MODULE 11

The Philippines in the Nineteenth Century in Rizal’s Context

A. Economic End of the Galleon Trade

G. Political Liberalism, Impact of the Bourbon Reforms

H. Cadiz Constitution

Learning Outcomes
 Appraise the link between the individual and society.
 Analyze the various social, political, economic, and cultural changes that occurred in the
nineteenth century.
 Understand Jose Rizal in the context of his times.

A. Economic End of the Galleon Trade

The Galleon Trade was a government monopoly. Only two galleons were used. One sailed from
Acapulco to Manila with some 500,000 pesos worth of goods, spending 120 days at sea; the other sailed
from Manila to Acapulco with some 250,000 pesos worth of goods spending 90 days at sea.
The Manila galleon trade made significant contributions to colonial Spanish culture. It helped to
fashion the very society of the Philippines, which relied upon its income, its merchandise, and the
services of Chinese, Malay, and other participants.
The Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade between the Philippines and Mexico started in 1565 and
lasted until Sept. 14, 1815. For 250 years, Spanish ships crossed the Pacific Ocean and traded in various
goods such as spice, cotton, jade, ivory, silk and gold.
 They were the sole means of communication between Spain and its Philippine colony and served
as an economic lifeline for the Spaniards in Manila. During the heyday of the galleon
trade, Manila became one of the world's great ports, serving as a focus for trade between China and
Europe.
On September 14, 1815, the Galleon Trade between the Philippines and Mexico ended a few
years before Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821. The opening of the Suez Canal and the
invention of steam ships, which reduced the travel time from Spain to the Philippines to 40 days, made
this more manageable.

B. The Opening of the Suez Canal

On November 17, 1869, the Suez Canal was opened to navigation. Ferdinand de Lesseps would later
attempt, unsuccessfully, to build a canal across the Isthmus of Panama. When it opened, the Suez
Canal was only 25 feet deep, 72 feet wide at the bottom, and 200 to 300 feet wide at the surface. The Suez
Canal is a man-made waterway connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean via the Red Sea. It
enables a more direct route for shipping between Europe and Asia, effectively allowing for passage from
the North Atlantic to the Indian Ocean without having to circumnavigate the African continent

Ismail Pasha, Khedive of Egypt and the Sudan, formally opened the Suez Canal on November 17,
1869. Although traffic was less than expected during the canal's first two years of operation, the waterway
had a profound impact on world trade and played a key role in the colonization of Africa by European
powers.
Governor-General Félix Berenguer de Marquina recommended that the King of
Spain open Manila to world commerce. ... In a royal decree issued on September 6, 1834, the privileges
of the company were revoked and the port of Manila was opened to trade. It was opened to
foreign trade in 1832, and commerce was further stimulated by the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869.
The Manila area became the center of anti-Spanish sentiment in the 1890s, and the execution of Filipino
patriot José Rizal in the city in December 1896 sparked a year-long insurrection.

C. Rise of Export Crop Economy and Monopoly

Goods like sugar, fibers, coffee, etc. became the main export commodities. The Spanish
government granted shipping subsidies. The economies of the region's colonial powers tried to increase
agricultural output pressuring the peasants to produce more goods for export and to develop plantation
agriculture. The decades from 1820 to 1870 were crucial in the economic history of the world and
produced significant changes in the economy of the country. An increase in trade and navigation in Asia
accompanied the opening of the Suez Canal. Goods like sugar, fibers, coffee, etc. became the main export
commodities.
The Spanish government granted shipping subsidies. As a result of all of this, in the Philippines
there was “a saltatory rise in the level of foreign trade.” These events and trends were common to the
Southeast Asian transformations from subsistence to export economies. However, the trajectory followed
by the Islands was different from the Southeast Asian path. The economies of the region’s colonial
powers tried to increase agricultural output pressuring the peasants to produce more goods for export and
to develop plantation agricultures from 1820 to 1870 were crucial in the economic history of the world
and produced significant changes in the economy of the country. An increase in trade and navigation in
Asia accompanied the opening of the Suez Canal. Goods like sugar, fibers, coffee, etc. became the main
export commodities. The Spanish government granted shipping subsidies. As a result of all of this, in the
Philippines there was “a saltatory rise in the level of foreign trade.” These events and trends were
common to the Southeast Asian transformations from subsistence to export economies. However, the
trajectory followed by the Islands was different from the Southeast Asian path. The economies of the
region’s colonial powers tried to increase agricultural output pressuring the peasants to produce more
goods for export and to develop plantation agriculture.

By the late 18th century, political and economic changes in Europe were finally beginning to
affect Spain and, thus, the Philippines. Important as a stimulus to trade was the gradual elimination of the
monopoly enjoyed by the galleon to Acapulco. The last galleon arrived in Manila in 1815, and by the
mid-1830s Manila was open to foreign merchants almost without restriction. The demand for Philippine
sugar and abaca (hemp) grew apace, and the volume of exports to Europe expanded even further after the
completion of the Suez Canal in 1869. The growth of commercial agriculture resulted in the appearance
of a new class. Alongside the landholdings of the church and the rice estates of the pre-Spanish nobility
there arose haciendas of coffee, hemp, and sugar, often the property of enterprising Chinese-Filipino
mestizos. Some of the families that gained prominence in the 19th century have continued to play an
important role in Philippine economics and politics.
The opening on November 17, 1869 of the Suez Canal in Egypt, one of the
most important artificial sea-level waterways in the world, paved the way for the Philippines' direct
commercial relations with Spain instead of via Mexico.
The Suez Canal's ability to stay open is important mainly for one reason: it is the shortest trade
link between Europe and countries on the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Because the majority of the world's
goods are transported via sea, the Suez Canal greatly reduces the time and cost of transporting goods.
 D. Social Education

Furthermore, with the opening of Suez Canal in 1869 travel to Spain become quicker, easier and
more affordable, and many Filipinos took advantage of it to continue higher education in Spain and
Europe, mostly in Madrid and Barcelona.
Not until 1863 was there public education in the Philippines, and even then the church controlled
the curriculum. Less than one-fifth of those who went to school could read and write Spanish, and far
fewer could speak it properly. The limited higher education in the colony was entirely under clerical
direction, but by the 1880s many sons of the wealthy were sent to Europe to study. There, nationalism and
a passion for reform blossomed in the liberal atmosphere. Out of this talented group of overseas Filipino
students arose what came to be known as the Propaganda Movement. Magazines, poetry, and
pamphleteering flourished. José Rizal, this movement’s most brilliant figure, produced two political
novels—Noli me Tangere (1887; Touch Me Not) and El Filibusterismo (1891; The Reign of Greed)—
which had a wide impact in the Philippines.

E. The Rise of the Chinese Mestizos

The Chinese mestizos were an important element of Philippine society in the 19th century. They
played a significant role in the formation of the Filipino middle class, in the agitation for reforms, in the
1898 revolution, and in the formation of what is now known as the Filipino nationality. Students of
Southeast Asian history have had little to say about the historical role played by the Chinese mestizo in
that region. Although studies of the Chinese in Southeast Asia have devoted some attention to the position
of native-born Chinese as opposed to immigrant Chinese, the native-born Chinese of mixed Chinese
native ancestry is rarely singled out for specific treatment. Perhaps this is because in most parts of
Southeast Asia the Chinese mestizos (to use the Philippine term for persons of mixed Chinese-native
ancestry) have not been formally and legally recognized as a separate group — one whose membership is
strictly defined by genealogical considerations rather than by place of birth, and one which, by its
possession of a unique combination of cultural characteristics, could be easily distinguished from both the
Chinese and the native communities. Such distinctiveness was, however, characteristic of the Chinese
mestizo in the Philippines during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Both the Spanish colonial
government and the mestizos themselves concurred in this exact identification as neither Chinese nor
native, but specifically Chinese mestizo. It is precisely because they formed a separate group, legally
defined as such by the Spanish government, that we are able to determine with considerable clarity the
nature of the mestizos' activities — and hence, the nature of their role in that period of Philippine history.
That role was of great significance to Philippine historical development. Indeed, although close
comparison is difficult, it is likely that no other group of mestizos — that is, not simply locally-born
Chinese, but specifically mestizo Chinese—played a similar role in the development of a Southeast Asian
country.
F. Rise of Inquilino

The availability of elective municipal positions after 1786 and active mestizo participation in
provincial economy as middlemen, inquilinos, etc., enabled this ethnic subgroup to infiltrate the
principalia by mid-eighteenth century, if not earlier. Inquilinos are leaseholders of agricultural land,
kasamas are tenant cultivators, jornaleros are dayworkers. Even former timawas are known to have
become cabezas in such important hacienda towns as Imus indicating that manumitted dependents
could rise from one social stratum to another, and that elite status had not been confined to old
principalia families. Another important factor in explaining social mobility in Philippine society very
often not considered is the role of Filipino women. In many cases, the improved economic situation
of Filipino families is usually traceable to the industry, frugality, and enterprising spirit of its women.
The basically independent disposition of the Filipino women and her will to succeed for the sake of
her family is part of what seems to be a strongly matriarchal inclination in some Southeast Asian
societies. Women face up to the challenge of having to "make both ends meet" by running sari-sari
stores (dry goods store), becoming tenderas (vendors) in the local market, or corredoras busily buying
and selling every imaginable item of merchandise from jewelry to dried fish and firewood. In Naic,
thirty per cent of the registered inquilinos in 1891 were women. Inspite of their business ability,
mestizo potential for acquiring wealth was limited by the presence of the monastic estates in the
province which consigned them and many to the status of mere inquilinos of the friars. If one were to
visualize the structure of Caviteño society in the late nineteenth century, one could see that between
an almost negligible number of upperclassmen in possession of an above-average wealth, and the
poor landless kasamas-jornaleros, there was the growing intermediate class of Caviteños, drawn
mainly from the numerous inquilino residents of the province, but different from the rest in that they
"were doing better", for they had improved their lot materially as to have risen from the ranks of the
common peasantry. The inquilino was not a creature of the urban areas, but rather still a ruralite just
beginning to sample the congenial although more complex aspects of town life. Occupationally, he
was not principally a merchant, a craftsman, or a farmer. He was often a non-cultivating inquilino
who drew his income partly from his leasehold. As an inquiline, he did not directly have to tend his
leasehold but sublet it to peasant cultivators called kasamas. Therefore he was relieved of the
drudgery of tilling the soil and was able to preoccupy himself with subsidiary activities from which
he apparently derived a substantial portion of his income. A leasehold of a little over a hectare could
have yielded approximately an eighth of an inquilino's income. Above the middleclass inquilinos was
an infinitesimal native upperstratum most members of which congregated in the Cabecera. Shops,
distilleries, contractual projects, shipping, rentals on urban property, etc., provided these Caviteños
with what was considered at the time to have been a sizeable fortune.
 G. Political Liberalism, Impact of the Bourbon Reforms

A more modest proposal with which this radical view is easily confused maintains that the notion
of public reason is a purely political idea, in the sense that it concerns only how we reason together  about
politics. This understanding of public reasons lies at the heart of what is commonly known as  ‘political
liberalism.’ According to John Rawl, political liberalism is a family of conceptions, which share the aim
of finding fair terms of social cooperation among free and equal members of a democratic society.
Rawls's political liberalism is a response to the problem posed by reasonable pluralism. The crucial
problem is that citizens in democratic societies entertain a plurality of what he calls reasonable
‘comprehensive doctrines’—overall philosophies of life centered on religious, philosophical, or moral
beliefs.
A major Bourbon reform, taking place mainly in the 1780s, was the creation of large districts
called intendancies (stewardship). Each was headed by an official with extensive powers called
an intendant, who was directly responsible to the crown in Spain. The measure was meaningful because
royal government in the provinces, outside the seats of the viceroy (the province ruler) and the captains
general, had hardly existed. It was as though a host of provincial cities received their own viceroy. One
result, and indeed the one most intended, was an increase in revenue collection; another, not intended,
was decentralization and bickering. The intendancy seats were not arbitrarily created or chosen but were
mainly large cities that had once been encomiendero centers and were still bishoprics, or long-lasting,
large-scale mining centers. The change was realistic in that it recognized the immense growth and
consolidation of provincial Hispanic centers that had occurred in the centuries since the first
establishment of the viceroyalties, and for that reason it took hold. Less successful was the attempt to
introduce similar officials at a lower level in the Indian countryside. Military affairs were a second target
of reform. Spanish America had long been defended by a patchwork of vice regal guards, port garrisons,
half-fictional militias, and some forts and paid soldiers on frontiers with hostile Indians, but it had not had
a formal military organization. Government in Bourbon times was not antireligious, but it was sufficiently
affected by the spirit of the times to be quite anticlerical. The most decisive of the measures taken was the
expulsion of the Jesuit order from Spanish America and Spain in 1767. The late Bourbons favored more
active encouragement of the economy and even intervention in it. They provided tax reductions and
technical aid for the silver mining industry; they expanded state monopolies beyond the mercury needed
for mining to some other commodities, of which tobacco was the most successful. 

H. Cadiz Constitution

The war years both recreated a patriotic spirit to cover the bare bones of Bourbon administrative
centralism and resulted in the explicit formulation of a liberal ideology that was to be a dynamic factor in
Spanish history. The Central Junta and its successor, the regency, were compelled to summon a Cortes in
order to legitimize the situation created by the absence of Ferdinand VII, who was a prisoner
in France. Conservatives conceived of this task as the mere supply of the sinews of war on behalf of an
absent king. The constitution of 1812 was to become the “sacred codex” of Latin liberalism.
The Constitution of Cadiz gave Spain a strictly limited monarchy (the king must work through his
responsible ministers), a single-chamber parliament with no special representation for the church or the
nobility, and a modern centralized administrative system based on provinces and municipalities.

References
https://www.univie.ac.at/Voelkerkunde/apsis/aufi/history/mabini02.htm
The Philippine Revolution by Apolinario Mabini translated into English by Leon Ma. Guerrero
References: https://www.britannica.com/place/Latin-America/The-Bourbon-reforms
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Constitution-of-Cadiz
 1. Exercises/Drills

Activity:
A. 1. Make a Graphic Organizer/table mapping on the changes in the nineteenth century Philippines,
categorizing social, political, economic, and cultural changes.

B. Film showing of the film “Ganito kami noon, paano kayo ngayon.

1. Describe the Nineteenth century Philippines as represented in the film Ganito kami noon,
Paano kayo ngayon. 10 points
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2. Based on your reading what can you say about the film’s representation of the nineteenth
century? 10 points
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3. What is the main question that the film seeks to answer? 10 points
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4. What is your own reflection based on the film and your understanding? 10 points
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