PHILIPPINE OUTWARD MIGRATION: A GLIMPSE ON HISTORY

PHILIPPINE OUTWARD MIGRATION: A GLIMPSE ON HISTORY

The islands have seen the arrival of different peoples over the centuries leading to the evolution of the present diverse culture. Among the earliest immigrants were the Little People, shorter than five feet tall. They were dark skinned, had Negroid features, and were named Negritoes by the Spanish. They may have arrived about 25,000 years ago, and they lived throughout the islands. In recent decades, they occupied the mountain interiors of Luzon, Mindanao, and Palawan, living in isolation and not mixing with later arrivals.

The first Indonesians arrived from the Asian continent sometime between 4000 B.C. and 3000 B.C., A second Indonesian influx occurred about 1000 B.C. and lasted about 500 years. Both waves of Indonesians settled throughout the islands, and over the centuries assimilated with subsequent immigrants. Present-day Ilonggo are one result of tribal intermixing.

The Iron Age Malays, began arriving in the third century A.D. Peak influxes started in the thirteenth century and continued well into the next. The Bontoks, Igorots, and Tinguians are descendants of the Malays. Tribes that in time became dominant were the Visayans, Cebunos, and Ilocanos. European and American colonists discovered some of these groups were "head-hunting pagans." The later Malay waves are users of  Sanskrit based alphabet and metal tools and more peaceful than earlier arrivals. They were the ancestors of most present-day Filipino Christians. While considered primitive by Western standards, these Malays were in fact far advanced over the earliest immigrants. During the fourteenth century, Islamic Arab traders arrived; their descendants, the Moros, populated the southern islands and remained militant Muslims.

The Chinese and Japanese have had a major impact in the twentieth century, although trade between the Philippines and South China began to develop as early as the fourteenth century as Chinese emigrants became successful merchants and traders. Descendants of Filipino and Chinese marriages continued this domination of island businesses, gaining economic successes and power. Their virtual monopoly of the nation's big businesses in the twentieth century led some Filipinos, particularly those in urban areas, to resent the Chinese and to engage in occasional hostile activities.

 Japanese immigration occurred after 1900; emigrants from Japan settled first on the island of Mindanao, and they developed several large abaca plantations. Unlike the Chinese and earlier Malay emigrants, the Japanese remained largely a homogeneous group, rarely intermarrying. At the outbreak of World War II, Japanese could be found throughout the islands, working mostly at such crafts as cabinetmaking and photography.

The first European immigrants did not intend to settle permanently in the Philippines. Spanish settlement proved transitory during the 400 years of Spain's colonial occupation. The first contact between Spain and the Philippines occurred in March of 1521, when Ferdinand Magellan's fleet reached the island of Samar on its circumnavigation of the earth. Magellan claimed the archipelago for Spain and the Catholic church, but Spain did not make his claim official until 1565. The country was named the Philippines in the 1550s after King Philip II of Spain.

In 1565, nine years after ascending to the Spanish throne, Philip II sent a royal governor to the Philippines. The governor, from his first seat of government on Cebu, sent expeditions to other islands and imposed Spanish rule. From the outset, colonial officers exerted forceful and lasting control, using the colonial methods used in the Americas as their model.

From 1565 to 1810 the Acapulco-Manila galleon trade flourished. It connected the Spanish empire in Latin America with the Asian market via the Philippines. Manila served as the entreport to the China trade route. Gold bullions were extracted by the Spanish in Latin America and exchanged for silk, spices, and tea in the East. The galleon trade forcefully used native Filipinos as members of the crews aboard the Spanish ships.

As royal governors gained greater dominion over the islands, they moved the colonial capital to Manila, with its superior harbor. Endorsing European ideas of mercantilism and imperialism, Spain's monarchs believed that they should exercise their power in the Philippines to enrich themselves. In the course of almost four centuries, Spanish settlers and their descendants in the islands came to own large estates and to control the colonial government.

The Catholic church, supported by the colonial powers, controlled large areas of land and held a monopoly on formal education. The church and the Spanish language were major Spanish cultural institutions imposed upon Filipinos. By 1898, over 80 percent of the islanders were Catholics.

The Spanish, in installing an autocratic imperialism that alienated Filipinos, created a class society and a culture that many Filipinos later tried to imitate. Some of the Spanish, who made the islands their home, married Filipinos; the descendants of these marriages were known as mestizos . By the nineteenth century, mestizos had inherited large areas of agricultural lands. This Filipino upper class found that the lighter their skin color, the easier it became to mingle with Europeans and Americans. They also learned to control local politics through power and corruption. This economic-political dominance came to be known as caciquism.

Local revolts against Spanish imperial corruption, caciquism, racial discrimination, and church abuse began late in the nineteenth century. These first revolts called for reform of the economic-political system but not for independence. An early leader, Jose Rizal, who formed La Liga Filipina (the Filipino League), called for social reform. After the Spanish banished Rizal, more radical leaders emerged. When Rizal returned to the islands, the Spanish colonial government arrested, tried, and executed him in 1896, thus unwittingly creating a martyr and national hero.

Andres Bonifacio, a young man of modest origin, formed the secret society Kagalanggalang at Kataastaasang Katipunan ng mga anak ng Bayan (KKK), or Katipunan that aims to end exploitation of Filipinos by the Spanish  slave rule through an armed revolution. It is the first movement for an independent Philippines. Twenty-seven-year-old Emilio Aguinaldo seized the leadership of the insurrectionists— now fighting openly against the Spanish, by assassinating Bonifacio. In 1898, Aguinaldo conferred with American officials in Hong Kong and Singapore. He was led to understand that the Filipinos would become allies with the United States in a war against Spain, the anticipated outcome of which would be an independent Philippine nation. Admiral George Dewey and Consul General E. Spencer Pratt, with whom Aguinaldo met, later denied that they had made such a promise. In 1898, the United States declared war against Spain, and as a result of the ensuing Spanish-American War, the United States went to war with the Philippines. The Filipinos, following Aguinaldo's lead, protested the arrival of American imperialism, and the insurrection first launched against the Spanish continued. After annexation of the Philippines by the United States, the U.S. Army fought to quell uprisings throughout the islands. With his capture on March 23, 1901, Aguinaldo advised his followers to swear allegiance to the United States. On July 4, 1902, the Army declared the insurrection to be at an end, even though the Filipinos, who had become largely independent under Spanish rule, continued to fight under the leadership of Macario Sakay , last President of the first Philippine Republic was captured in 1913. The Filipino American war took more than one million Filipino lives and 6,000 American lives. The Treaty of Paris, approved on February 6, 1899, made the United States an imperial power and started a 47-year rule on the Philippines.

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