian cultural traditions. In the
systemic context these changes continue to be evidenced in architectural style,
city plan, and diet. Today, however, archaeologists working in Luzon, Cebu,
and Mindanao are revealing vast differences between the nature of Spanish
colonialism in the Philippines and that seen in the Americas. There, the
remoteness of the colony from Europe, combined with its geographical position
on the doorstep of China, created a unique Spanish colonial adaptation that
reveals the significance of Asia in the world economic order.
KEY WORDS: Spanish Philippines; commerce; acculturation; ceramics.

INTRODUCTION

In 1896 at Pugadlawin, Andres Bonifacio began the Philippine revo

lution against Spain. Fifty years later?following occupations by die United
States and Japan?came independence. Now as we mark the centennial of
the Spanish-American V&r we must ask if 1896 marked the first break
with Spain's colonial order or if it was merely the lens that brought an
earlier schism into focus? The legacy of 425 years of colonialism has few
such long-lived counterparts in the modern world. For 377 of those four
and a quarter centuries of occupation, Spain was the key political player
in the archipelago. The changes wrought by such a long association would

department of Anthropology and Sociology, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA 95053.

45
1092*7697/98/03aM)045$I5.0Q/D O 1998 Plenum Publishing Corporation

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 46 Skowronek

seemingly be found at all levels of the society. Yet when the Philippines
are compared with their colonial counterparts in the Americas, vast differ
ences appear in the configurations of the colonial presence. Thus, the situ
ation in the Philippines has ramifications for ideas surrounding the creation
and physical manifestations of the modern global economy.

RATIONALE

For decades, economic historians have pointed to the early modern

era or age of European expansion as the birthplace of the world economy
(e.g., Stavrianos, 1981; Wallerstein, 1974, 1989; Wolf, 1982). This Eurocen
tric view has placed Asia at the periphery of the nascent global economy.
Asia was perceived to be an area that had had its own insular economic
focus, which later was incorporated into this Western juggernaut. Others
(e.g., Frank, 1995, pp. 173, 189; Bergesen, 1995, p. 201) have challenged
this view and argued for an Afro-Eurasian world economic system of 5000
years' duration. In this Asian-centered view of history, Europe is seen as
the periphery. European states wanted to participate as equal players in
the Asian core but were economically, militarily, and politically too weak
to challenge the East through Eurasia or south Asia, lb overcome these
deficiencies contact was sought to the west. Europe's capture of the Ameri
cas was seen as a prelude to the elusive prize of Asia. There they trans
formed the social and natural environment into a facsimile of their
homeland, literally a New Europe was created in the New World when it
became part of their European-centered economy (Skowronek, 1989).
While the British, Dutch, French, Portuguese, and Spanish would come to
establish colonial enclaves in South, Southeast, and East Asia, China re
mained aloof and closed to the Europeans for the next three and one half
centuries (1480s-1830s). Their contact was limited by the Chinese to the
regulated exchange of luxury goods at specific ports?a situation that left
Europe at the periphery of Asia.
While being at the periphery of the Asian economy, we would, none
theless, expect that a 377-year Spanish presence in the Philippines would
be clearly evidenced in the archaeological record. As has been abundantly
demonstrated in New World-focused archaeology of the postcontact era, a
clear break appears in the archaeological sequence of pre-Columbian cul
tural traditions wherever Europeans have settled. In the systemic context
these changes are evidenced in architectural style and city plan. In the ar
chaeological context this break is most visible in the form of imported
European-produced objects including those which were colonially produced
using European production technologies and design motifs in substitution

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The Spanish Philippines 47

for local forms. Such objects arrived in the colonies for two main reasons.
First, the tenets of mercantilism dictated that the homeland's manufactures
should be marketed in the colonies; and second, in the creation of a mestizo
society, the Spanish desired to create a facsimile of the Old World or a
"New Europe," such that material culture would serve as ethnic-status in
dicators. For example, the use and display of highly visible ceramic table
wares would mark the owners as members of the colonizing power
(Skowronek, 1984,1989). Anyone vaguely familiar with research on Spanish
colonial cities or missions, pueblos, and presidios that marked the limits
of Spain's New World empire will recognize the many pottery and glass
objects found therein as these sorts of materials (see Deagan, 1987). What
is important to note is that even in the farthest hinterlands of the Empire
(e.g., Spanish Florida, New Mexico, and California), where communication
was poor and frequently nonexistent for long periods of time, Spanish set
tlers made a conscious effort to procure these items and create a "New
Europe" on the frontier (Shulsky, 1994; Skowronek, 1989; Skowronek and
Wizorek, 1997). Given these observations, what should we expect to find
in the Philippines?

BACKGROUND

The economic history of the Spanish Philippines can be divided into

three distinct periods. First, an era I term the "Prelude" was a time of
initial exploration and contact. This period lasted some 40 years, or from
the arrival of Magellan in 1S21 to the founding of Cebu in 1565 and Manila
in 1571. This epoch was followed by a 250-year period of barter and plun
der when the Philippines served as a commercial outpost for the famed
Manila galleon trade. The last two-thirds of the nineteenth century was an
era of commercial capitalism based on the export of plantation produce
(Legarda y Fernandez, 1967, p. 11). The concern of this research is the
latter two eras.
Annually, for 250 years, between 1573 and 1815 (Chaunu, 1960; Cush
ner, 1971, pp. 127-128; Legarda, 1955; Legarda y Fernandez, 1967, pp. 3-6;
Lyon, 1990, pp. 11,37; Schurz, 1939; Hibangui et aL, 1982, p. 89), two Span
ish merchant vessels made the 14-month-long round-trip passage from Ma
nila to Acapulco on the western coast of Mexico (Moses, 1929, p. 75).
These ships bore the finished exotica of the Far East (Cushner, 1971, pp.
128, 187; Lyon, 1990, pp. 13-14). From the Philippines came cotton goods
and such metals as copper, silver, and gold. The ships also carried abaca
hemp (burlap and rope), dyewoods, hides, and coconut products (copra
and shell). India and Ceylon supplied taffetas, pearls, diamonds, topazes,

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48 Skowronek

carved ivory, and cotton goods. The Spice Islands, later known as the Dutch
East Indies and today as Indonesia, shipped cloves, cinnamon, pepper, cam
phor, gems, and some ceramics. Indochinese imports included tin, ivory,
rubies, and sapphires. Additionally, from Japan came amber, cutlery, and
furniture. We know, however, from tax and port records, that the lion's
share of the goods on the galleons originated in China and was borne to
Manila in Chinese ships (Chaunu, 1960, pp. 148-199). Items of silk, jade,
sandalwood, ivory, copper, and iron, in addition to pearls and pottery, ar
rived in Chinese ships (Cushner, 1971, p. 128; Lyon, 1990, p. 14; TUbangui
et aLy 1982, pp. 51-53). As early as the Sung Dynasty (A.D. 950-1279) and
for half a millennium prior to the arrival of the Spanish, Chinese merchants
trafficked in earthenware pots and jars, tin, copper and iron wares, and
porcelain tablewares and jars. The archaeological record testifies to the vol
ume of this trade, as massive quantities of imported porcelains and other
trade commodities have been recovered from both burial and habitation
contexts throughout the Philippines (e.g., Aga-Oglu, 1946; 1948; Junker,
1990, p. 167). Under the Spanish the volume of silks and porcelains, in
cluding pieces of higher quality, went up (Guerrero and Quirino, 1977, p.
1009; Legarda y Fernandez, 1967, p. 3; Mudge, 1986, p. 39; Tubangui et
aL, 1982, p. 51). From Mexico the galleons returned laden with silver,
books, lace, fans, and wine for the Spanish residents of the Philippines
(Alip, 1959, p. 53; Cushner, 1971, p. 197; Legarda y Fernandez, 1967, p.
3; Lyon, 1990, p. 36). All told, between 1 and 2 million pesos in goods
moved annually between the two colonies (Cushner, 1971, pp. 134, 136).
For all of its commerce, the Philippines were an economic liability or
"black hole" for the Spanish (Cushner, 1971, p. 129; Legarda y Fernandez,
1967, pp. 14-15, 20). Although the islands had evidenced veins of precious
ores and had an appropriate climate and soils for the establishment of plan
tations, the colony was impoverished and received an operating subsidy or
situado from Mexico, of which it was an autonomous dependency until 1821
(Bauzon, 1977, p. 1037; Cushner, 1971, p. 132; Moses, 1929, p. 75; Phelan,
1967, pp. 13, 106, 154; TUbangui et aL, 1982, pp. 48-50). That situado plus
the taxes collected in Manila and Acapulco on the cargoes of the galleons
went for the maintenance of the flota and the infrastructure of the Spanish
colonial government and its representatives (Cushner, 1971, p. 129; TUban
gui et aL, 1982, p. 47). The reason for these economic shortcomings can
be traced to the Manila galleons and the position of the Philippines as the
commercial middlemen for the Mexican Chinese trade (Casino, 1982, p.
98). Great profits could be made in Manila brokering these exchanges with
out having to develop the hinterlands of the colony. Also, since plantations
in the New World produced sugar, tobacco, cotton, and indigo, there was
little reason to compete with them for such bulk products. Anyway, such

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The Spanish Philippines 49

products would be difficult to transport across the Pacific and across Mex
ico to reach and attract attention in the European markets.
The market economy did not extend beyond Manila. In the hinterlands
of the archipelago, subsistence agriculture was the norm until the last third
of the eighteenth century, when the so-called Bourbon Reforms were en
acted (Rafael, 1988, p. 193). At that time Spain sought to make each co
lonial area more self-sufficient (de Jesus, 1980, pp. 23, 25, 57, 131;
Wallerstein, 1989, p. 239). In the Philippines that meant ending the 200-year
old Mexican subsidy and establishing a government regulated monopoly of
tobacco, cotton, indigo, abaca, coffee, and sugar. Furthermore, the monop
oly of the Manila galleon was broken when the port of Manila began to
be serviced by the Spanish-owned Royal Philippine Company.
In the wake of die Napoleonic Wars, Spain struggled to reassert royal
authority over its isolated New World colonies. Yet, one, by one each gained
independence, so that by 1827 only Cuba and Puerto Rico remained in
the Empire. The Philippines, with these and other scattered colonies in
Africa and Micronesia were the remnants of once mighty imperial Spain.
At this time the economic focus of each of these colonies was completely
redirected from mercantilism and subsistence agriculture a plantation ex
port economy. Ports were opened to foreign vessels and non-Spaniards
were allowed to own land for the first time.
In the Philippines, 19 years after the last Manila galleon sailed, the
Royal Philippine Company was disbanded, and in 1834 Manila was made
a free port for trade. This opened the door and allowed non-Spanish Euro
peans to own land. Thus, beginning in 1834 the Philippines were trans
formed into a giant plantation that produced abaca, coffee, sugar, and
tobacco for export. With this open door policy British- and American-based
banks and insurance companies began to be established in Manila. These
institutions in turn founded more plantations that shipped produce through
the newly opened Suez Canal (1869) to a growing European market (Con
stantino, 1975, pp. 114-115; Corpuz, 1989, pp. 458-460; Diaz-Ttechuelo,
1978, pp. 1345-1349; Legarda y Fernandez, 1967, pp. 1-12; Hibangui et aU
1982, pp. 85-89). Descriptions of this nineteenth-century trade underscore
Spain's shift from mercantilism into commercial capitalism. For example,
in the Philippines as early as 1838, Rafael Diaz Arenas (1838, p. 36), an
officer in the Royal treasury nonchalantly wrote of the presence of foreign
traders wherein "all European merchandize carried in non-Spanish ships
were to pay a duty of 14%. He went on to discuss their plantation produce
and other raw material exports and the wide variety of foreign imports
brought into the Philippines by these individuals (1838, pp. 45-73). What
I find most interesting in his account is his specification of items imported
by "Anglo-Americans," which included crystal ware and ceramics. By the

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Hie Spanish Philippines 51

Fig. 2. The fortifications of Manila.

1880s Chinese-owned department stores in Manila dealt in "fine crystal

and furniture" from Europe (Legarda y Fernandez, 1967, p. 13). Britain
and the United States were the number one and two non-Asian importers
in the Philippines in the nineteenth century, while the Spanish were a poor
third (Cushner, 1971, p. 197; Legarda y Fernandez, 1967, p. 11). Given this

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 52 Skowronek

distribution, how would this history be represented in the archaeological

record?

A CHANGING CULTURAL
LANDSCAPE-ARCHAEOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

Imperial Architecture?The State and Church

Archaeologists working in the early modern era are well acquainted

with the behavioral and physical manifestations of Spanish colonialism.
Spain left its mark on the cultural and natural landscape in many ways.
TTie best known of these include the grid city plan. From east to west and
north to south in the Americas, Spanish colonial cities were laid out fol
lowing the city planning ordinances of the laws of the Indies (Crouch et
aL9 1982). These laws were also applied in their Asian colonies (Rafael,
1988, pp. 88-89; Zialcita and Tinio, 1980, p. 26) (Fig. 1)
Concepts surrounding status were similar on both sides of the Pacific
within the Spanish colonies. For example, eighteenth-century drawings
made in the Philippines as part of the Malaspina Expedition of 1792 show
Spanish Creoles and peninsulares wearing European-style clothing, while
mestizos and others of Chinese or Filipino descent wore indigenous styles
or distinctive mixtures of the two, including the barong tagalog or the polo
barong, the Filipino version of the familiar Latin American guayabera
(Madulid, 1987, pp. 224-248). Similarly, town life centered around a central
plaza where the church, government buildings, and main businesses were
located. Closest to these institutions, on the most visible locations, were
the homes of the elite. Farther out lived the masses in their taga labas or
homes of thatch and wood (Lockhart and Schwartz, 1983, p. 67; Zialcita
and Tinio, 1980, p. 125).

Domestic Architecture

Across the world certain architectural styles came to epitomize the

Spanish empire. Fortifications designed by Spanish engineers are, in their
rigidity, a classic example of planned state architecture [whether found in
Florida, Peru, or the Philippines (Spoehr, 1973)] (Fig. 2). The Catholic
church was the second aspect of Spanish colonialism. When found in the
Americas their style is distincdy European in inspiration, from floor plan
to detailing. In the Philippines the style is clearly Asian influenced but is,
nonetheless, clearly part of the Spanish cultural template for buildings of

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The Spanish Philippines 53

Fig. 3. Church of San Guillcrmo, Laoag, IIocos Norte.

Fig. 4. Streetscape, Vigan, IIocos Sur.

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 54 Skowronek

this kind (Coseteng, 1972; Diaz-Ti-echuelo, 1959; Galende and Javellana,

1993, p. 7) (Fig. 3). Unlike the Jesuits, who adopted Asian dress to aid
their alien proselytizing mission within sovereign China, the Spanish in the
Philippines did not have to resort to such methods of cultural accommo
dation within their colonial possessions (Sebes, 1988).
Finally, there are the homes of the elites, the key participants in Spain's
economic endeavors. When we think of their homes we see the stereotypic
white-washed, tile-roofed styles of Spain's southern torrid zone become the
ubiquitous style throughout their American colonies. In both Old and New
World locales occupants used the entire structure for any and all activities.
In the Philippines we must remember that the majority of elites were
Asian?Creoles, Filipinos, Chinese, or mestizos?with very few Spanish-born
peninsulares. Their houses were built largely by Chinese craftsmen using lo
cally made materials. From the public or street side of these geometric struc
tures there was no doubt that this was a corner of the Spanish empire, but
these facades hid a distinctly Asian house in floor plan and in the function
of rooms (Zialcita and Tinio, 1980, p. 29) (Fig. 4).
Many of these trends can be seen in the architectural styles that char
acterized the Philippines in the nineteenth century. In the eighteenth cen
tury the bahay na bato of the affluent peninsulares and Creole families were
built following a "geometric style" (Zialcita and Tinio, 1980, pp. 126,151).
The floor plan was in an L- or U-shape similar to that found in the Ameri
cas (e.g., Manucy, 1964, p. 49). Appointed with Spanish made ceramic floor
tiles (ladrillos) and locally made roof tiles (tejas), these homes served to
mark the status of their owners as individuals who identified themselves
as part of the ruling Spanish elite (Zialciata and Tinio, 1980, p. 127). Space
within the houses had different uses than we would recognize today. In
the past, houses were comprised of multipurpose rooms that could function
in a number of ways depending on the time of the day and the people
present (Zialcita and Tinio, 1980, p. 95). In the Philippines, though, there
was one critical difference: it was deemed impossible to live on the ground
floor, as it was thought to be too wet for any function beyond that of a
storeroom or a bodega (Zialcita and Tinio, 1980, pp. 25, 26) (Fig. 5).
With the opening of the Philippines to outside investors, the colony's
subsistence-based agriculture was rapidly transformed, through the infusion
of large amounts of British and American capital, into a giant plantation
producing sugar, rice, abaca, indigo, and coffee. In addition to their cash,
these new Westerners brought new ideas regarding their personal environ
ment or housing. They brought with them the revivalist styles of Europe
and, with them Western concepts of space such that there were now rooms
in each house dedicated to specific functions such as dining rooms (come
dors), bedrooms (dormitorios), and living rooms (sala) (Zialcita and Tinio,

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 56 Skowronek

Mmm * djfpmh JUm* y Am.

A.,, \?r-X-^ X-5-?I ***
' ? t I t t ? t * t

Fig. 6. Elevation of the Victorian home of Sr. Garchitorena, Manila, 18

courtesy of GFC Books and Fernando Zialcita, from Zialcita and Tin

1980, pp. 102, 108-109, 164-165). By the end of the seco

nineteenth century, this new "floral" Victorian-inspired
characterize the homes of the newly affluent Spanish and
and indios who were part of these nouveau riche principa
elite (Zialcita and Tinio, 1980, pp. 127, 132, 136, 151) (Fi
level we can further evaluate the impact of this changing
by examining an archaeologically sensitive indicator of ext
change?ceramics.

Ceramics

Ceramics are durable and therefore ubiquitous on historical archae

ological sites. Their form, surface decoration, and method of manufacture
make them highly identifiable markers of function, status, and cultural
point of origin. It has been noted in Spanish colonial New World sites that

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The Spanish Philippines 57

there is a favorable correlation between European-made, copied or im

ported ceramics and the social status and ethnicity of their users. If similar
trends in colonial culture were operating in these remote corners of the
empire, we would expect a change in this aspect of material culture as the
ethnic and demographic composition of the society changed.
In peripheral, protective colonial areas such as Florida and Puerto
Rico in the Caribbean basin, most archaeological research on the Spanish
presence has focused on the era before the last quarter of the eighteenth
century (e.g., Deagan, 1983, 1987; Goggin, 1968; Skowronek, 1984, 1989;
1992a). These studies have shown that in these areas as late as 1750, Span
ish-made tablewares, of both colonial and, very rarely, Old World manu
facture, outnumbered non-Hispanic produce by a two-to-one margin
(Skowronek, 1992a, pp. 114-116). However, in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries (1780s-1830s), as the goals of the Bourbon Reforms
for self-sufficiency were beginning to be realized, this would change. Thus
New World colonial areas such as California (Skowronek and Wizorek,
1997; Wizorek and Skowronek, 1997) began economically to shift from pro
tective to productive, indicating Spain's resurgence and move away from
mercantilism toward commercial capitalism.
In Asia a different material pattern existed before the collapse of
Spain's New World empire. Very few Spanish or Mexican-made ceramics

Fig. 7. Swatow Wferes (San Carlos University collection, Cebu).

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 58 Skowronek

were exported to their Pacific Ocean possessions (Skowronek, 1992b). In

stead ships bore silver, books, lace, fans, and wine (Alip, 1959, p. 53; Cush
ner, 1971, p. 197; Lyon, 1990, p. 36). The reason for the virtual absence
of ceramics is clear when we consider that the expressed economic raison
d'etre for the maintenance of the colonies was for trade with the Far East.
This trade was for a wide variety of commodities including silk and pottery.
Under the Spanish control of the islands, the volume of silks and porce
lains, including pieces of higher quality, went up and became ubiquitous
within Spanish colonial towns (Dizon, 1994; Guerroro and Quirino, 1977,
p. 1009; Hibangui et aL, 1982, p. 51). As the chinoiserie or imitation Chinese
pattern tin-glazed earthenwares of the sixteenth- through eighteenth-cen
tury Old World attest, Europeans in the New World colonies wanted Chi
nese-made porcelains to mark their status. Only if those high cost wares
were unavailable would lower-cost "knockoffs" be accepted (Skowronek,
1984). Nonetheless, even in backwaters such as St. Augustine, Florida,
Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Santa Clara, California, Chinese porcelains do
occur at low frequencies (Deagan, 1983; Shulsky, 1994; Skowronek and Wi
zorek, 1997). In the Philippines, where access to low-cost, high-quality ce
ramics was only as far as Manila, rather than a 14-month-long trip to
Mexico, majolicas would be scorned and considered as akin to bringing
"coals to Newcastle"?an economic absurdity.
When the archaeological records of Guam and the Philippines are con
sidered these observations are supported. In the collections made by the
University of Michigan Philippine Expedition of 1922-1925, no majolica
vessels have been identified from the 542 sites investigated (Guthe, 1927,
1929; Skowronek, 1992b). Similarly, recent excavations in Manila's Intra
muros and the galleon San Diego have revealed no evidence of Mexican
or Spanish-made chinoiserie-styte tablewares (Bautista and de la Tbrre,
1994; Dizon, 1994; Gatbonton, 1994; Valdes, 1993). Similarly, work in
Agana, Guam, has revealed only "a few sherds of majolica pottery" and
"little else that could certainly be attributed to Spanish manufacture"
(Welch et aL, 1992, p. 8). However, from these same sites we do find Ching
porcelain and decorated Swatow wares from Kwantung province in China
that date from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (Harrison,
1979, p. 27) (Fig. 7). Only the ubiquitous ceramic storage containers known
as "olive jars" continue to indicate the Spanish presence in these distant
Asian lands from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries (Fig. 8).
These earthenware containers would have been filled with a variety of Old
World comestibles, such as wine and olive oil, that are basic in Spanish
cuisine. Such foodstuffs would have been locally unavailable in this remote
corner of the empire.

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 The Spanish Philippines 59

Fig. 8. Olive jars. (a)"EarlyM tibor for (b) "Middle" forms (both San Diego shipwreck,
1600) (c) "Late" form (San Agustin Project, Intramuros, Manila; NCR-92-J, Phil
ippine National Museum collections), (d) "Middle" form ("Burial Ground 107" Bo
hol, Guthe collections, University of Michigan).

American-, English-, and Dutch-made ceramics such as transfer

printed pearlwares, stonewares, and edged and banded whitewares do even
tually become part of the assemblages from the Pacific (Skowronek, 1992;
Welch et aL, 1992). Joining Cantonese and Japanese export porcelains and
dating from the 1830s to the 1890s, these materials represent both the
opening of Spanish ports for free trade and the establishment of a plan

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60 Skowronek

Fig. 8b

tation-focused economy whose managers were wage earners representing

European investors (Fig. 9).

MAKING SENSE OF THE SPANISH PHILIPPINES

For 377 years, from 1521 to 1898, the Philippines existed at the edge
of the Spanish and European world. This is longer than for all other colo
nies except Cuba and Puerto Rico. From the era of Marco Polo, Asia was
considered by Europeans as the zenith of success. When Spain began its
expansion it saw Christianity as the greatest of causes, but the height of
civilization was China. If imitation is the greatest of flatteries, the chinois
erie ceramics of Europe and the fabled Manila galleons, filled with silks
and spices, well sum up the era before the 1750s. After that the world was
secularized during, and as a result of, the Industrial Revolution. As a result
of its defeat in the Opium Wars of the 1830s, China was no longer seen
as the elusive prize and pinnacle of civilization. Instead China was seen as
a lower form of society within the unilinear evolutionary scheme of the
early social Darwinists. In China's former place of prominence was the capi
talism of England and the United States.

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The Spanish Philippines 61

,;
Fig. 8c

The Philippines were politically Spanish and the marks of empire are
clear in city plan and in public and private forms of architecture. The Span
ish themselves, however, remained a true minority at this far corner of the

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 Skowronek

Fig. 8d

empire for hundreds of years. These peninsulares can be seen archaeologi

cally through the containers for their exotic Old World foodstuffs?olive
oils, wines, and sherries. Yet it is Asian-produced material culture that is
overwhelmingly present, and it is Asian culture that survives. We need only
compare Spanish colonial homes in the Americas with those of the Phil
ippines to underscore this point. From the street, their public side, they all

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The Spanish Philippines 63

Fig. 9. (a) Hand-painted pearlware ("Burial Cave 22" Samar); (b) blue transfer
printed pearlware ("Grave 193" Bohol; Guthe collections, University of Michigan),
(c) Black transfer-printed pearlware; (d) shell-edged whitewares (San Agustin Pro
ject, Intramuros, Manila; NCR-92-J, Philippine National Museum collections).

look very similar, but it is the interior space, and how it is divided, that
reflects the mindset of the people who lived therein. The floor plans of St.
Augustine, Florida (Manucy, 1964), would be familiar to any archaeologist
be they working in California, Mexico, or Florida. Compared with those
from the Philippines, we see a different division of private space, an Asian
division of space (Zialcita and Tinio, 1980). Inside these houses the diet,
the material culture, and the language remained Asian.
Yet a transformation begins to took place in the nineteenth century,
when plantation-based commercial capitalism began. After 1835 English
and American entrepreneurs move to the Philippines, and for the first time
we see that the goal is not to imitate Asia but simply to capture it eco
nomically. The shock troops of this new invasion make it perfectly clear
that they are Europeans first and foremost in language, diet, and material
culture. Thus the break with Spain and the true birth of modern world or
global economy can be seen early in the nineteenth century.

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 Skowronek

Fig. 9b

CONCLUSIONS

In the New World, wherever Europeans settled, there is a clear break

in the archaeological sequence of pre-Columbian cultural traditions. In the
systemic context, these changes continue to be evidenced in architectural
style, city plan, and diet: aspects of culture that were consciously imposed
by the colonists. In the archaeological context, this break is most visible in
the form of imported European-produced objects including those which
were colonially produced using European production technologies and de

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The Spanish Philippines 65

Fig. 9c

sign motifs in substitution for local forms. Ceramic table, storage, and utili
tarian wares are one category of artifact that exhibit these characteristics
and, so, epitomize these changes. Such objects arrived in the colonies for
two main reasons: first, because the tenets of mercantilism dictated that
the homeland's manufactures should be marketed in the colonies and, sec
ond, due to the creation of a mestizo society, whose desire was to create
a facsimile of the Old World or a "New Europe," such that these items
would serve as ethnic-status indicators. Even in the farthest hinterlands of
the empire (e.g., Spanish Florida and California), where communication
was poor and frequently nonexistent for long periods of time, there was a
conscious effort to procure these items and create a "New Europe" on the
frontier (Skowronek, 1984, 1989).
The Spanish empire was not an unchanging monolith; rather, it was
reshaped by the economic and historical exigencies that brought change to
the early modern world. Unlike other European powers, whose colonies had
to be efficient and self-supporting to make diem worthy of imperial attention
and protection, the wealth Spain derived from its early productive colonies
allowed it to maintain its special form of religious mercantilism that could
support other more peripheral nonproductive areas and, as such, deny them
to foreign interlopers. The trade monopolies that characterized this approach

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 66 Skowronek

Fig. 9d

are epitomized in the Spanish empire origins of the majority of ceramic as

semblages of this pre-nineteenth-century era (Skowronek 1992a).
In the eighteenth century the Bourbons abandoned mercantilism and
raced to join the commercial capitalists by encouraging the economic de
velopment of the nonproductive periphery. This success was just beginning
to be realized when the Napoleonic Wars cost them their fleets and, with
that, forever shattered their hold on a worldwide empire. No longer was
the situado expected to supply these areas; instead the opening of new mar
kets for other Spanish ports represents a stimulation for the economy of
the motherland and the colony alike.
In the second third of the nineteenth century came the final transition
of the previously peripheral colony of the Philippines. As a free port with
eased rules for immigration, plantations were established with foreign capi
tal, machinery and expertise. These Spanish and non-Spanish managers
were paid representatives of foreign-based investors?the forerunners of

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Tht Spanish Philippines 67

the multinational corporation in the Third World. Their job was to oversee
the production of exportable raw materials. These "expats," like the earlier
Spanish, sought to transplant their cultural ideals to the frontier. Spanish
olive jars tell us that certain Old World wines and foods were still coveted
by the Spanish in the islands but their desire for tablewares would now be
fulfilled by the mass-produced and readily available wares that could be
procured at a low cost from Europe. Non-Spaniards were temporally lim
ited in their ability to transform these politically Spanish islands. Yet there
is archaeological evidence suggesting that Anglo-Americans could have en
joyed imported familiar crystal ware and ceramics (Arenas, 1838, pp. 45-73)
while their children were sent overseas for their education. It is no wonder
therefore that work by Cheek et aL (1987, p. 65) suggests that similar ar
chaeological deposits dating from this era in Puerto Rico more closely re
sembled English colonial than Spanish colonial sites. As more evidence is
accumulated we will have to consider changes in city planning and archi
tectural style as new towns came to be established in the nineteenth-century
Spanish empire. Thus, we can see that Bonifacio was the voice for a silent
revolution that had in fact begun sue decades earlier.
Social scientists are trained to considered both the diachronic and the
synchronic views of past cultures. However, as historical archaeologists dealing
with the expansion of the European-centered world economy through the co
lonialism of the early modern era, we need to contextualize these cultures
against the larger world system of which they were a part 15 examine only
one part of the system and, from that, to extrapolate our expectations would
be erroneous and akin to the tail wagging the dog. Tbday the world is trans
forming itself from that which was created some 150 years ago. As observers
of this change, we need to examine how cultures are transformed as the larger
system changes. The Spanish colonial empire was not static but was a dynamic
system that reacted and changed in response to the ever-increasing world sys
tem. The material legacy it left behind can be deciphered and its explanatory
implications refined to help reveal how behavior was altered.
The truly European-centered world economy has been a short-lived
phenomenon based on the nineteenth- and twentieth-century hegemony of
Great Britain and the United States. Tbday, however, it appears that the
pendulum is swinging eastward once again, with the world of the twenty
first century being based on an Asian-centered world economy.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I gratefully acknowledge the support of the National Endowment for

the Humanities [Summer Stipend Program (FT-41096-95) 1995; Philip

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 68 Skowronek

pines] and Santa Clara University [Thomas Tfcrry Research Grants (1992,
Spain; 1995, Philippines] for the financial backing of part of the research
presented here. The following individuals and institutions contributed to
the ideas presented in this article, and I thank them for their assistance:
the Philippine National Museum, for granting me access to its collections
and for making me an Honorary Researcher in the Archaeology Division;
Chief Wilfredo P. Ronquillo, Dr. Eusebio Dizon, Amalia de la Tbrre, Angel
Bautista, and the other members of the Archaeology Division, National
Museum of the Philippines, for their cooperation and friendship; Henry S.
Tbtanes, Lecturer, Department of History, Ateneo de Manila University,
for introducing me to the documentary collections housed at the Rizal Li
brary; and the Institute of Philippine Culture, for granting me affiliation
through their Visiting Research Associate Program?Dr. Romana E de los
Reyes, Director, and Ms. Menchie M. Mendez, Administrative Assistant
Institute of Philippine Culture. I especially thank Professor Fernando N.
Zialcita, Chair, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ateneo de
Manila University, for his friendship and introduction to the colonial ar
chitecture of Vigan and Manila. GCF Books and Butch Zialcita kindly gave
permission for the reproduction of a number of the plans and elevations
from Philippine Ancestral Houses. For the Guthe collections, I thank Dr.
Henry Wright III, Liz Baccus, Masao Nishimura, and Andy Darling, Uni
versity of Michigan, and Professor Laura Junkers, Vanderbilt University.
In Guam and the Mariana Islands, I thank Dr. David J. Welch of Inter
national Archaeological Research Institute, Inc. Thanks go also to Ms.
Linda Longoria, Assistant to the Dean of Business, Santa Clara University,
and the Leavey School of Business and Administration for their material
and collegial support and to my colleagues in the Department of Anthro
pology and Sociology for their support of my ongoing research. I am es
pecially indebted to Charles Orser, Editor of the UHAy and Ms. Linda
Shulsky for their suggestions regarding the revision of this work.

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