Expulsion of “Undesirable” Chinese from the Philippines, 1883–1898

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-178
Author(s):  
Jely A. Galang (贾杰理)
Keyword(s):  
The Philippines ◽  
The State ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Undocumented Migrants ◽  
Spanish Colonial ◽  
Economic Context ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Political Security ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Colonial Government

Abstract “Undesirable” Chinese – vagrants, undocumented migrants, pickpockets, beggars, drunkards, idlers and the “suspicious” – were considered “dangerous” by the Spanish colonial government because they posed a threat to the financial and political security of the Philippines. Mostly belonging to the laboring classes, these unemployed and marginally employed individuals were arrested, prosecuted and punished for violating policies relating to registration, taxation and migration. While other forms of discipline and punishment were meted out to these “minor” offenders, the state deemed it necessary to expel them from the colony. This paper explores why and how “undesirable” Chinese were expelled from the Philippines between 1883, when the first expulsion order was issued, and 1898, when Spanish rule ended. Set in the broader political and socio-economic context of the late nineteenth century, it examines the actors, institutions and processes involved in banishing these offenders to China. Using previously underutilized archival materials, it interrogates the relations that emerged among various entities such as the state, the leaders of the Chinese community in Manila, private businesspeople, and Chinese “criminals” in terms of the expulsion process.

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.

‘The salvational currents of emigration’: Racial theories and social disputes in the Philippines at the end of the nineteenth century

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 426-444
Author(s):  
Florentino Rodao
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Spanish Colonial ◽  
Biological Determinism ◽  
White Race ◽  
Colonial Society ◽  
Late Nineteenth

This article analyses the changing significance of racial theories in the writings of Spanish emigrants in the late nineteenth century Philippines. Works by Antonio Cañamaque, Pablo Feced (Quioquiap), and Antonio Barrantes show how racialised understandings of colonial society in the Philippines evolved, from an initial dismissal of hybridism and rejection of mestizos to assertions of the innate superiority of the ‘white race’ and advocation of a rigid separation between local communities. These developments are considered in the context of the rising popularity of biological determinism alongside an influx of Spanish emigrants into the Philippines. The Spanish settlers used biological determinism to proclaim their role as the sole purveyors of both ‘progress’ and of a kind of egalitarianism. This article describes these debates and arguments, analyses their inconsistencies, and addresses the Filipino elite's responses to the settlers’ racial theories. These responses are read not simply as part of the development of Filipino nationalism, but as reflective of rivalries within the Spanish colonial community in the Philippines, where the locally born found additional reasons to support anticolonialism.

From Bohemia to Balintawak

2021 ◽  
pp. 19-44
Author(s):  
John T. Sidel
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Culture Wars ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Spanish Colonial ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Asian History ◽  
Jose Rizal ◽  
The One

This chapter provides a seemingly unusual, but potentially illuminating, vantage point from which to approach the cosmopolitan dimensions of the Philippine Revolution of the late nineteenth century — the Bohemian town of Litoměřice. It recounts the visit of Dr. José Rizal, the great Filipino novelist and celebrated progenitor of Philippine nationalism, to Leitmeritz and his relationship with Ferdinand Blumentritt, a local gymnasium teacher and avid student and scholar of Philippine history and society. The chapter provides a coherent narrative account, one whose emplotment follows the nationalist logic so prevalent in the study of Southeast Asian history. On the one hand, the revolution is said to have been led from above by urban — and highly urbane — educated young men familiar from Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities, Filipino nationalists who emerged from Spanish colonial schools in the Philippines. On the other hand, the Philippine Revolution is also said to have been driven from below by a broader pool of the Filipino masses, by peasants and fishermen across the provinces of the archipelago, and by artisanal laborers in Manila and other port cities. The chapter argues that the struggles leading up to the Philippine Revolution can be understood in terms of what scholars have termed the “Culture Wars” of the late nineteenth century, a transcontinental if not global conflict pitting “anticlerical” scientists, Freemasons, liberals, and republicans against the Catholic Church in its ultramontane incarnation.

Masonería, Cofradía, Katipunan

2021 ◽  
pp. 45-71
Author(s):  
John T. Sidel
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
South America ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Spanish Colonial ◽  
International Context ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Nineteenth

This chapter argues that the Philippine Revolution of the late nineteenth century can be most fully understood in light of the international context in which it unfolded and the cosmopolitan mobilizing structures that enabled and impelled the trajectory it followed. The chapter suggests that the timing of the Philippine Revolution — late relative to South America, early in Southeast Asia — owed less to the nationalizing impact of Spanish colonial state formation than to the cosmopolitanizing consequences of the deepening integration of the Philippine archipelago within the world capitalist economy over the course of the nineteenth century. The chapter reviews the church's fundamental role in the formation of a modern public sphere in the Philippines and in linking the Philippines to the very same cultural, intellectual, and linguistic world of Christianity, which liberal and republican cosmopolitan challenges to the universalist claims of Rome had emerged. Ultimately, the chapter discusses how plebeian and egalitarian forms of brotherhood provided the basis for a revolution within the Revolution, with the associational form of the cofradía providing a popular vehicle for subaltern mobilization in many provinces across the archipelago.

‘Business Imperialism’ and Argentina, 1875–1900: A Theoretical Note

1980 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 437-444 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Jones
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Economic Advantage ◽  
The State ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
South American ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
British State

The facts are by now sufficiently clear for it to be common ground in any discussion of late nineteenth-century imperialism that the British State was disinclined to interfere on behalf of British capitalists with Latin American interests when these were threatened by local firms or States. Equally it is clear that British capitalists did not invest in Argentina in the belief that, by so doing, they were actively assisting the foreign policy of the British State. The State provided no grounds for this belief and no inducement to invest, and had it done so it is unlikely that the capitalists concerned – a pretty liberal bunch by and large – would have responded to any greater extent than they felt was consistent with their economic advantage. Again, there were not, in Britain, territorially ambitious militarists and aristocrats with their sights set on the South American republics. This element was quite adequately catered for in the Empire. In short, the models of imperialism favoured by Hobson, Schumpeter, and other conspiracy theorists, however appropriate they may be in particular cases, cannot be generalized and have very little relevance to Argentina.

The Economy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Tomlinson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
British Economy ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Late Nineteenth

This chapter falls into two unequal parts. The first charts, broadly chronologically, the shifting understandings, historical and historiographical, of the role of the state in economic life. The second focuses on debates about the performance of the economy, especially notions of ‘decline’ which have been central to those debates since the late nineteenth century. Variegated but overlapping senses of ‘decline’, originating in very specific historical circumstances, have overshadowed much writing on the modern British economy, with, it will be argued, often detrimental effects on our understanding. Such notions need to be historicized—placed firmly in the intellectual, ideological, and above all political contexts within which they arose.

The Changing Landscape of the Past: New Histories in Thailand Since 1973

1995 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thongchai Winichakul
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Historical Discourse ◽  
The Past ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Historical studies in Thailand have been closely related to the formation of the nation since the late nineteenth century, and until recently the pattern of the past in this elitist craft changed but little. It presented a royal/national chronicle, a historiography modern in character but based upon traditional perceptions of the past and traditional materials. It was a collection of stories by and for the national elite celebrating their successful mission of building and protecting the country despite great difficulties, and promising a prosperous future. The plot and meaning of this melodramatic past have become a paradigm of historical discourse, making history an ideological weapon and a source of legitimation of the state.

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