Category Archives: Spain

by Joel | 10 September 2026 · 4:59 am

Islam Penetrates Nusantaria

From Empire of the Winds: The Global Role of Asia’s Great Archipelago, by Philip Bowring (I.B. Tauris, 2018), Kindle pp. 250-254:

Whether rulers adopted it out of genuine preference for its monotheistic belief and universalism, out of commercial or other temporal interest, or because of conquest, Islam spread from the top downwards. How long that took, and the depth to which it penetrated, depended on many factors. Even in Sumatra the progress of Islam was slow and fitful. Tomé Pires, writing in the early sixteenth century, recorded that most rulers in Sumatra were Muslims, but those in the west and interior were heathen and ‘some make a practice of eating their enemies when they capture them.’ In other words, not much had changed since Ibn Battuta’s visit 150 years earlier.

…

During that era the only place where Islam was on the retreat was in Spain and North Africa. But again that helped Islam in the east. The Spanish conquest of Arab Granada in 1492 and subsequent oppression of non-Christians propelled a Muslim exodus that reverberated as far east as Maluku. There, as in other places they visited two decades later, the Portuguese were surprised to find Spanish speakers.

The spread of Islam gradually eliminated Hindu and Buddhist worship from the whole archipelago except Bali. On the mainland, however, Islam never penetrated far inland, where it was up against a form of Buddhism which in practice gave strength to the kingdoms in what are now Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia. Known as Theravada, this version of Buddhism originated from Sri Lanka and focused on the role of sangha, or monkhood, and the accumulation of merit through works. This fitted well with concepts of kingship, but also enabled the absorption of earlier concepts of spirits and minor deities. But more importantly, these states were more agrarian, mostly more populous and far less reliant on foreign trade, so less subject to the influence of foreign Muslim merchants.

The Sufi Influence

The Islam which spread through the archipelago varied according to its source and the strength of the existing belief systems. A relatively far greater number of Muslims arrived in the less populated, trade-oriented Sumatra and the peninsula than in Java, where conversion of traditional rulers was the key. The difference is reflected in many ways, such as the fact that Arabic-derived script, Jawi, was the norm in Sumatra and the Malay peninsula by the fifteenth century, whereas in Java Kawi continued to be widely used into the twentieth century. Both were then largely supplanted by Roman script.

An important factor in the spread of Islam, especially in Java, was that the dominant strain was Sunni Sufism. Sufism, found in both Sunni and Shia Islam, has at times been viewed as heretical by more legalistic Muslims but was strong among Indian Muslims from Gujarat and Bengal and in the Ottoman realm. Its emphasis on direct communication with God, its mysticism, its admiration for holy men and ascetics and its focus on individual teachers rather than rituals and laws helped acceptance. Under the overlay of Hindu-Buddhist features was an older belief system in which the spiritual and temporal were one. In this domain lived the spirits of nature, who needed to be respected. Sufi mysticism could accommodate this.

…

Singing, dancing, drumming and recitation of phrases were a means of embracing the divine spirit, which merged well with existing traditions. Sufism also often recognized the importance of ancestral links to past teachers, so focus on the lineage of rulers was accepted. At the populist level none of this may have mattered greatly, but at least it left room for gradualism. In many cases, Islamization amounted to little more than circumcision and the end of eating pork. The more conversions were obtained by local people rather than by Muslims from overseas, the less likely they were to be overly strict, or indeed to be well acquainted with the Qur’an and Hadith.

…

Essentially, Java’s Muslim rulers were pragmatists who could readily tolerate the old practices alongside nominal acceptance of the new. Such syncretism was to reach its apogee in the seventeenth century when Muslim Mataram, under Sultan Agung (1613–45) briefly came to rule most of Java. The exceptions and last bastions of Hinduism on Java were Banten [in the extreme west] and Balambangan in the extreme east. Formally and avowedly Muslim, Mataram combined many of the features of pre-Islamic customs and beliefs, had its own unique calendar and maintained its own very elegant version of the Kawi writing system. Although Muslim, the Mataram sultans were suspicious both of the ambitions of ulamas and of the trading cities with their wealth and foreign-inspired religious orthodoxy.

For much of Java, Sultan Agung’s rule was crucial for embedding old systems within the new and for creating a lasting culture which remains at the heart of the modern state and the essentially theist principles expressed in the Indonesian constitution. Elsewhere too, old and new went side by side, with Hindu epics being modified and appearing in both Javanese in Kawi script and in Malay in Jawi. Thus today in Indonesia it is possible to say that ‘Islam is our religion, kakawin [the Javanese rhythmic narrative verse which mixes Hindu mythology and Javanese settings] our culture.’

The sultanate also aligned itself with the pre-Hindu legend of the goddess of the sea, Nyai Roro Kidul. Belief in the powers of this lady from the Indian Ocean, sometimes portrayed as a mermaid, is still strong in popular culture of the southern Javanese and Sundanese. Other legends mixing Hindu and earlier beliefs also live on.

Well, I’ve approached the publisher’s warning limit for copying from the Kindle version of this book, so this will have to be my last post from this work. The next chapter, titled “Nusantaria: Holed Near the Waterline,” is about the arrival of the Portuguese, so this is a good break point.

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Filed under China, economics, language, migration, Portugal, religion, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Spain

by Joel | 6 September 2026 · 5:53 am

First European Views of the Marianas

From Empire of the Winds: The Global Role of Asia’s Great Archipelago, by Philip Bowring (I.B. Tauris, 2018), Kindle p. 242:

The first Spaniards reaching the remote Marianas islands noted how tall and fit they were, and recent examination of remains suggests they had a life expectancy of 44 years, much higher than in Europe at the time. The islands had been settled some 3,000 earlier, from either Luzon or Sulawesi, and had typical Austronesian characteristics such as a matrilineal system, weaving skills and megaliths known as latte stones, and a language, Chamorro, roughly comprehensible to Ferdinand Magellan’s Malay interpreter. Magellan (in Portuguese ‘Fernão Magalhães’, in Spanish ‘Fernando Magallanes’) was so impressed with their sailing skills that he called them the ‘Islas de Velas Latinas’ (‘Isles of the Lateen Sails’) after their small but remarkably agile sailing craft. The late sixteenth century Spanish document known as the Boxer Codex noted that their lateen sails were made of waxen palm leaves of many colours and designs. The boats could sail very fast whatever the wind strength and direction. The people were described as ‘thickset with large and stout limbs […] larger than we are’. They had a ‘pleasant appearance’ apart from filed teeth and widespread yaws – a disfiguring but not fatal skin disease common in the tropics. However, less appreciative Spaniards called them the ‘Islas Ladrones’ (‘Robber Islands’) on account of their sense of communal possession, a name which lingered long after they were renamed Marianas in 1668 after Mariana, widow of Spain’s King Philip IV. They are now divided as Guam, the largest, which is an unincorporated US territory, and the Northern Marianas, a US-dependent Commonwealth.

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Filed under labor, language, Micronesia, migration, Philippines, Portugal, Southeast Asia, Spain, U.S.

by Joel | 12 August 2026 · 2:13 pm

Philippines Under Japan

From The Making of the Modern Philippines: Pieces of a Jigsaw State, by Philip Bowring (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), Kindle pp. 51-54:

At least initially, few of the elite saw reason to confront the Japanese. A majority of senators joined the Executive Commission; others kept a low profile. A few were enthusiastic, including Laurel who admired Japanese order and devotion to the nation. Laurel could reasonably claim that some cooperation with Japan was necessary for the good of the people. Accepting the Presidency of the supposedly independent republic, however, was another matter given that the elected president and vice-president had a government-in-exile in Washington.

Another key collaborator was Benigno Aquino, a lawyer and landowner from Tarlac, who had been Secretary for Agriculture under Quezon. The Japanese made Aquino head of a new appointed assembly, known by the acronym Kalibapi (the Association for Service to the New Philippines). Also banging the drum for Japan was the MaKaPili, the Patriotic Society of Filipinos, led by former Sakdal leader Benigno Ramos. Former revolutionary general, Artemio Ricarte, who had always refused allegiance to the US, returned in late 1944 after thirty years in exile in Hong Kong and then Japan. Even Emilio Aguinaldo resurfaced, urging close cooperation with Japan.

Spanish citizens, who were still numerous and influential as priests or from the old elite, were divided. Many had supported the Falangists during the Spanish Civil War and were thus prone to be sympathetic to Japan, but Andres Soriano of the giant A. Soriano Corporation stuck with Quezon as a member of his cabinet even though he had been the local leader of Spain’s Falangists. Others played an equivocal role. Manuel Roxas, who Quezon originally favoured as vice-president over Osmena, was captured by the Japanese and became an adviser to Laurel. The Japanese hoped to make him president in 1943 rather than Laurel but he declined. Late in the war Roxas may have provided intelligence to the Americans.

Whatever its notion of Asia for Asians, the occupation had several problems which fed on each other. The first was the arrogant and often brutal behaviour of the Japanese military for whom easy-going Filipino ways were alien. There was also a demand for comfort women for the soldiery, for which there was little local consent. Second was the quest for raw materials by Japan, combined with the inevitable shortages of a wartime economy shorn of foreign trade. The Japanese needed local resources to feed a 400,000-man army in the Philippines. Food shortages and unemployment were caused by Japanese demands for materials and the collapse of export industries which had been focused on the US market. A third factor was that antipathy towards the Americans was found more among the elite than lower down the social order where the US was associated with progress and aspiration. In exile, Quezon and Osmena provided a focus for resistance, there was pride in the Filipinos’ sacrifices in Bataan, and before long an expectation that the Americans would return.

Guerrilla activity developed, in many cases led by former soldiers, and provided some support brought by American submarines. As only Americans could defeat the Japanese, many Filipinos now longed for their return, past sins forgiven. They provided information and help to the Americans while appearing to be loyal to the puppet government. As resistance grew, so did reprisals and fear of the kempeitai, the Japanese military police. Disorder reigned too with some supposedly anti-Japanese activity becoming a cover for settling feuds between rival families. The resistance spawned many heroes but also, in the aftermath, many bogus claims to it. The most significant resistance, at least in the longer term, was provided by the Hukbong Bayan Laban na Hapon – the People’s Anti-Japanese Army – or Huks in Central Luzon, heart of rice and sugar cultivation, and of big haciendas. Feudal and paternalist tenancy systems, which at least provided stability for families, had been significantly replaced by sharecropping and small farmers, reduced by debt, into becoming wage labourers. As anti-landlord as it was anti-Japanese, some of the movement’s leaders drew inspiration from Mao Zedong. The movement was headed by Luis Taruc, a protégé of early nationalist and convert to Marxism, Pedro Abad Santos, brother of the Chief Justice. Taruc, who had been a full-time peasant organizer for the Socialist, then Communist, Party since 1934, was the leader of several thousand members from the sharecropper and landless workers, mainly in Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, Pampanga and Tarlac. The Huks were, however, predominantly a peasant organization born of injustice more than ideology.

…

Post-war tales of Japanese atrocities and Filipino suffering during the occupation helped provide a focus for the nation in the early years of independence, which finally occurred on 4 July 1946. Yet not far under the surface of this massaged history was the reality that the elite recognized. There was little instinct for retribution against collaborators. Aquino was charged with treason but released on bail and died the following year. Laurel was likewise charged with treason but never tried. In 1948, as President, Manuel Roxas, whose own cooperation with the Japanese remained questionable, declared an amnesty. Only five years later, Laurel stood unsuccessfully for president as the Nacionalista Party candidate winning 37 per cent of the vote. The victor was Elpidio Quirino who, despite the deaths of many family members in the Battle of Manila, pardoned the Japanese convicted of war crimes. Vargas went from the puppet republic’s ambassador in Tokyo in 1945 to head of the National Planning Commission in 1946.

Whatever mixture of class solidarity, family relationships, Catholic notions of forgiveness or common nationalism, the quick post-war healing was in sharp contrast to experiences in many other countries occupied during the 1937–45 wars. There were also cross currents. Lingering Spanish and Church sentiments were in favour of the Spanish dictator, General Franco, as a bastion against atheistic communism and hence highly critical of the anti-clericalism of leftist nationalists. Those with Chinese affiliation, on the other hand, were influenced against Japan by its invasion of China. Nationalists came in different colours with some interested in sustaining the status quo but without the Americans. Only those on the far left were consistent in being anti both Japanese and US imperialism and even they were sometimes divided between middle class Marxist revolutionaries and rice farmers fighting landlords.

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Filed under economics, food, Japan, labor, military, nationalism, Philippines, Spain, U.S., war

by Joel | 11 August 2026 · 5:43 am

Rise of Religious Nationalism in Philippines

From The Making of the Modern Philippines: Pieces of a Jigsaw State, by Philip Bowring (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), Kindle pp. 29-31:

The nineteenth century saw a sustained clash between the religious needs of the Filipinos and the colonialist views of the Spanish Church, the friars in particular. Nationalism had its roots in this conflict.

Tension between the Spanish-led Church and peasant Catholics led to the creation of the all-Filipino Cofradia de San Jose in Central Luzon by Apolinario de la Cruz, better known as Hermano Pule, who had wanted to join the Dominican order but was barred because of his race. Becoming a lay preacher, he and a Filipino priest established the Cofradia de San Jose, attached to a hospital. It gradually attracted several thousand followers and only admitted Spanish and mestizos personally approved by Pule. It combined Catholic teaching with some pre-colonial ideas. Refused recognition by both State and Church, it was seen by the governor-general as implicitly political and was violently suppressed. In a battle with followers, troops killed several hundred and Pule and other leaders were captured and executed; Pule was just twenty-seven years old. Madrid was shocked and eventually the Supreme Court admonished the governor-general saying the Cofradia was not political but had merely committed an ecclesiastical offence, but the damage had been done.

The country was in the curious position of having become devout believers in Christ while increasingly despising the Church’s principal agents the friars, the mendicants who had grown rich and greedy. In 1858, a British visitor was entertained to a dinner which would have ‘satisfied a Parisian gourmand’ meanwhile also noting that local Spanish ‘newspapers were more pre-occupied with the lives of saints than the most stirring events of the political world’.

At the same time, the Church saw growing divides between its mostly Spanish clergy and both the local priests and their flocks. The government did make efforts to extend primary education with its own schools in addition to the clerical schools but with a focus on teaching Christianity. The friars tended to ignore government demands that they teach Spanish to the Indios fearing that it would give them access to new, often secular, ideas.

In 1870, of 792 parishes, 611 were administered by the orders while the rest were controlled by secular priests, most of whom were Filipinos. The confrontation between the two sparked a surge of local identity. Political swings in Madrid exacerbated issues as a liberal governor was replaced by a conservative. A minor uprising in a Cavite shipyard was used by the government, egged on by the friars, to accuse three outspoken local priests – Fathers Burgos, Gomez and Zamora – to be tried for plotting rebellion and executed. Others were imprisoned or exiled to the Marianas. Well-to-do supporters exiled themselves to Spain.

The deaths of the three priests were a landmark. Burgos, the son of a Spanish officer and a local mestiza, was highly educated, so too were Gomez and Zamora, mestizos educated at the University of Santo Tomas. All deeply resented the inferior position of the non-Spanish clergy.

This episode fuelled the wrath of an upcoming generation of prospering new class of mestizos, elite Indios and creoles (local born Spanish) who could be educated in Europe but who at home felt the heavy hand of racist officials and the Guardia Civil. From this elite, known as ilustrados (the enlightened) emerged the Propagandists, a movement aiming not for independence but for equal treatment as citizens and representation in the Cortes (parliament) in Madrid as Cuba and Puerto Rica had been given. They also demanded the ending of the friars’ role in government, their replacement by local priests, more mass education, the curtailment of foreign – notably Chinese – economic power and a fairer tax system – the Spanish did not pay tax.

Gathering gradual momentum from 1880, by 1889 the movement was embedded among young ilustrados in Spain who published La Solidaridad, a fortnightly newspaper. The names of those involved are celebrated by street names throughout the country – Marcelo del Pilar, a lawyer, who wrote tracts in Tagalog as well as Spanish, Mariano Ponce, Juan Luna, a painter, and his brother Antonio, a future general, but most noted even then was Jose Rizal, a mestizo from Calamba near Manila whose elder brother had been a friend of Father Burgos. Rizal, a name he adopted, was fluent in several languages, a medical doctor and a writer whose first novel, Noli Me Tangere published in 1887, was a searing attack on the regime in Manila and on the friars.

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by Joel | 10 August 2026 · 4:59 am

Manila in Global Trade, 1600s

From The Making of the Modern Philippines: Pieces of a Jigsaw State, by Philip Bowring (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), Kindle pp. 25-26:

Despite the best intentions of some Spanish officials and priests, the overall low standard of Spanish rule was exacerbated by the conflicts of interest between State, clerics and encomenderos. This was acknowledged at the time by officials on the ground.

…

Manila was a different story. As the main focus of Spanish rule and source, it soon acquired walls, stone buildings and a cathedral. The city flourished from the galleon trade established very soon after the conquest. Ships from Mexico brought silver, while traders arrived from China and Japan, and a few from Melaka and elsewhere, to sell luxury goods, spices etc. for silver. The trade was immensely profitable for the Spanish merchants in Manila and the growth of the city attracted thousands of Chinese workers in addition to traders. Chinese generally became known as ‘sangleys’ – derived from the Hokkien word for trader, a name still reflected today in Sangley Point, the little peninsula jutting out into Manila Bay and the location of a small US-built airport. Some Augustinian friars learned Hokkien and converted some Chinese to Christianity.

By 1603, there were far more Chinese – about 30,000 – than Spanish. Tensions rose to the point that the Chinese, fearing they were about to be forced back to China, revolted and had initial success. However, they were inadequately equipped and had to retreat to a camp in Batangas where they succumbed to a force of some 200 Spanish, 300 Japanese and 1,500 locally recruited men. The Chinese had appealed to their emperor for help but Ming China was unsympathetic to those who betrayed their country by settling abroad. About 20,000 Chinese were massacred. The emperor threatened the Spanish with retribution but did nothing. Trade was interrupted but only briefly.

Another impact observed by de Morga was the shortage of skilled manpower. Due to the influx of low-cost Chinese labour, the Indios had ‘forgotten husbandry, the rearing of fowls, flocks, cotton and weaving robes as they used to do in the time of their paganism and for a long time after the country had been conquered’.

The Chinese gradually returned to Manila so that they numbered 25,000 by 1636 but they were again the subject of killings in 1639 following a minor rebellion by Chinese relocated to the countryside outside Manila to grow rice. The Chinese and Spanish needed each other but the relationship was always uneasy due to Spanish (and some indigenous) fears of Chinese numbers. Although most were in Manila and major towns and dominated the retail trade and crafts, some did move to rural areas as petty traders and money lenders.

The galleon trade was very profitable for those involved in it and a right to space on one bound to Mexico one was highly valued. Two vessels a year usually made the journey – two out, two in. Losses at sea were quite small – twenty-six out of a total of 108 galleons over the 250 years. Most of these occurred in the vicinity of the archipelago, particularly the tricky passage from Manila to the open Pacific via the San Bernardino Strait between Luzon and Samar. Four vessels were seized by the English.

The flow of silver into China gave a major boost to its money supply and other trade, domestic and foreign. It is sometimes described as the first globalization, though in reality Manila was involved with little other than the galleon/China trade as trade with Europe via the Indian and Atlantic Oceans was controlled by others. Merchants from ports such as Melaka brought goods such as cottons, carpets and spices from India, to join the cargoes of Chinese and Japanese products, but Manila merchants did not go west. The galleons were the property of State which controlled access to space, which enriched officials. A committee headed by the governor and including the head of the audencia (supreme court) and representatives of the Church, city council and leading merchants allotted boletas, tickets providing a certain amount of cargo space on a galleon. These were not supposed to be traded but gradually the boletas became saleable to genuine merchants, at a price. By the eighteenth century, the system had become an income subsidy for a large part of the Spanish population, at the expense of the genuine merchants.

The galleon trade also existed within a bigger restrictive system which aimed to protect other production and trade interests of Spain and its American possessions. These necessarily were sometimes at odds with each other but in any case kept foreigners out of any non-Asian trade. Meanwhile, the Dutch and English grew fat on their Europe-Asia trade with which Spain could not compete effectively.

The galleons did little for the domestic Philippine economy or trade with other parts of Asia. Indeed, it took away the incentive for the local Spanish to develop the economy. There was little trans-Pacific export of local products. Over time some Filipinos settled in Mexico, having arrived as galleon crew.

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by Joel | 9 August 2026 · 5:13 am

Modern Philippines: A Jigsaw

From The Making of the Modern Philippines: Pieces of a Jigsaw State, by Philip Bowring (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), Kindle pp. 1-3:

In March 1521 three ships under Ferdinand Magellan (Magalhaes/Magallanes), a Portuguese navigator in the service of the king of Spain, landed in the Visayan islands. One ship later completed the first circumnavigation of the globe, an event for the history record books but more importantly it changed that history of the islands, now home to 110 million people. A few decades later, Spain assumed ownership of the archipelago stretching from the Luzon Strait to the Sulu Sea and named it Islas Filipinas. The Spanish left a religion, a few genes and some aspects of culture, but the people were and remain predominantly of Malay/Austronesian race, language and culture, albeit with other influences from America and China.

The Philippines is unique in many ways; its geology, its fauna, in its history of rule by two successive Western powers, Spain and the United States. It has been a political identity with a singular name for nearly 500 years, much longer than many of its neighbours. It is the only predominantly Christian nation in Asia south of the Caucasus and is fervently Catholic. In the nineteenth century it spawned the first modern nationalists fighting Western imperialism.

However, this singularity does not make for an identity which is readily understood even by its own citizens, let alone by foreigners. It is part of the vast Malay Archipelago and shares a basic language and some culture with its Indonesian and Malaysian neighbours but it is separated from them by 500 years of history and itself divided by fragmented geography and regional loyalties. That history explains its current problems as reflected in its weak post-1945 economic and social performance compared with most of its neighbours, and its continuing high levels of violence. Democracy flourishes, elections are regular, noisy and competitive yet little progress is made towards changing a system dominated by dynasties as seen in the contests in the 2022 election. After the grip of two distant empires, Spanish and American, it now lives under the shadow of another, closer one, China.

Geology divides it into more than 2,000 inhabited islands. Regional rivalries and the widespread but not universal use of English have thwarted the acceptance of Filipino (essentially the Tagalog of Central Luzon) as the national language. Regional languages and loyalties remain strong so that imported languages and the Church seem at times the main unifiers. It is also an administrative jigsaw in that power locally lies not with its geographically coherent seventeen regions but with eighty numerous provinces and cities with province-level powers, some very small.

A basic Malay culture has been so influenced by Spain, the Catholic Church and then by America that its identity is sometimes seen as Latin as much as Asian. Indeed, many Filipinos in California, where they are the second largest Asian community, often self-identify as Latino or Pacific islander not Asian. The Catholic Church, as adapted locally, provides some common bond, other than for the Muslims, but faces its own challenge from evangelicals and populist preachers. Religious division is an underlying historical reality exacerbated by the concentration of Muslims in western Mindanao and Sulu and more recently by extremist Islamism from abroad. Yet the cultural roots and language, even aspects of its politics, remain essentially Malay from Ilocos in the north to Sulu in the south. However, fragmented by religion, local languages and quasi-tribal identities, the Philippines is at once identifiable yet hard to define or describe.

The very notion ‘Filipino’ began with local born Spaniards, known as creoles, and only very gradually spread to Spanish mestizos, Chinese mestizos and urbanized indigenous people accepted into the dominant principalia class. The nationalism of the ilustrados (the reformist educated elite) in the late nineteenth century raised national consciousness and the struggles against America and Japan saw mass participation. Independence brought the masses into the Filipino embrace but despite shared urbanization and education, the sense of national identity developed fitfully. Added to the centrifugal forces of geography were the strength of elite links to the US and of many leading businessmen to China. Suggestions to change the colonial name to a Malay one have failed – many late nineteenth revolutionaries preferred ‘Katagalugan’, which became the name of a short-lived Tagalog republic. More recently ‘Maharlika’, a word denoting a Tagalog noble warrior class, has been suggested but attracted little support.

Five hundred years on from the arrival of Spain and Catholicism fissures remain. Muslim Mindanao’s on and off warfare has been about local rivalries as well as opposition to Manila and Christianity. Meanwhile, non-Muslim parts of the island also continue to see conflicts, mainly over land rights between local ethnic groups, particularly in Mindanao and the broader population whose composition has been changed by decades of migration from the Visayas. That internal colonization continues. Visayan languages now predominate in Mindanao. Generally, regional loyalties and in political terms local patron-client relationships remain important. They remain crucial even if weakened by urbanization and the shared identity of the millions of Filipinos now working overseas or brought together via social media such as Facebook or by international beauty pageants. National politics is still partly driven by the regional appeal of particular candidates. Local identity is mostly stronger than national identity, perhaps a reflection of the lack of esteem of the national government.

After years under a backward Spain and the aegis of friars, American imperialism brought education and new legal and administrative systems. Seventy years ago, the then recently independent Philippines boasted higher literacy levels than most of Asia and the highest income levels of populous Asian countries apart from Japan. It had an admired – at least from a distance – US-inspired legal and democratic system. Today, despite two decades of reasonable economic performance, it is widely seen as having failed to match most of its neighbours in income growth and progress in education. It remains better known for natural disasters, flamboyant leaders, political violence and sporadic insurgencies, and for its major export – its own citizens finding work abroad which they could not find at home.

Its social structure has changed only modestly over time, with huge gaps in income and wealth, the dominance of certain families, particularly in the provinces, the preference for the fairer skins of mestizos (European or Chinese) and even place names celebrating colonialists, for example the posh enclaves of Makati – Magallanes, Forbes, Legazpi, Urdaneta and Dasmarinas. Violence is an all too constant ingredient in politics. President Duterte’s so-called War on Drugs killed particularly large numbers. Killings of political rivals, critical journalists and of farmer and worker activists had long been common but accelerated dramatically under Duterte. Lawyers abound but the state of law and order varies widely, ever subject to political and pecuniary influences. The state structure is weak for historical and geographical reasons which partly explain the persistence of insurgencies and of dynastic politics at both national and local levels. Senses of nationalism and civic duty appear weak compared to the demands of kinship and client relationships, blurring lines between public and private spheres. These features have especially flourished under the de-centralized political system and weak central bureaucracy bequeathed by America. Trading and sailing have always been essential elements of economic life and smuggling a natural outcome of attempts to tax it.

However, the nation has strengths too. Filipinos may be divided among themselves at home but in the outside world they have an identity and solidarity that is strong and recognized as such. Gender equality is ahead of most of Asia; Filipino workers are valued overseas for their skills and commitment, and command of English carries global benefits. Its Catholicism is sometimes more about ritual than ideology and society has relatively few hang-ups about racial mixing born of centuries of practice and the more recent impact of migration. It is welcoming of foreigners and renowned for its love of music and fiestas. There is a tradition of free speech – and sometimes gaudy rhetoric – and a media which is often too lively for those in power. In the much longer run, a generation or two away, its high fertility rate, which has long been a burden, will in a generation prove a bonus as most of its neighbours face ageing and falling populations. One day the nation may even acquire a name which reflects its Malay core identity.

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by Joel | 20 February 2026 · 3:02 am

Nazi Intelligence Failure in 1943?

From Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory, by Ben Macintyre (Crown, 2010), Kindle pp. 229-232:

The first full German intelligence assessment of the documents was written on May 11 and signed by Baron von Roenne himself. It was addressed to the OKW Operations Staff, or Wehrmachtführungsstab, headed by General Alfred Jodl, and entitled, portentously, “Discovery of the English Courier.” It began: “On the corpse of an English courier which was found on the Spanish coast, were three letters from senior British Officers to high Allied Officers in North Africa. … They give information concerning the decisions taken on the 23rd April, 1943, regarding Anglo-American strategy for the conduct of the war in the Mediterranean after the conclusion of the Tunisian campaign.” Major Martin is described as “an experienced specialist in amphibious operations.”

Von Roenne went on to lay out, point by point, the misinformation prepared by Cholmondeley and Montagu. “Large scale amphibious operations in both the Western and Eastern Mediterranean are intended. The proposed operation in the eastern Mediterranean, under the command of General Wilson, is to be made on the coast round Kalamata, and the section of the coast south of Cape Araxos. The code name for the landings on the Peloponnesus is ‘Husky.’ … The operation to be conducted in the Western Mediterranean by General Alexander was mentioned, but without naming any objective.” Von Roenne, however, had picked up on the reference to sardines. “A jocular remark in this letter refers to Sardinia,” he wrote. “The code name for this operation is ‘Brimstone.’” The attack on Sardinia, he surmised, must be “a minor ‘commando type’ since Mountbatten had requested the return of Major Martin after the operation. This indication points to the invasion of an island rather than of a major undertaking. … This is another point in favour of Sardinia.”

Just as important, Von Roenne relayed the news that Sicily was not a real target for the Allies, but a decoy: “The proposed cover operation for ‘Brimstone’ is Sicily.” That lie would sit, immovably, at the center of German strategic thinking over the coming months: the attacks would come in the east, in Greece, and in the west, most probably in Sardinia; evidence of any planned assault on Sicily could safely be dismissed as a hoax. The only uncertainty, von Roenne warned, was that of timing. If the two divisions identified in Nye’s letter—the Fifty-sixth Infantry attacking Kalamata and the Fifth Infantry Division aimed at Cape Araxos—were deployed at less than full strength, then the “operation could be mounted immediately” and the offensive might start at any time. However, the Fifty-sixth Division, von Roenne noted, had two brigades “still in action” at Enfidaville. If the entire division was to be used in the assault, these troops “must first be rested and then embarked. This possibility, which necessitates a certain time lag before the launching of the operation, is, judging by the form of the letters, the most likely.” In von Roenne’s mature estimation, Germany still had “at least two or three weeks” to reinforce the Greek coast before the attack.

That was also enough time for the British to change their plans, which they might well do if they knew the information had reached the Germans. Von Roenne now turned to this important consideration. “It is known to the British Staff that the courier’s despatches to [sic] Major Martin fell into Spanish hands,” he wrote, but “it is not perhaps known to the British General Staff that these letters came to our notice, since an English Consul was present at the examination of the letters by Spanish officials.” The letters had been reinserted in the envelopes and returned to the British, and a senior officer of the Madrid Abwehr station had personally inspected the resealed envelopes before they were returned to Alan Hillgarth. The British might suspect but would have no proof that the letters had been read, let alone passed to the Germans and copied. “It is, therefore, to be hoped that the British General Staff will continue with these projected operations and thereby make possible a resounding Abwehr success.” In order to convince the British that their secrets were still safe, von Roenne suggested that the Germans mount their own deception: they should give no indication that they feared simultaneous attacks in the eastern and western Mediterranean and instead “initiate a misleading plan of action which will deceive the enemy by painting a picture of growing Axis concern regarding Sicily.” The Germans should pretend to reinforce Sicily, while doing nothing of the sort.

Von Roenne ended with a security warning. “News of this discovery will be treated with the greatest secrecy, and knowledge of it confined to as few as possible.” The baron’s assessment was remarkable in many ways: it hauled on board every single aspect of the deception and even launched a corresponding deception plan to reinforce it. But perhaps most astonishing of all was the ringing endorsement that accompanied the appraisal: “The circumstances of the discovery, together with the form and contents of the despatches, are absolutely convincing proof of the reliability of the letters.” The army’s chief intelligence analyst, from the outset, utterly dismissed the possibility of a plant.

This was, to say the least, strange. The analysts of FHW usually distrusted uncorroborated information emanating directly from the Abwehr, knowing the inefficiency and corruption of that organization, and tended to be skeptical of Abwehr revelations “unless these were clearly corroborated by more tangible evidence.” Von Roenne’s natural caution seems to have deserted him. He knew only what the Madrid Abwehr station had told him about the discovery of the body, which was secondhand information derived through Adolf Clauss. The report detailing the results of the second meeting with Pardo on May 10 had not yet reached Berlin. No additional checks had been made, the body had not been examined, and the original documents had remained in German hands for only one hour, far too short a time for forensic testing. And yet he chose to describe the documents as incontrovertibly genuine.

Deception is a sort of seduction. In love and war, adultery and espionage, deceit can only succeed if the deceived party is willing, in some way, to be deceived. The betrayed lover sees only the signs of love and blocks out the evidence of faithlessness, however glaring. This unconscious willingness to see the lie as truth—“wishfulness” was Admiral Godfrey’s word for it—comes in many forms: Adolf Clauss in Huelva wanted to believe the false documents because his reputation depended on believing them; for Karl-Erich Kühlenthal, any intelligence breakthrough to his credit, no matter how fantastic, made him safer, a Jew among anti-Semitic killers. Von Roenne, however, may have chosen to believe in the fake documents for an entirely different reason: because he loathed Hitler, wanted to undermine the Nazi war effort, and was intent on passing false information to the high command in the certain knowledge that it was wholly false and extremely damaging.

It is quite possible that Lieutenant Colonel Alexis Baron von Roenne did not believe the Mincemeat deception for an instant.

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by Joel | 16 February 2026 · 1:08 am

Royal Navy Asset in Spain, 1943

From Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory, by Ben Macintyre (Crown, 2010), Kindle pp. 102-104:

A cable was sent to Captain Alan Hillgarth, the naval attaché at the Madrid embassy and Churchill’s intelligence chief in Spain, asking him to send a trusted lieutenant to London for an urgent conference. Salvador Augustus Gómez-Beare, assistant naval attaché at the British Embassy in Madrid, duly presented himself at the Admiralty, fresh off the plane from Madrid, and was ushered into Room 13.

Gómez-Beare, universally known by his nickname “Don,” was an Anglo-Spaniard from Gibraltar who perfectly straddled the two cultures. He was a British citizen, enjoyed a large private income, spoke pure upper-class English, and displayed impeccable English manners and habits as only someone who is not English can. He played bridge with Ian Fleming at the Portland Club and golf all year round. But in Spain he was Spanish and brown-skinned, spoke with a southern accent, and was invisible. In 1914, as a medical student in Philadelphia, he had volunteered to join the British army, and spent two years in the trenches before joining the Royal Flying Corps. During the Spanish civil war he had “worked in military intelligence for Franco’s army.” Gómez-Beare could reach places no Englishman could penetrate, “a Spaniard to Spaniards and an Englishman to the English, who served England with an intensity and thoroughness that no mere Anglo-Saxon could attain.” Hillgarth had recruited him in 1939, initially suggesting he be given the rank of captain in the Royal Marines “because of his enormous RAF moustache.” He was given the rank of lieutenant commander in the RNVR on condition he shave and despite having “no more than a smattering of sea experience,” but from the start of the war, Gómez-Beare could be found “padding about Madrid, driving up to San Sebastian, flitting over to Barcelona, hovering about Gibraltar, and smuggling British airmen out of France.” When Airey Neave escaped from Colditz in 1942, it was Gómez-Beare who smuggled him across the border to Gibraltar. He had a villa in Seville, a flat in Madrid, and spies in every corner of Spain. Gómez-Beare was Hillgarth’s primary recruiter and runner of secret agents.

Alan Hillgarth, as a senior member of the embassy staff in a neutral country, could not be seen to engage directly in espionage or recruit spies, but Gómez-Beare was under no such constraints. In Hillgarth’s words, he was “exceptionally favoured by character40 and linguistic attainments to cultivate such people, and in the majority of cases his contacts would not have agreed to work with anyone else.” Gómez-Beare’s spies ran through the Spanish bureaucracy like veins through marble: he had agents in the Spanish police, the security service, the Ministry of the Interior, the General Staff, and every branch of the military. He had informants in high society and low, from the salons of Madrid to the docks of Cádiz. These spies never met one another and only ever made contact through Gómez-Beare himself. “He was invaluable,” said Hillgarth. “It was he who handled our special contacts. His loyalty and discretion are unequalled and the Spaniards, particularly the Spanish Navy, love him.”

The Germans, by contrast, did not love Don Gómez-Beare. Britain’s assistant naval attaché narrowly escaped being blown up by a car bomb during a clandestine visit to Lisbon. Madrid was a festering nest of espionage and counterespionage, and for four years a fierce war had raged between British spies and German spies in Spain, undeclared, unofficial, and unrelenting. Both sides deployed bribery and corruption on a lavish scale. Abwehr agents spied on their British counterparts, who responded in kind; the Spaniards spied on both sides, rather inefficiently. At first, the odds seemed stacked against the British. The Germans simply had too many advantages, with numerous “privileges and facilities (of course unofficially)” provided by willing Spanish collaborators. The Abwehr infiltrated all branches of the civil service, police, government, and even business. But with time, the contest leveled out, as Hillgarth and Gómez-Beare extended their web of informants through a combination of charm, bribery, and skulduggery. “Spain contained a large number of German agents and plenty of Spaniards in German pay,” wrote Hillgarth. “They had some ingenious ideas. We did our best to learn their plans, and to some extent succeeded.” In this febrile atmosphere, it was impossible to be sure who was spying for whom. “Madrid was full of spies,” wrote Hillgarth. “No one is watched all the time, but everyone is watched some of the time.”

And no one was watched more closely, or better at watching, than Don Gómez-Beare.

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by Joel | 26 September 2025 · 5:31 pm

Loss of Portugal’s Flagship, 1512

From Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire, by Roger Crowley (Random House, 2015), Kindle pp. 268-271:

The Frol de la Mar was one of the trophy ships of the Portuguese fleet. At four hundred tons, it was the largest carrack yet built; equipped with forty cannons, distributed on three decks, its stacked high stern and forecastle made it an intimidating presence among the dhows of the Indian Ocean—a floating fortress that could fire in all directions. At the battle of Diu, it had slammed six hundred cannonballs into the Egyptian fleet in the course of a single day, but its size made it awkward to maneuver in tricky conditions, and it was now old. The average life of a ship on the India run was perhaps four years; the battering of the long voyages and the ravages of the teredo worm turned stout planks to pulp in a short time. By 1512 the Frol had been at sea for ten. It was seriously leaky and required continuous patching and pumping. Albuquerque wanted to nurse it back to Cochin and conduct repairs, but the common consensus was that the ship was a death trap. Many of those leaving flatly refused to sail in it. Only the formidable confidence of the governor ensured a crew. Because of its size, it carried the bulk of the treasure as well as many of the sick and wounded and some slaves as presents for the queen.

…

The Frol was in trouble, now leaking badly and unable to maneuver with the burden of its cargo and the growing weight of water. It had also anchored to ride out the storm, but water was coming in so fast that the pumps were useless. According to Empoli, “another wave struck it, and the rudder broke off, and it swung sideways and ran aground. It immediately filled with water; the crew gathered on the poop deck, and stood there awaiting God’s mercy.” It was time to abandon ship. Albuquerque ordered some of the masts cut down and lashed together to make a crude raft. The sick and wounded were put in the one ship’s boat, while the remaining crewmen were transferred to the raft in a rowboat. Albuquerque, with one rope tied around his waist and the other tethered to the Frol, steered the skiff back and forward until all the Portuguese had been taken off. Disciplined to the last, he ordered all to leave the ship in just jacket and breeches; anyone who wanted to keep any possessions could stay behind. As for the slaves, they could fend for themselves. Their only recourse was jumping into the sea; those who could not swim drowned. Some were able to cling to the raft but were prevented at the point of a spear from climbing aboard and overloading it. At sea, it was always survival of the most important. Behind them the Frol broke in two, so that only her poop deck and mainmast were visible above the water. The ship’s boat and the raft drifted through the night, “and so they stayed with their souls in their mouths begging God’s mercy, until dawn, when the wind and the sea abated.”

…

In the Frol “was lost a greater wealth of gold and jewels than were ever lost in any part of India, or ever would be.” All of this had vanished into the depths, besides the gems and bars of gold intended for the king and queen, along with beautiful slaves drowned in the catastrophe and the bronze lions Albuquerque had reserved for his own memorial. And there was something else, equally precious to the geographically hungry Portuguese as they attempted to take more and more of the world into their comprehension and their grasp. It was a fabulous world map, of which only a portion survived. Albuquerque lamented its loss to the king:

a great map drawn by a Javanese pilot, which showed the Cape of Good Hope, Portugal and the land of Brazil, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, the spice islands, the sailing routes of the Chinese and the people of Formosa [Taiwan], with the rhumbs [lines marking compass bearings] and the courses taken by their ships and the interiors of the various kingdoms which border on each other. It seems to me, sire, that it’s the best thing I’ve ever seen, and Your Highness would have been delighted to see it. The place names are written in the Javanese script. I had a Javanese who knew how to read and write it. I send this fragment…in which Your Highness will be able to see where the Chinese and the Formosans really come from, and the routes your ships must take to the spice islands, and where the gold mines are, the islands of Java and Banda, source of nutmeg and mace, and the kingdom of Siam, and also the extent of Chinese navigation, where they return to and the point beyond which they don’t voyage. The main map was lost in the Frol de la Mar.

But Albuquerque was already using the new bridgehead of Malacca to seek out and explore these seas for himself. He sent embassies to Pegu (Bago in Burma), Siam (Thailand), and Sumatra; an expedition visited and mapped the spice islands of eastern Indonesia in 1512; reaching farther east, ships sent to China in 1513 and 1515 landed at Canton and sought trade relations with the Ming dynasty. He was tying together the farthest ends of the world, fulfilling everything [King] Manuel could demand.

Unfortunately for the Portuguese, these bold extensions had unforeseen consequences. The Malacca strike had been partially undertaken to snuff out Spanish ambitions in the Far East. Instead it provided the personnel, the information, and the maps to advance them. Among those at Malacca was Fernão de Magalhães (Magellan); he returned to Portugal, wealthy from the booty, with a Sumatran slave, baptized as Henrique. When Magalhães quarreled with King Manuel and defected to Spain, he took Henrique with him, as well as Portuguese maps of the spice islands and detailed letters from a friend who had made the voyage. All these he put to use a few years later in the first circumnavigation of the world, under the flag of Spain, during which Henrique was to prove an invaluable interpreter—knowledge that allowed Portugal’s rival to claim the spice islands of the East Indies as its own.

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Filed under education, migration, military, Portugal, religion, slavery, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Spain, war

by Joel | 6 September 2025 · 1:31 am

Bolívar Recalibrates National Identity

From Venezuela’s Collapse: The Long Story of How Things Fell Apart, by Carlos Lizarralde (Codex Novellus, 2024), Kindle pp. 203-205:

By 1819 Bolívar delivered the justly famous Angostura speech to the second Venezuelan Congress. What he said then laid out a plan based on Boves’ insight into colonial society. For years, the Angostura text has been read as an example of a centralizing Bolívar advocating for a strong state that accommodates patrician institutions like a hereditary House of Lords. The most radical aspect of the speech is seldom mentioned.

Going well beyond what he had written in the Cartagena Manifesto, Bolívar seeks to explain the fragmentation and hatred within the colonial territories. Many decades before Vallenilla Lanz and Uslar Pietri had articulated the fracture at the country’s heart, he already speaks of a society on the verge of falling apart: “The diversity of origin requires an infinitely firm grip, an infinitely delicate tact to manage this heterogenous society whose complicated artifice can be dislocated, divided, and dissolved with the slightest altercation.”

The key phrase is “diversity of origin,” which acknowledged at the very beginning of the 1800s that Venezuela was, at its core, a multi-ethnic and multi-racial society. The explanation goes into considerable detail,

“We must be aware that our people are not Europeans, or North Americans: they’re a composite of Africa and the Americas rather than a product of Europe; even Spain itself is no longer European due to its African blood, its institutions and its character. It is impossible to properly decide to which human family we belong. The largest part of the indigenous population has been annihilated, the European has mixed with those of the Americas and those of Africa, and they have mixed with Indians and with Europeans …”

No one had ever described the facts and uncertainties of ethnic and racial differences in this way. Boves’ de facto solution had been to promote the extermination of all whites. Creole society’s program sought to reenact the colonial caste system. Many ignored the issue and pretended it was not relevant. As the years went by and a battery of constitutions dismantled the caste system’s nominal rules, and later, slavery, most of the country’s intellectual establishment chose to ignore the subject.

The speech’s enduring passage defines the conundrum faced by countries in the Caribbean basin: “our parents, different in origin and blood, are foreigners, and all have visibly different skin: the dissimilarity brings a challenge of the highest order.” In the context of his time, and that of many decades after him, Bolívar proposes a radical solution: “The blood of our fellow citizens is different. Let’s mix it in order to unify it …”

The speech promotes a mixed-race country with a historical dimension and a spiritual path. Boves’ men had lived their day-to-day in a new kind of army: multi-ethnic, horizontal, and devoid of rankings based on skin color or national origin. This had been a revolutionary social experiment. Bolívar wanted a society based on that model and included his ethnic group in the mix.

While the concept of nation proposed at Angostura had nothing to do with the Creole ideals of the older Cartagena Manifesto, Bolívar continued to advocate for a powerful ruler and a centralizing seat of power.

The speech summarizes the late Bolívar’s prescription for the country: fuse all nations and races and ethnicities into a new brown Venezuelan identity and superimpose a powerful central state to combat factionalism and special interests.

Although this was never clearly stated, one hundred years later Rómulo Betancourt founded his political project upon those ideas. Acción Democrática would create a vast and centralized welfare state unimaginable to Bolívar in its scope, reach, and sheer power. And the party and its leaders would work tirelessly to create one nation around the idea of Juan Bimba, a racially mixed John Doe that stood for the average (and ideal) Venezuelan.