Category Archives: religion

by Joel | 22 August 2026 · 6:13 am

Languages of Nusantaria

From Empire of the Winds: The Global Role of Asia’s Great Archipelago, by Philip Bowring (I.B. Tauris, 2018), Kindle pp. 29-31:

Language is also a divide between maritime and mainland. The island and peninsula people all speak very similar atonal Austronesian languages, as did those of much of Vietnam and Taiwan until relatively recent times. Mainland South East Asia on the other hand is the domain of Austro-Asiatic, Thai and Sinitic languages, all of them tonal.

Maritime and mainland have some history in common, with the sea as a link. But they are otherwise divided by geography. The mainland has broad, fertile river basins such as the Mekong, Ayeyarwady and Chao Phraya, and are able to support large populations and urban development. The islands are often mountainous, with a limited amount of good alluvial and volcanic soil and many experiencing excessive rainfall that leaches the soil. Their populations tend to be small and their political entities fragmented. Vast China has mostly looked inward. It has always generated much of the trade which supported the maritime states. Its coastal people have long interacted with the Nanyang, but China overall shares limited history and culture with Nusantaria.

As boatbuilders and navigators the maritime peoples were also suppliers and carriers of the spices and tropical forest merchandise which attracted global demand. These successively brought Indian culture, Muslim religion and western domination in their wake.

This is also the story of their seafaring gifts to the world, with many ideas copied by or exchanged with India, Arabia, China and the west. It is a story of their adaptation of imported artistic, religious and political ideas to their own circumstances, and accomplishments such as the Borobudur temple. This is the story of communities mostly living on or close to the sea, of loose and changing political entities but communities sharing common cultural traits, such as cockfighting, betel chewing and the takraw ball game. They have the same linguistic roots and have long been reliant on trade with each other as well as with the outside world. Traditionally, the sea was for many the primary means of survival and transport. Apart from in Java and Bali, where fertile soil and self-sufficiency accounted for what have been called their ‘quiet habits and contented dispositions’, the island peoples were ‘maritime and commercial, devoted to speculation of gain, animated by a spirit of adventure, and attached to distant and hazardous enterprises’. The bigger picture was that neither Java nor the myriad other islands could be important without the interaction between them.

The transience of states is one reason why the region’s history is poorly known. Modern states prefer to build their own identities, which may require ignoring the past, especially if it is inconvenient in the context of religious, border and other contemporary issues. Another is the lack of pre-colonial written history. Of the little that exists almost all comes from outside sources, many of which make references to places whose identity can only be guessed at. Yet another is the absence of major archaeological remains other than temples, and they are significant only in Java and coastal Vietnam. Indigenous work such as writings on palm leaves and palaces of wood rotted away long ago.

Modern archaeology and attendant scientific advances in genetics and the origin of materials are gradually filling some gaps. Aerial photography and new dating systems are gradually adding to knowledge. But there remain huge blank spaces between the written references to cities, power and wealth found in foreign texts and what can be proven. Even archaeology can mislead. Ceramics are a favoured marker because they survive better than any man-made product, but that can lead to an over-emphasis on the importance of particular designs as cultural markers, or on the role of China as principal exporter in historic times. Almost certainly, cotton textiles and forest products were for centuries the prime traded goods, not ceramics. Even bones decay quickly in tropical climates and acidic soils.

A vast amount of scholarly material exists on specific topics, such as ceramics, linguistics, genetics, boatbuilding, religious art, anthropology, folk myths, music and botany, as well as on the various written sources. Weaving the strands of knowledge – not to mention the many areas of academic disagreement – into a readable but coherent whole is the goal of this book written by a non-specialist who acknowledges his debt to the many experts cited in the footnotes and bibliography. Such a book for the general reader is needed, to acknowledge better the peoples of Nusantaria’s shared identity and their role in world history.

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Filed under economics, language, migration, Philippines, religion, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Taiwan

by Joel | 21 August 2026 · 7:08 am

Naming ‘Maritime Southeast Asia’

From Empire of the Winds: The Global Role of Asia’s Great Archipelago, by Philip Bowring (I.B. Tauris, 2018), Kindle pp. 29-31:

This region is often referred to as ‘maritime South East Asia’, with the more general term ‘South East Asia’ dating only to World War II. Although Japan used the term ‘Tonan Ajiya’ (‘South East Asia’ [lit. ‘East South Asia’]) from the late nineteenth century, in European languages its use did not become widespread until the 1950s, bringing together mainland states between China and India with the islands. The formation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1967 added to the notion that mainland and maritime were one, yet in practice they have divergent interests and religion, now as in the past.

Europeans had long termed the islands the ‘Indian archipelago’ or ‘Insulindia’. Alternatively they referred to them as the ‘Malay archipelago’, neither term distinguishing between the Indonesian and Philippine island groups. The area corresponded roughly to ‘Nusantara’, a name dating to the thirteenth century and the Java-based Majapahit empire. Nusa is a Sanskrit-derived word meaning ‘island’.

‘Nusantara’ defined the region of islands and coasts over which Majapahit rule, tribute or mercantile influence extended. It covered most of what is now Indonesia, part of the Philippine archipelago, the central Vietnam coast and the Malay peninsula. Beyond its Javanese heart it did not rule directly but held sway over the many small mercantile states of the region. ‘Nusantara’ in Malay today has a narrower meaning: ‘archipelago’, specifically the Indonesian archipelago. So this book uses ‘Nusantaria’ to denote a broader zone, the single maritime region between the northern entrance to the Melaka and Luzon straits, and the Banda islands in the extreme east of the archipelago. While predominantly describing the wider Malay world, and touching too on Taiwan, Madagascar and the Marianas, Nusantaria links to the coastal Thai, Chinese, Tamil and other players in the history of the exchange of goods, people and ideas both within the region and with peoples to the west and north-east. It corresponds also to the use by the distinguished archaeologist of South East Asia, Wilhelm Solheim, of the term ‘Nusantao’ to define the mostly Austronesian-speaking peoples of the ancient trading networks of the islands and coasts (tao means people in many Austronesian languages).

The maritime zone is now mostly associated with its largest component, the South China Sea. But even that is a misnomer. The Chinese themselves used the term ‘Nanhai’ or ‘Nanyang’ (‘South Sea’ or ‘Southern Ocean’) for seas that included the South China Sea but could also refer to southern seas generally. Likewise, the Vietnamese used geographical location, calling it the ‘East Sea’ as it lay to their east. More recently and in response to Chinese claims to almost the whole sea, the Philippines has begun to refer to at least its adjacent water as the ‘West Philippine Sea’. The term ‘Philippine Sea’ had been used by early seventeenth-century European mapmakers. Indonesia refers to its portion as the Natuna Sea, after the island group of that name off the Borneo coast. This includes its archipelagic seas north of the islands, which fall within China’s extravagant claims to sea extending 1,600 kilometres from its mainland.

The name ‘South China Sea’ is a European invention of relatively recent date. When the Portuguese first got there in the sixteenth century they called it the ‘Cham Sea’, after the mercantile state which had long existed on the coast of what is now central Vietnam. Arabs at one time called the southern part of it the ‘Malay Sea’ or the ‘Spice Sea’ because it was close to the Spice Islands.5 The more northern part was known as the ‘Sanf Sea’, a reference to Champa.6 Others called it the ‘Luzon Sea’ after the main island of today’s Philippines. Westerners long referred to these seas as part of the Indian Seas. The name ‘Indonesia’ (‘Indian islands’) reflects this. ‘China Sea’ only came into western use around 1800. ‘South’ was added in the early twentieth century.

A few hundred years ago, before the territorial expansion of China to Taiwan and southwards by Vietnam, Nusantaria was almost entirely Malay – to use the term ‘Malay’ in its broad cultural and linguistic sense. Even today these generic Malays of the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei own most of its coastline. They are peoples who have traded with and occasionally paid tribute to China, and have absorbed Chinese immigration but, at least until very recently, have been more influenced by ideas from India, the Arab and Persian worlds and Europe than by China.

To the Chinese, the whole region was the ‘Nanyang’, meaning ‘Southern Sea’, a region inhabited by darker-skinned people and thus often seen as inferior in a system that associated skin tone with social status. For many Indians it was an overseas extension of their Hindu-Buddhist culture. Even now the marks left by Indian religion, writing and art are more evident than those of China. As for the peoples who actually lived in this region, they mostly saw it in terms of individual entities, of spheres of political influence, religion and trade, which had long been linked through dynasties and rivalries.

The maritime zone now comprises two modern archipelagic states: all of the Philippines and most of Indonesia, Brunei and the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak on Borneo. To these island entities must be added the Malay peninsula, where Malays remain in charge, and, until quite recently, much of coastal Vietnam. These last two share similarities to the island states because their peoples are wedged between forest and water and so traditionally looked seaward.

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Filed under China, economics, language, migration, nationalism, Philippines, religion, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Taiwan

by Joel | 20 August 2026 · 4:17 pm

Empire of the Winds Introduction

From Empire of the Winds: The Global Role of Asia’s Great Archipelago, by Philip Bowring (I.B. Tauris, 2018), Kindle pp. 27-29:

In 1498 the crew of the ships of Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama became the first people known to sail between Europe and India, landing at Calicut on the south-west coast of India. By 1512, the long arm of Portuguese merchant adventurism had reached almost 5,000 kilometres further, to its ultimate eastern destination, the Banda archipelago, most distant of the fabled Spice Islands.

But this historically crucial surge of European expansion was a minor navigational achievement compared with those of the maritime peoples whose lives the Portuguese were now disrupting. Some 1,500 years earlier sailors from this region had pioneered voyages which linked the Spice Islands to India and China and on to the coasts of Arabia and Africa. These were the pioneers who settled Madagascar, traded along the African coast and may well have sailed around the Cape of Good Hope and north as far as the Gulf of Guinea.

By 500 CE, and probably earlier, the sea, not the more famous overland Silk Road, was the pre-eminent mode of east–west trade. The sea was unquestionably hazardous, but it was easier and sometimes quicker to move 50 tonnes of goods on a ship compared with having to lead camels and pack animals over mountains and deserts, fending off robber bands, and across political boundaries where rulers were eager to extract tolls. According to Roman estimates it was 27 times more expensive to transport goods by land rather than water. Similar estimates were made for eighteenth-century Europe.

It was these sailors who guided the Portuguese from Melaka to the Bandas. That was a journey through the heart of a zone which rivals the Mediterranean as a locus of global trade and cultural interaction. This region comprises the almost countless islands and coastlines of the interlinked South China, Java, Sulu, Sulawesi and Banda seas and is joined to the Indian and Pacific oceans by the straits of Melaka, Sunda, Lombok, Makassar and Luzon. Its land is primarily composed of the islands of the vast Malay archipelago but includes the Malay peninsula and touches modern Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, as well as southern coastal China. India is a hop away across the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal.

This is a story of seafaring, of the drivers of global commerce, of cultural interchange and of the rise and fall of states and political systems. It is the story of a sea-girt region that remains predominantly Austronesian-Malay by language and original culture but has been subject to successive waves of influence from India, Islam, the west and China. It is the story of a sea which enabled ancient Rome to know cloves and camphor, of sailboats and of navigators who linked Maluku to the Bab el Mandeb and the coast of Africa and settled Madagascar. While ships and goods moved westward other ships and merchants moved eastward, bringing Indian and Islamic cultures to east Asia. Trade in spices was also the spur to Europe’s involvement in the region, which began more than 500 years ago. Nusantaria lost its leadership in boatbuilding and navigation, but to this day remains at the heart of global commerce, supplying some 40 per cent of merchant marine crews.

Despite its illustrious past, the region’s sense of identity is not what it was even in the 1880s when mariner and novelist Joseph Conrad was sailing its seas and José Rizal was awakening the nationalist aspirations of a wider Malay world. Steamships, airplanes and, above all, new nation states created from maps drawn haphazardly by western empires have eroded its sense of itself. Religious divisions have done the same. The economic dominance of western and east Asian countries has for now marginalized indigenous Nusantarian strengths. Many books of ‘South East Asian’ history are written with scant, if any, acknowledgment of the separate identity of the Austronesian linguistic and cultural heritage of the islands and coasts. For their different reasons, Indian, western and Chinese writers tend to generalize about ‘South East Asia’ mainly by reference to the mainland. Although the populations of states of the archipelago and Malay peninsula outnumber by 40 per cent those of the mainland they receive far less attention, partly because of a shortage of early documentary history.

But nothing can obliterate the common history and shared culture of the maritime region. So this is a book which largely ignores modern state boundaries to give a picture over time of the region, of the role of the sea and of the peoples who have lived near its shores for the past 2,500 or so years.

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

by Joel | 19 August 2026 · 9:21 am

Migration into Mindanao

From The Making of the Modern Philippines: Pieces of a Jigsaw State, by Philip Bowring (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), Kindle pp. 183-187:

The island of Mindanao is the most misunderstood part of the nation. Decades of on and off conflict in its Muslim region has long stolen the headlines. Under President Duterte, this provided an excuse for declaring martial law over the whole island. The reality is that for decades the island proved a land of opportunity for hundreds of thousands who moved from over-populated islands, mostly the Visayas, to the relatively underpopulated Mindanao…. Movement from the Visayas to Mindanao long pre-dates the Spanish.

…

The big boost to settlement came with the Commonwealth government, President Quezon recognizing the agricultural and forestry potential of the region as a way to underpin the national economy and raise the Christian population to counterbalance the Moros.

…

The big boost to settlement came with the Commonwealth government, President Quezon recognizing the agricultural and forestry potential of the region as a way to underpin the national economy and raise the Christian population to counterbalance the Moros.

…

The Davao region, meanwhile, had attracted large numbers of Japanese to develop timber and plantation industries and Davao city was on its way to becoming the largest in Mindanao, with far more Japanese than Americans. Japanese ran shops, restaurants, fish canneries and export enterprises, often with sleeping Filipino partners to get around alien laws. The 1930s Japanese-led developments were key to making Davao the premier city of the island that it soon became. Although many Japanese left in 1945, their lands and enterprises were quickly taken over by immigrants from the Visayas and Luzon.

…

The scale of the internal colonization after 1935 was only partly a result of colonial rule or the Quezon initiatives. The underlying demographic driver was that because of improved government in the late Spanish period, and the impact of the US on public health, the population in the Visayas and Luzon in particular grew exceptionally fast. The people of Mindanao had far more land than they were able to occupy and cultivate.

…

Worst off have been the Surigao provinces where few benefit from mining and forest wealth. The Paper Industries Corporation of the Philippines (PICOP) once employed more than 10,000 people in and around Bislig on the coast of Surigao del Sur. At its peak it was the biggest pulp and paper operation in Asia.

…

Caraga encapsulates many of the problems of the wider nation. In theory, it is endowed with great forests, well-watered lowlands and lakes, a variety of mineral deposits, a coastline which offers opportunities for fisheries, and beaches and scenery to lure tourists. The regional capital, Butuan, is the oldest identifiable city in the country, dating back more than 1,000 years and with trading links to Java and China. In recent times, however, Butuan has been overshadowed by the growth not only of Davao City but also Cagayan de Oro to the west.

…

One large mining company, Nickel Asia, operates modern mines but much mining is small- to medium-scale and uncontrolled, raising little if any revenue for the government while polluting rivers and lakes.

Well, this will have to be my last post from this book, since I’ve nearly reached the publisher’s limit for copying. (I appreciate the warnings when I hit 80% of the limit.) The book has a fair number of little proofreading errors, and navigation to the helpful maps on the Kindle often drops you back into the Table of Contents. But the author covers a wide range of topics in great detail.

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Filed under economics, industry, Japan, language, migration, military, Philippines, religion, U.S.

by Joel | 18 August 2026 · 5:01 pm

Overseas Filipino Workers

From The Making of the Modern Philippines: Pieces of a Jigsaw State, by Philip Bowring (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), Kindle pp. 157-158, 164:

Economic and social failures combine with demography to create the issue for which Filipino people are world-renowned – migration. Of all the populous nations of the world which rely heavily on migrant remittances – Bangladesh, Egypt, Mexico, etc. – none equals the Philippines either in its contribution to GDP (9 per cent) or in the diversity of its migrants or the range of the locations where they make their livings. Even the range of their occupations may come as a surprise to those overseas who may tend to identify them with specific occupations such as domestic helper or seafarer.

There are indeed plenty – 20–25 per cent each – in both of those categories but at least until the pandemic, the world had witnessed nearly five decades of steady expansion in both numbers and locations. By 2019, the total employed overseas and on ships had reached about 2 million. In addition, there has been a steady stream of permanent migrants, mostly to the US and Canada but also to Australia, and, more recently, Japan, the United Kingdom, Italy and other European countries. The US community has been growing steadily for decades and now totals some 4.1 million, roughly half migrants and half locally born. There are about 1.6 million in California though at 13 per cent, Hawaii has the highest percentage of the state population, partly reflecting the migration of agricultural workers in the 1930s (see Chapter 3). The established communities of settled migrants in high income countries have been as important a source of remittances as those of the OFWs on contracts. Permanent migrants also on average have higher qualifications than OFWs. Although their links to the motherland may gradually weaken, higher incomes ensure continuing large scale financial support.

…

As for permanent migrants, the relative ease with which they have melded into their new nation works against developing strong community organizations. They are for example far less visible than Chinese in California, though their numbers are only a little less. The organizations that they create among themselves are mostly based on province or other local identity not on the notion of Filipino. Further complicating their self-identity is the reluctance of many to be identified as Asian, which many, at least in the US, associate with being Chinese, Korean or Japanese. Culturally, many feel closer to Latinos or South Pacific Islanders because of Church and language links. That most permanent migrants have gone to English-speaking countries has had an impact back home. It helps sustain some of the links and cultural affinities created by 350 years of Spanish and American rule. Awareness of common linguistic and cultural bonds to Malay neighbours, Indonesia and Malaysia, is weak despite the legacy of Rizal and of Macapagal’s Maphilindo proposal.

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by Joel | 15 August 2026 · 8:11 am

Centralism vs. Federalism in Philippines

From The Making of the Modern Philippines: Pieces of a Jigsaw State, by Philip Bowring (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), Kindle pp. 128-130:

The 1987 Constitution was intended to promote ‘maximum decentralization short of federalization’. It was imprecise about decentralization of public finances, merely referring to ‘just shares’ and allowing local taxation subject to rules made by Congress. It also provided for significant devolution of functions and to enable this a 1991 law saw allocation of 40 per cent of the Bureau of Internal Revenue collection go to local government units (LGUs). This was further allocated by a complex formula to 23 per cent for provinces and cities, 34 per cent for municipalities and 20 per cent for barangays. The law also set rules for taxes on property, mining and other local economic activity.

…

In the Philippines, the decision-making power of the executive was centralized, the administrative sinews needed for implementation were weak. So, too, was the justice system, a mix of Spanish and US influences. In principle, it was centralized with all judges, including those at the lowest level, the Municipal Trial Courts, chosen by Manila. In practice, however, local politics played a role in the choice of judges. The reputation of the court system for corruption and delay was a further obstacle to administrative efficacy.

Discussion of federalism has long been impeded by the assumption that it requires a change in the constitution. That in turn raises fears of presidents trying to perpetuate themselves by changing to a parliamentary system or allowing two terms. The existing constitution allows for autonomous zones in Muslim regions – the ARRM predates 1987 – and the Cordillera, home to various indigenous groups in northern Luzon. However, Cordillera autonomy has never happened thanks to a lack of unity. It remains possible within the constitution for Congress to grant more administrative and fiscal power to all regions or provinces. However, even if desirable in principle there are fears that perpetuate, even strengthen, dynastic dominance. Would it spread national wealth better, or simply increase divisions between the city hubs and the resource rich areas on the one hand and the rest of the country on the other?

There was an argument that the Philippines needed more centralization, not less. The gap between policy made in Manila and its implementation was partly due to the inadequacies of central ministries but also to the small size, politicization and frequent corruption of local government units. Regional councils could collect data, advise and make plans which cover provinces and cities, but they have no decision-making or implementing authority. Whilst there has, naturally, been a desire by the members of the House to see an increase in LGU funding by Manila, there have been differing views on whether local spending power is more or less productive. The existing regions have been a starting point for discussing the federal system, but are seventeen regions (including the BARMM [B = Bangsamoro ‘Moro Nation’] and Cordillera) too many? Or too few – Sulu for example wanted its own, separate from the BARMM? Or was division by geography not in keeping with any real sense of identity?

The existing regions are also imbalanced with the contiguous National Capital Region, Central Luzon and Calabarzon (Southern Tagalog) all far more populous than others. As of 2015 Calabarzon, had a population of 14 million, Caraga 3 million. Little of the discussion on federalism has got to grips with the issues of indigenous peoples (IPs) or lumads as they are known in Mindanao. The need for protection of their land and language rights has long been accepted in principle but in practice remains subject to erosion and conflict. They are too numerous to be ignored but too disparate to make into coherent units as the failure to establish autonomy for the Cordillera has shown. Despite the fact that, with the exception of the pre-Austronesian [Aeta/Agta] groups, they are no more or less indigenous than the average rice farmer from Tarlac. Yet the IPs are often treated as inferior citizens, lacking the ‘civilization’ of those more impacted by the centuries of colonial rule. In effect, they are subject to abuse with their schools ‘red-tagged’, communal lands seized by settlers and plantation owners, and their leaders accused of supporting the NPA. Alternatively, they may be subject to well-meaning paternalism by earnest NGOs which emphasizes their differences not their similarities to the wider population. The use of English in education and official documents also diminishes the role of the national language and hence the identity of regional languages whether widespread like Cebuano or confined to small IP communities.

The basic argument for federalism is that the Philippines’ fragmented geography made centralization costly and inefficient. It was unresponsive to differing local needs and was a dampener on local initiatives and was unable to harness regional pride in a country where a sense of regional identity was strong – as senate elections also showed. It limited competition between regions and held up resource development.

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by Joel | 14 August 2026 · 8:33 am

Decline Under Marcos

From The Making of the Modern Philippines: Pieces of a Jigsaw State, by Philip Bowring (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), Kindle pp. 73-74:

Politically, most of the country was quiet for the first years of martial law. Local politicians were left alone but there was no national stage on which they could play. Central power was increased by the amalgamation of the Philippine Constabulary and local police forces into the Philippine National Police. A few young idealists fled to the hills and the NPA after the imposition of martial law and the urban intelligentsia muttered dissent but there was no sign of any general opposition movement gaining a hold. [Ninoy] Aquino remained in jail and in 1977 was sentenced to death by a military tribunal, but US pressure ensured that this would not be carried out and after the US secured a new bases agreement in 1979, he was allowed to leave the country for medical attention.

An interim National Assembly (Batasang Pambansa) was finally established in 1978 but consisted largely of KBL members, though a Visayan opposition group headed by Hilario Davide, later chief justice, remarkably beat a KBL candidate backed by the Osmenas and other big local families. In Manila, evidence at local polling stations suggested there were far more votes for opposition candidates than were officially reported.

The military, meanwhile, was ever more focused on internal strife, initially mostly in Muslim Mindanao/Sulu. Demand for a separate Moro state had existed before martial law partly, driven by conflict between Muslims and Christian settlers from the Visayas…. By 1975, rebels dominated the countryside and cities such as Marawi, and Cotabato could only be accessed by army-protected convoys.

Eventually the military gained the upper hand and a semblance of peace was established using Libya as an intermediary with Muslims promised autonomy in the so-called Tripoli Agreement. However, the Moros split in 1977, some, led by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) of Hashim Salamat continued the fight and then the MNLF did so too. The MILF was Maguindanao-based and less secular than the MNLF in outlook. Intermittent lower scale actions became the norm.

The Moro issues were geographically contained and far from Manila. The NPA was another matter. Its original base area was close to Manila but it also realized the need for de-centralizing its activities if it were to prosper in the martial law era when it could no longer do deals with local politicians and was vulnerable to concerted military action. … By the early 1980s, it was estimated that about 15 per cent of the population lived in areas controlled or heavily influenced by the NPA and where businesses routinely paid taxes to it for protection.

The Catholic Church hierarchy, fearful of secular nationalism and socialism had originally been quietly supportive of Marcos, but with the appointment of Jaime Sin as archbishop (later Cardinal) of Manila in 1974, a more critical attitude prevailed. At the same time, priests in some areas, being aware of the suffering of the poor, became sympathetic towards the NPA.

However, the fundamental cause of the eventual collapse of the regime was economic failure driven by debts, domestic and foreign, incurred in supporting the Marcos family, the crony companies, and Imelda’s ongoing passion for show and monuments. The technocrats like the foreign bankers for long continued to believe that, for all its faults, it was no more corrupt but more efficient than the Old Society. … The years 1979 to 1980 saw another global oil crisis with the price per barrel doubling within a year. This hit at least as hard for the Philippines as the 1973/74 crisis because other commodity prices did not follow and the country was already too deeply in debt to offset its negative impact.

A bigger problem was the local banking industry’s excessive loans to cronies. In 1981, the mid-sized group of Chinese financier Dewey Dee, which thrived on the crony fringe, collapsed leaving huge debts, including to the Herdis group. As the house of cards then gradually collapsed, Herdis, then Cuenca’s CDCP and Silverio’s Delta Group had to be taken over by the government. The technocrats were seen to have gained ground against the cronies and some banks were closed, but crony debt, much in dollars borrowed from the Development Bank, was in effect nationalized.

Even this weight on an already struggling economy might have been bearable but for the shock of August 1983. Deciding to return to the Philippines, Aquino was shot dead on the tarmac at Manila Airport. A crudely executed assassination by members of the armed forces was almost certainly planned by General Ver, army chief of staff and ultimate Marcos loyalist, though whether on his own initiative or that of Marcos, then undergoing kidney dialysis treatment, or Imelda is unclear. The killing dramatically changed attitudes to the regime, particularly in Washington. Locally, there had been sporadic small bombing incidents by the Light a Fire movement linked to exiles in the US, but the banality of the murder by bullet, so reminiscent of Old Society politics, and the crudity of a cover-up attempt, shocked even those who had no time for Aquino. Before it, Marcos still had the majority of the population behind him. That changed dramatically.

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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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Filed under education, migration, nationalism, Philippines, religion, Spain

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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Filed under China, economics, labor, language, Mexico, migration, Philippines, religion, Spain

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.