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.

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.

A Philippine ‘coolie trade’: Trade and exploitation of Chinese labour in Spanish colonial Philippines, 1850–98

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 457-483
Author(s):  
Mònica Ginés-Blasi
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Spanish Colonial ◽  
Commercial Activities ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Coolie Trade

Chinese immigration to the Philippines has traditionally been studied in relation to commercial activities. But between 1850 and 1898, there was an unparalleled influx of Chinese labourers, which raised the number of Chinese residents to 100,000. This influx was fuelled by the abundant profits obtained by Chinese brokers and foremen, Spanish institutions and authorities in Manila, consuls in China, and Spanish and British ship captains, all of whom extracted excessive fees and taxes from the labourers. The trade in and the exploitation of Chinese labourers in the Philippines have yet to be thoroughly researched. This article shows that the import and abuse of Chinese labourers in and to the Philippines continued throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, and that, despite some anti-Chinese Spanish colonial rhetoric, a wide range of actors and institutions, both in China and in the Philippines, took advantage of this unprecedented inflow of immigrants.

‘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.

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.

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.

scholarly journals Battlefield Diplomacy and Empire-building in the Indo-Pacific World during the Seven Years’ War

Itinerario ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 467-488 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristie Patricia Flannery
Keyword(s):  
South Asians ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Royal Navy ◽  
Spanish Colonial ◽  
Real Balance ◽  
Empire Building ◽  
Pacific World ◽  
Colonial Government

In 1762, at the height of the Seven Years’ War, Britain’s Royal Navy and East India Company mobilised a motley army of Europeans, South Asians, and Africans and invaded Manila, the capital of Spain’s Asian Empire. The Black Legend blinded the British to the complexities of the real balance of power in the Philippines. The Spanish colonial government quickly raised militias of Spaniards, Mexicans, Chinese mestizos, and indigenous Filipinos who ultimately defeated the British. The loyalties of the soldiers of many nations who converged in Manila could not be taken for granted. This article examines the ongoing bargaining that took place between imperial officials and soldiers, revealing the crucial role that negotiation played in eighteenth-century empire building beyond the Atlantic. War transformed fighting men of many nations into important historical actors who determined the outcome of the Seven Years’ War in the Indo-Pacific world.

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.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document