End of the Empire: The Spanish Philippines and Puerto Rico in the Nineteenth Century

Itinerario ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 33-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell K. Skowronek
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
New World ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Spanish Empire ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
Initial Contact ◽  
Spanish Colonization ◽  
Spanish Colonies ◽  
Physical Manifestation

AbstractAs we pass the Quincentennial of the founding of the Spanish empire we stand within two years of marking the centennial of its demise in Asia and the New World in 1998. In recent years, much research has focused on the changes wrought on indigenous populations at the time of initial contact, but little consideration has been given to the material legacy of this empire. This study will examine the material aspects of two Spanish colonies, the Philippines and Puerto Rico at the end of nearly four centuries of Spanish colonization. Archaeological evidence from the two colonies is compared and contextualised within the economic order of the nineteenth century in order to better evaluate the nature of the physical manifestation of late Spanish colonialism.

scholarly journals Punitive Entanglements: Connected Histories of Penal Transportation, Deportation, and Incarceration in the Spanish Empire (1830s-1898)

2018 ◽  
Vol 63 (S26) ◽  
pp. 169-189
Author(s):  
Christian G. De Vito
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Spanish Empire ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis article features a connected history of punitive relocations in the Spanish Empire, from the independence of Spanish America to the “loss” of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines in 1898. Three levels of entanglement are highlighted here: the article looks simultaneously at punitive flows stemming from the colonies and from the metropole; it brings together the study of penal transportation, administrative deportation, and military deportation; and it discusses the relationship between punitive relocations and imprisonment. As part of this special issue, foregrounding “perspectives from the colonies”, I start with an analysis of the punitive flows that stemmed from the overseas provinces. I then address punishment in the metropole through the colonial lens, before highlighting the entanglements of penal transportation and deportation in the nineteenth-century Spanish Empire as a whole.

Deportation of “Undesirable” Chinese in the Philippines, 1837–1882

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 214-246
Author(s):  
Jely Agamao Galang
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Labor Supply ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
The State ◽  
Spanish Empire ◽  
Spanish Colonial ◽  
Formed Part ◽  
Colonial Government ◽  
Primary Materials

Abstract Between 1837 and 1882, the Spanish colonial government in the Philippines deported “undesirable” Chinese—vagrants, drunkards, unemployed, idlers, pickpockets, undocumented, and the “suspicious”—to various parts of the archipelago. Deportation, in this context, refers to the transportation or banishment of individuals deemed “dangerous” by the state to different far-flung areas of the islands or outside the colony but still within the Spanish empire. Deportation primarily served as a form of punishment and a means to rehabilitate and improve the wayward lives of “criminals.” This paper examines the deportation of “undesirable” Chinese in the nineteenth-century Philippines. Using underutilized primary materials from various archives in Manila and Madrid, it interrogates the actors, institutions and processes involved in banishing such individuals. It argues that while deportation served its punitive and reformative functions, Spanish authorities also used it to advance their colonial project in the islands. Chinese deportees formed part of the labor supply the state used to populate the colony’s frontier areas and strengthen its control over its newly-acquired territories.

Late Spanish Empire

2021 ◽  
pp. 989-1010
Author(s):  
Josep M. Fradera
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Asian Country ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Spanish Empire ◽  
American Empire ◽  
International Conflicts ◽  
Liberal Constitutionalism ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Us Intervention

After the Seven Years’ War, the Spanish Empire entered into a quickening spiral of internal and external changes. International rivalries accelerated internal adjustments in the relationship between society and an increasingly bureaucratic, intrusive, and demanding state. Internal and international conflicts resulting from the late-eighteenth-century wars and the Napoleonic invasion culminated with the crisis of the American empire and the emergence of independent republics all over the Spanish America. It was in those decades that the system of three colonies that would survive until the end of the Nineteenth century—Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines—was established. In the following decades, the three remaining overseas possessions would be sites of enormous changes. The Spanish monarchy put renewed emphasis on military might, giving its authorities a praetorian standing and skirting the edges of the liberal constitutionalism that ruled the Peninsula since 1836–1837. Cuba became critically important as the world’s greatest sugar-producing region, whose wealth was the result of vast plantations worked by slaves and indentured laborers imported (despite abolition) by British, French US and Spanish vessels. Meanwhile, In parallel, the Philippines became a major tobacco grower, the center of commerce with Asia, China in particular . The crisis of slavery in the Antilles after three wars of independence (1868-1898) and the subsequent political paralysis owing to the lack of reforms weakened Spain’s position as a colonial power in the last third of the nineteenth century. The US intervention of 1898, which coincided with anti-imperialist revolutions in Cuba and the Philippines, forced Spain to definitively withdraw, putting an end to its transatlantic nexus and to the Spanish nation’s identity as an American and Asian country.

Nineteenth-Century Philippines and the Friar-Problem

1961 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vicente R. Pilapil
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
United States Government ◽  
American People ◽  
Spanish Colonization ◽  
Colonial Government ◽  
Far Eastern

At the closing years of the nineteenth century the Philippine Islands became a territorial part of the United States. For this “imperialist” domination of another people, the latter government, being based on the principle of popular sovereignty, had to find a justification. It found reason in the contention that it was helping the Filipino people achieve their independence from the despotism of Spanish rule; after that, the United States Government felt obliged to provide a stable government in the islands in place of the former colonial government. For the benefit of the American people, most of whom had only then heard of the Philippines, scores of articles were written on this Far Eastern country. In line with the government's position—that of posing as the “ savior ” of an oppressed people—and influenced by the revolutionary propaganda which had characterized the period of struggle for independence, these writers tended to paint a more or less dark picture of the Philippine Archipelago as it stood in the last century of Spanish colonization. What really was the state of the Philippines in the nineteenth century has remained a question of great interest and undiminished historical importance. Another Philippine affair was met with equal interest in this country: the friar-problem.

scholarly journals Why is Spanish not used as an interlanguage in the Phillipines?

2019 ◽  
pp. 88-102
Author(s):  
Félix Manuel Jiménez Lobo
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Spanish Empire ◽  
Official Language ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
Spanish Colonial ◽  
Spanish Colonies ◽  
The 19Th Century

This article examines the reasons for the disappearance of Spanish as an interlanguage in the Philippines (both as an official language and as a means of communication between speakers of different languages) after the change of colonial power at the end of the 19th century. First, the author explains the geographic, ethno-linguistic and historical context of the country, summarizes the evolution of Spanish in the Philippines from the beginning of the Spanish colonial period until the present day with special attention being given to the appearance of the creole Chavacano, and presents the traditional explanations for the disappearance of the language. Later he compares the evolution of Spanish in the Philippines with other former Spanish colonies. He concludes that Spanish disappeared through a combination of unique historical circumstances which did not occur in other territories of the former Spanish Empire.

Yellow Fever

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel K. Cohn, Jr.
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Yellow Fever ◽  
New World ◽  
Spanish Empire ◽  
Collective Violence ◽  
Deep South ◽  
Old World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Great Fear ◽  
Sugar Plantations

The chapter begins with the history of yellow fever in the Spanish Empire and its absence in spawning riots or attacks against the victims of the disease in the New World, despite great fear, panic, and the death principally of newly arrived and impoverished immigrants. The chapter then concentrates on yellow fever across the Deep South, the creation of ‘shotgun’ quarantines, and the first threats of collective violence from the end of the nineteenth century to the US’s yellow fever finale in 1905. These threats derived from recently arrived Sicilian workers on bayou sugar plantations and possessed the imprint of Old World cholera threats. Yet, unlike Europe’s cholera riots, suspicions relating to yellow fever never erupted into widespread rioting, destruction, or murder. Through campaigns by Italian-speaking neighbours and priests, the Sicilian workers soon gained trust and joined the campaigns to tackle the yellow fever peril.

Historical Considerations Regarding the Creation of the Cuban National Identity

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-104
Author(s):  
Adrian Scheianu
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
New World ◽  
Exceptional Case ◽  
The Other ◽  
Spanish Empire ◽  
Number Of Factors ◽  
Xixth Century ◽  
Spanish Colonies ◽  
Independent States ◽  
Different Characteristics

Abstract Although the revolutionary outbreak of the Spanish colonies in the Americas was sudden and apparently unplanned it was, in fact, a long process, during which colonial economies underwent growth, societies developed identities, ideas advanced to new positions and Spanish Americans began conscious of their own culture and jealous of their own resources. In Cuba the process of creating a national identity displays similarities with what happened in the former European colonies from the two Americas, turned into independent states but, on the other hand, shows different characteristics that make Cuba an exceptional case among the nations of the New World. A number of factors of different natures, as well as the vicinity of a state that from the second half of XIXth century is paving the way for a great power, helped to keep Cuba in Spanish hands until the end of the XIXth century long after the other colonies of the Spanish empire had fallen to local settler armies elsewhere. This short study aims to illustrate some aspects regarding the historical dynamics in the build up of a Cuban national identity.

Scriptural Battlefields: The Old Testament, Legal Culture, and the Polemics of the Spanish New World Empire, 1492–1821

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra ◽  
Adrian Masters
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Social Order ◽  
New World ◽  
Legal Culture ◽  
Spanish Empire ◽  
Correct Interpretation ◽  
Group Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Social Order

Scholars have barely begun to explore the role of the Old Testament in the history of the Spanish New World. And yet this text was central for the Empire’s legal thought, playing a role in its legislation, adjudication, and understandings of group status. Institutions like the Council of the Indies, the Inquisition, and the monarchy itself invited countless parallels to ancient Hebrew justice. Scripture influenced how subjects understood and valued imperial space as well as theories about Paradise or King Solomon’s mines of Ophir. Scripture shaped debates about the nature of the New World past, the legitimacy of the conquest, and the questions of mining, taxation, and other major issues. In the world of privilege and status, conquerors and pessimists could depict the New World and its peoples as the antithesis of Israel and the Israelites, while activists, patriots, and women flipped the script with aplomb. In the readings of Indians, American-born Spaniards, nuns, and others, the correct interpretation of the Old Testament justified a new social order where these groups’ supposed demerits were in reality their virtues. Indeed, vassals and royal officials’ interpretations of the Old Testament are as diverse as the Spanish Empire itself. Scripture even outlasted the Empire. As republicans defeated royalists in the nineteenth century, divergent readings of the book, variously supporting the Israelite monarchy or the Hebrew republic, had their day on the battlefield itself.

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