Nueva España STORY OF FILIPINAS part V

Nueva España 
STORY OF FILIPINAS part V



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The Jesuits Expelled from the Philippines.—The order expelling the Jesuits from the Philippines was put into effect in the year 1767. The instructions authorized the governor in case of resistance to use force of arms as against a rebellion. Besides their colleges in Manila, Tondo, Cavite, Leyte, Samar, Bohol, and Negros, the Jesuits administered curacies in the vicinity of Manila, in Cavite province, in Mindoro and Marinduque, while the islands of Bohol, Samar, and Leyte were completely under their spiritual jurisdiction. In Mindanao their missions, a dozen or more in number, were found on both the northern and southern coasts. Outside of the Philippines proper they were the missionaries on the Ladrones, or Marianas. Their property in the Philippines, which was confiscated by the government, amounted to 1,320,000 pesos, although a great deal of their wealth was secreted and escaped seizure through the connivance of the governor, Raon

 Governor Anda
Don Simon de Anda had been received in Spain with great honor for the defense which he had made in the Islands, and in 1770 returned as governor of the Philippines. 
 Anda had addressed to the king a memorial upon the disorders in the Philippines, in which he openly charged the friars with commercialism, neglect of their spiritual duties, oppression of the natives, opposition to the teaching of the Spanish language, and scandalous interference with civil officials and affairs. Anda’s remedy for these abuses was the rigorous enforcement of the laws actually existing for the punishment of such conduct and the return to Spain of friars who refused to respect the law.

 The Moro Pirates.—The Moros were again upon their forays, and in 1771 even attacked Aparri, on the extreme northern coast of Luzon, and captured a Spanish missionary. Anda reorganized the Armada de Pintados, and toward the end of his life created also the Marina Sutil, a fleet of light gunboats for the defense of the coasts against the attacks of pirates.

 Failure of an English Settlement.—The hostility of the Moro rulers was complicated by the interference of the English, who, after the evacuation of Manila, continued to haunt the Sulu archipelago with the apparent object of effecting a settlement. By treaty with the Moro datos, they secured the cession of the island of Balanbangan, off the north coast of Borneo. This island was fortified and a factory was established, but in 1775 the Moros attacked the English with great fury and destroyed the entire garrison, except the governor and five others, who escaped on board a vessel, leaving a great quantity of arms and wealth to the spoils of the Moros. The English factors, who had taken up business on the island of Jolo, fled in a Chinese junk; and these events, so unfortunate to the English, ended their attempts to gain a position in the Jolo archipelago until many years later.

 ncrease in Agriculture.—Anda died in October, 1776, and his successor, Don José Basco de Vargas, was not appointed until July, 1778. 

With Basco’s governorship the beginning of those numerous projects for the encouragement of agriculture and industry which characterized the last century of Spanish rule. His “Plan general economico” contemplated the encouragement of cotton-planting, the propagation of mulberry-trees and silk-worms, and the cultivation of spices and sugar. Premiums were offered for success in the introduction of these new products and for the encouragement of manufacturing industries suitable to the country and its people.

 The Royal Company of the Philippines.”
 The company was given a complete monopoly of all the commerce between Spain and the Philippines, except the long-established direct traffic between Manila and Acapulco. All the old laws, designed to prevent the importation into the Peninsula of wares of the Orient, were swept away. Philippine products were exempted from all customs duty, either on leaving Manila or entering Spain. The vessels of the company were permitted to visit the ports of China, and the ancient and absurd prohibition, which prevented the merchants of Manila from trading with India, and China, was removed.

 In 1789 the port of Manila was opened and made free to the vessels of all foreign nations for the space of three years, for the importation and sale exclusively of the wares of Asia; but the products of Europe, with the exception of Spain, were forbidden.

 Conquest of the Igorrote Provinces of Luzon.—Basco was a zealous governor and organized a number of military expeditions to occupy the Igorrote country in the north. In 1785 the heathen Igorrotes of the missions of Ituy and Paniqui in Nueva Vizcaya revolted and had to be reconquered by a force of musketeers from Cagayan

 Establishment of a Permanent Navy in the Philippines.—The intentions of England in this archipelago were still regarded with suspicion by the Spanish government, and in 1795 and 1796 a strong Spanish fleet, sent secretly by way of the coast of South America, was concentrated in the waters of the Philippines under the command of Admiral Alava. Its object was the defense of the Islands in case of a new war with Great Britain. News of the declaration of war between these two countries reached Manila in March, 1797, but though for many months there was anxiety, England made no attempt at reoccupation. These events led, however, to the formation of a permanent naval squadron, with head-quarters and naval station at Cavite


 The Climax of Moro Piracy.—The continued presence of the Moros in Mindoro, where they haunted the bays and rivers of both east and west coasts for months at a time, stealing out from this island for attack in every direction, was specially noted by Padre Zuñiga, and indicated how feebly the Spaniards repulsed these pirates a hundred years ago.

 It was the last severe phase of Malay piracy, when even the strong merchant ships of England and America dreaded the straits of Borneo and
passed with caution through the China Sea. Northern Borneo, the Sulu archipelago, and the southern coasts of Mindanao were the centers from which came these fierce sea-wolves, whose cruel exploits have left their many traditions in the American and British merchant navies, just as they periodically appear in the chronicles of the Philippines

 Five hundred captives annually seem to have been the spoils taken by these Moros in the Philippines Islands, and as far south as Batavia and Macassar captive Filipinos were sold in the slave marts of the Malays. The aged and infirm were inhumanly bartered to the savage tribes of Borneo, who offered them up in their ceremonial sacrifices. The measures of the Spanish government, though constant and expensive, were ineffective. Between 1778 and 1793, a million and a half of pesos were expended on the fleets and expeditions to drive back or punish the Moros, but at the end of the century a veritable climax of piracy was attained.

 The Great Wars in America and Europe.—The English ccupied Balanbangan in 1803, but held the island for only three years, when it was definitely abandoned. For some years, however, the coasts of the Philippines were threatened by English vessels, and there was reflected here in the Far East the tremendous conflicts which were convulsing Europe at this time. The wars which changed Europe at the close of the eighteenth century, following the French Revolution, form one of the most important and interesting periods of European
  history,

 The Revolution of the English Colonies in America.—In 1776 the thirteen English colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America declared their independence of Great Britain. In the unfair treatment of the British king and Parliament they had, they believed, just grounds for revolution. For nearly eight years a war continued by which England strove to reduce them again to obedience. But at the end of that time England, having successively lost two armies of invasion by defeat and capture, made peace with the American colonists and recognized their independence. In 1789 the Americans framed their present constitution and established the United States of America.

 The French Revolution.—Condition of the People in France.—In their struggle for independence the Americans had been aided by France, who hoped through this opportunity to cripple her great colonial rival, England. Between America and France there was close sympathy of political ideas and theories, although in their actual social conditions the two countries were as widely separated as could be. In America the society and government were democratic. All classes were experienced in politics and government. They had behind them the priceless heritage of England’s long struggle for free and representative government. There was an abundance of the necessaries of life and nearly complete freedom of opportunity.

 France, like nearly every other country of continental Europe, was suffering from the obsolete burden of feudalism. The ownership of the land was divided between the aristocracy and the church. The great bulk of the population were serfs bound to the estates, miserably oppressed, and suffering from lack of food, and despoiled of almost every blessing which can brighten and dignify human life. The life of the court and of the nobility grew more luxurious, extravagant, and selfish as the economic conditions in France became worse. The king was nearly an absolute monarch. His will was law and the earlier representative institutions, which in England had developed into the splendid system of parliamentary government, had in France fallen into decay.

DECLINE OF SPAIN
 The Decline of Spain.—Lack of Progress.—In this advance and progress Spain did not share. The empire of Napoleon was never established in the Peninsula. In 1811 the Spaniards, with, the assistance of the English under the great general, Wellington, repulsed the armies of the French. This victory, so gratifying to national pride, was perhaps a real loss to Spain, for the reforms which prevailed in other parts of Europe were never carried out in Spain, and she remains even yet unliberated from aristocratic and clerical power.

 Separation of the Philippines from Mexico.—The events of these years served to separate the Philippines from their long dependency on Mexico. In 1813 the Cortes decreed the suppression of the subsidized Acapulco galleon. The Mexican trade had long been waning and voyages had become less profitable. The last of the galleons left Manila in 1811 and returned from Acapulco in 1815, never again to attempt this classical voyage.

 Trade was still limited to the ships of the Royal Philippine Company, and this shipping monopoly lasted until 1835, when a new era in the commercial and industrial life of the Philippines opened. An English commercial house was established in Manila as early as 1809.

 Rebellions in the Philippines.—The Liberal Spanish Cortes.—Two revolts in the Philippines that occurred at this period are of much importance and show the effect in the Philippines of the political changes in Spain. In 1810 the liberal Spanish Cortes had declared that “the kingdoms and provinces of America and Asia are, and ought to have been always, reputed an integral part of the Spanish monarchy, and for that same, their natives and free inhabitants are equal in rights and privileges to those of the Peninsula.”

 Repeal of the Declaration of the Cortes.—King Ferdinand VII. in May, 1814, on his return to power, as we have seen, published the famous decree abolishing constitutional government in Spain and annulling all the acts of the Cortes, including those which aimed to liberalize the government of the colonies. These decrees, when published in the Philippines, appeared to the Filipinos to return them to slavery, and in many places their disaffection turned to rebellion. In Ilocos twelve hundred men banded together, sacked convents and churches, and destroyed the books and documents of the municipal archives. Their fury seems to have been particularly directed against the petty tyrants of their own race, the caciques or principales.

 A Revolt Lead by Spaniards.—A plot, with far more serious motives, took place in 1823. The official positions in the regiments and provinces had previously been held almost entirely by Spaniards born in America or the Philippines. The government now attempted to fill these positions with Spaniards from Manila. The officials, deprived of their positions, incited the native troops which they had commanded, into a revolt, which began in the walled city in Manila. About eight hundred soldiers followed them, and they gained possession of the Cuartel of the King, of the Royal Palace, and of the Cabildo, but they failed to seize the fortress of Santiago. It was not properly a revolt of Filipinos, as the people were not involved and did not rise, but it had its influence in inciting later insurrection
 Insurrection on Bohol.—Since the insurrection on Bohol in 1744, when the natives had killed the Jesuit missionaries, a large part of the island had been practically independent under the leader Dagóhoy. After the expulsion of the Jesuits, Recollects were placed in special charge of those towns along the seacoast, which had remained loyal to Spain. An effort was made to secure the submission of the rebels by the proclamation of a pardon, but the power of the revolt grew rather than declined, until in 1827 it was determined to reduce the rebellion by force. An expedition of thirty-two hundred men was formed in Cebu, and in April, 1828, the campaign took place, which resulted in the defeat of the rebels and their settlement in the Christian towns

 The Revolt of 1841.—Repression of the People by the Friars.—Unquestionably in the past, the work of the friars had been of very great value; but men as well as institutions may lose their usefulness, as conditions change, and the time was now approaching when the autocratic and paternal régime of the friars no longer satisfied the Filipinos. Their zeal was no longer disinterested, and their work had become materialized by the possession of the vast estates upon which their spiritual charges lived and labored as tenants or dependents. The policy of the religious orders had, in fact, become one of repression, and as the aspirations of the Filipinos increased, the friars, filled with doubt and fear, tried to draw still tighter the bonds of their own authority, and viewed with growing distrust the rising ambition of the people.

 Apolinario de la Cruz.—The unfortunate revolution of 1841 shows the wayward and misdirected enthusiasm of the Filipino; and the unwisdom of the friars. Apolinario de la Cruz, a young Filipino, a native of Lukban, Tayabas, came up to Manila filled with the ambition to lead a monastic life, and engaged in theological studies. By his attendance upon lectures and sermons and by imitation of the friar preachers of Manila, Apolinario became, himself, quite an orator, and, as subsequent events showed, was able to arouse great numbers of his own people by his appeals.

 Organization of Municipal Governments.—In 1844 an able and liberal governor, General Claveria, arrived, and remained until the end of the year 1849. A better organization of the provincial governments, which we have seen, followed Claveria’s entrance into office, and in October, 1847, came the important decree, organizing the municipalities in the form which we have already described, and which remained without substantial modification to the end of Spanish rule, and which has to a considerable extent been followed in the Municipal Code framed by the American government.

 Spanish Settlements on Mindanao.—Zamboanga.—With Claveria’s governorship we enter also upon the last phase of Moro piracy. In spite of innumerable expeditions, Spain’s occupation of South Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago was limited to the presidio of Zamboanga. She had occupied this strategic point continuously since the reëstablishment of Spanish power in 1763, The great stone fort, which still stands, had proved impregnable to Moro attack, and had long been unmolested.

 Conquest of the Gulf of Davao.—But this step roused the Spaniards to activity and the occupation of the island. A naval vessel subdued the towns along the north coast, and then proceeding to the mouth of the Rio Grande, secured from the sultan of Maguindanao the cession of the great Gulf of Davao. Spain took no immediate steps to occupy this gulf, but in 1847 a Spaniard, Don José Oyanguran, proposed to the governor, Claveria, to conquer the region at his own expense, if he could be furnished with artillery and munitions and granted a ten years’ government of Davao, with the exclusive privilege of trade.

 Rule of Governor Torre.—Liberal Reforms.—In 1868, Queen Isabella II. of Spain was deposed, and a little later a revolutionary government, the “Republic of Spain,” was founded. It was the brief triumph of that reforming and liberal spirit which for so many years had been struggling to free Spain from the burdens of aristocracy and ecclesiasticism.
 
 The “Liga Filipina,” and Dr. Rizal.—Large numbers of Filipinos were now working, if not for independence, at least for the expulsion of the friars; and while this feeling should have been met by a statesmanlike and liberal policy of reform, the government constantly resorted to measures of repression, which little by little changed the movement for reformation into revolution.

 n 1887 the “Liga Filipina,” was formed by a number of the younger Filipino patriots, chief among whom was Dr. José Rizal y Mercado. Rizal, by his gifts, his noble character, and his sad fate, has gained a supreme place in the hearts of Filipinos and in the history of the Islands. He was born in 1861 at Calamba, on Laguna de Bay, and even as a child he was affected with sadness at the memory of the events of 1872 and with the backward and unhappy condition of his countrymen. He was educated by the Jesuits at the Ateneo Municipal in Manila, and his family having means, he was enabled to study in Spain, where he took a degree in medicine, and later to travel and study in France, England, and Germany.

 It was inGermany  that he produced his first novel, Noli Me Tangere. He had been a contributor to the Filipino paper published in Spain, “La Solidaridad,” and, to further bring the conditions and needs of his country to more public notice, he wrote this novel dealing with Tagálog life as represented at his old home on Laguna de Bay and in the city of Manila. Later he published a sequel, El Filibusterismo, in which even more courageously and significantly are set forth his ideas for reform.

 The Katipunan.—Meanwhile the ideas which had been agitated by the wealthy and educated Filipinos had worked their way down to the poor and humble classes. They were now shared by the peasant and the fisherman. Especially in those provinces where the religious orders owned estates and took as rental a portion of the tenants’ crop, there was growing hatred and hostility to the friars. The “Liga Filipina” had been composed of cultivated and moderate men, who while pressing for reform were not inclined to radical extremes, nor to obtain their ends by violent means.

 

 Rebellion of 1896.—A general attack and slaughter of the Spaniards was planned for the 20th of August, 1896. The plot was discovered by the priest of Binondo, Padre Gil, who learned of the movement through the wife of one of the conspirators, and within a few hours the government had seized several hundred persons who were supposed to be implicated. The arrests included many rich and prominent Filipinos, and at the end of some weeks the Spanish prisons contained over five thousand suspects. Over one thousand of these were almost immediately exiled to far-distant Spanish prisons—Fernando Po, on the west coast of Africa, and the fortress of Ceuta, on the Mediterranean.
 Meanwhile the Katipunan was organizing its forces for struggle. On the 26th of August, one thousand insurgents attacked Caloocan, and four days later a pitched battle was fought at San Juan del Monte. In this last fight the insurgents suffered great loss, their leader, Valenzuela, was captured and, with three companions, shot on the Campo de Bagumbayan. The rising continued, however, and the provinces of Pampanga, Bulacan, and Nueva Ecija were soon in full rebellion. The center of revolt, however, proved to be Cavite, This province was almost immediately cleared of Spaniards, except the long neck of land containing the town of Cavite and protected by the fleet. Here the insurgents received some organization under a young man, who had been prominent in the Katipunan—Emilio Aguinaldo.

 The governor-general, Blanco, a humane man, who afterwards for a short time commanded in Cuba, was recalled, and General Polavieja replaced him. The Spanish army at the beginning of the revolt had consisted of but fifteen hundred troops, but so serious was the revolt regarded that Spain, although straining every energy at the moment to end the rebellion in Cuba, strengthened the forces in the Philippines, until Polavieja had an army of twenty-eight thousand Spaniards assisted by several loyal Filipino regiments. With this army a fierce campaign in Cavite province was conducted, which after fifty-two days’ hard fighting ended in the defeat of the insurgents and the scattering of their forces.


Death of Dr. Rizal.—For the moment it looked as though the rebellion might pass. Then the Spanish government of Polavieja disgraced itself by an act as wanton and cruel as it was inhuman and impolitic.
Four years Dr. Rizal had spent in exile at Dapitan. He had lived quietly and under surveillance, and it was impossible that he could have had any share in this rebellion of 1898. Wearied, however, with his inactivity, he solicited permission to go as an army doctor to the dreadful Spanish hospitals in Cuba. This request was granted in July, and Rizal had the misfortune to arrive in Manila at the very moment of discovery of the rebellion in August. Governor Blanco hastened to send him to Spain with a most kindly letter to the minister of war, in which he vouched for his independence of the events which were taking place in Manila.

 His enemies, however, could not see him escape. Their persecution followed him to the Peninsula, and, upon his arrival in Spain, Rizal was at once arrested and sent back to Manila a prisoner. His friend Blanco had gone. Polavieja, the friend and tool of the reactionary party, was busy punishing by imprisonment, banishment or death all Filipinos who could be shown to have the slightest part or association in the movement for reform. And by this clique Dr. Rizal was sentenced to execution. He was shot early on the morning of December 30, 1896. At his death the insurrection flamed out afresh. It now spread to Pangasinan, Zambales, and Ilocos

 End of the Revolt by Promises of Reform.—Polavieja returned to Spain, and was succeeded by Gen. Primo de Rivera, who arrived in the spring of 1897. The Spanish troops had suffered several recent reverses and the country swarmed with insurgents. The policy of Primo de Rivera was to gain by diplomacy where the energy of his predecessor had failed. In July, 1897, an amnesty proclamation was issued, and in August the governor-general opened negotiations with Aguinaldo, whose headquarters were now in the mountains of Angat in Bulacan. Primo de Rivera urged the home government to make some reforms, which would greatly lessen the political importance of the friars. He was vehemently opposed by the latter, but it was probably upon the promise of reform that Aguinaldo and his fellow-insurgents agreed, for the payment of 1,700,000 pesos, to surrender their arms, dismiss the insurgent forces, and themselves retire from the Islands. This agreement was made, and on December 27, 1897, Aguinaldo left the port of Sual for Hongkong

 The Spanish Misrule Ended.—Conditions in the provinces still continued very unsatisfactory, and in its very last hours the Spanish government lost the remnant of its prestige with the people by a massacre in Calle Camba, Binondo, of a company of Bisayan sailors. Ten days after this occurrence a revolt blazed out on the island of Cebu. Had events taken their course, what would have been the final conclusion of the struggle between Spaniards and Filipinos it is impossible to say. On the 25th day of April the United States declared war upon Spain, and the first day of May an American fleet reached Manila harbor, and in the naval fight off Cavite, Spanish dominion, which had lasted with only one brief interruption for 332 years, was broken.