Prosperity without Progress [Reprint 2020 ed.] 9780520335820

Citation preview

Prosperity without Progress

This volume is sponsored by the CENTER FOR SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA STUDIES University of California, Berkeley

Prosperity without Progress MANILA HEMP AND MATERIAL LIFE IN THE COLONIAL PHILIPPINES Norman G. Owen

University of California Press Berkeley

Los Angeles

London

University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England ®1984 by The Regents of the University of California Printed in the United States of America 123456789

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Owen, Norman G. Prosperity without progress. "This volume is sponsored by the Center for South and Southeast Asia Studies, University of California, Berkeley"—Half-t.p. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Manila hemp industry—Philippines—History. 2. Philippines—Social conditions. I. University of California, Berkeley. Center for South and SoutheastAsiaStudies.il. Title. HD9156. M352P66 ISBN 0-520-04470-3

338.1'73571'09599

82-2024 AACR2

TO ROBERTA

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations List of Text Tables

ix x

List of Abbreviations Preface

xi

xiii

Acknowledgments Author's Note

xix

xxii

PROLOGUE: THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTHCENTURY WORLD 1

CHAPTER ONE: SETTING THE STAGE

7

Kabikolan 7 Partidos, Missions, and Mountains 14 Moros 24 The Colonial Superstructure 30 Before the Boom 39

CHAPTER TWO: MERCHANT HOUSES AND MANILA HEMP The Global Fiber Market 42 Manila and the World Market 49 The Merchant Houses of Manila 56 Middlemen 66

CHAPTER THREE: ABACA IN KABIKOLAN

72

Production 72 Land 81 Labor 87 Transportation and Storage 93 Marketing 99 Profits 105

42

viii

Contents

CHAPTER FOUR: SUBSISTENCE AND SURVIVAL

114

Material Life and Population 114 Rice Cultivation 120 Production, Consumption, and Exchange 129 Dietary Diversity 139 Private Buildings and Public Works 145 Handicrafts 147 The Persistence of Subsistence 154

CHAPTER FIVE: ALTERNATIVES TO ABACA

158

Pioneer Commercial Industries 158 Second-Generation Initiatives 166 American Rule and the Coconut Boom 174

CHAPTER SIX: SERVICES AND CITIES

182

Distributive and Producer Services 182 Social and Personal Services 192 Urbanization and Its Limits 203

CHAPTER SEVEN: DEVELOPMENT AND DEPENDENCY

212

Relative Prosperity 212 Truncated Progress 220 Development and the Bikolano Ethic 222 Colonialism: Institutional Dependency 232 Capitalism: Commercial Dependency 241 Internalization: Structural Dependency? 246 Prosperity without Progress 250

Appendix A: Abaca Prices and Exports, 1818-1940

255

Appendix B: Abaca Prices in Pesos and Dollars, 1870-1902 Appendix C: Abaca Production, 1850-1938

266

Appendix D: Population by District (000), 1794 -1938 Appendix E: Economic Indicators, 1845-1939 Glossary

275

Bibliography

279

Manuscript Materials Cited by Author Manuscript Materials by Country Published Materials and Theses Index

293

279 281

279

273

271

264

ILLUSTRATIONS

MAPS 1. The Philippines

8

2. Kabikolan: Geographic Features

11

3. Kabikolan: Partidos and Major Towns 4. Bikol Municipalities, 1939

16

119

5. Central Kabikolan: 19th-century Ports & Roads

131

FIGURES 1. Abaca Prices, Export Volume, and U.S. Business Cycles, 1830-1940 50 2. Abaca Prices in Pesos and Dollars, 1870-1902

53

3. Average Annual Population Increase by District

135

ix

TEXT TABLES

1. Rainfall Regimes

13

2. Abaca Prices and Exports 3. Philippine Exports 4. Abaca Exporters

52

60 66

5. Average Annual Abaca Production, 1850-1938 6. Abaca Prices and Bikol Marriages 7. Population of Kabikolan

79

110

116

8. Baptisms by Month, Guinobatan, 1804-1899 9. Population Increase by District

128

132

10. Staple Crop Cultivation and Production

140

11. Estimated Distribution of Annual Carbohydrate Consumption 12. Comparative Economic Indicators

213

ABBREVIATIONS

ACCJ AFIO AGI AHN BAHC BNM Bo. BRPI Cia. CTJ D D. DUSCM E EGA EPA EPCS Est. Tip. F FO GPO HDP Imp. JAS JEH JSEAH JSEAS L LMM MHC MN MPAC

American Chamber of Commerce Journal (Manila) Archivo Franciscano Ibero-Oriental (Madrid) Archivo General de Indias (Seville) Archivo Histórico Nacional (Madrid) Bulletin of the American Historical Collection (Manila) Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid Barrio Blair and Robertson, The Philippine Islands Compañía (company) Cordage Trade Journal (New York) Documento (document); in MN Don USNA, Despatches from United States Consul in Manila Expediente (document, file); in AHN Elección de Gobernadorcillo, Albay; in PNA Erección de Pueblos, Albay; in PNA Erección de Pueblos, Camarines Sur; in PNA Establecimiento Tipográfico (typographical establishment, press) Filipinas; in AGI Foreign Office; in PRO Government Printing Office (Washington, D.C.) Historical Data Papers; in PNL Imprenta (printing-office, press) Journal of Asian Studies (Chicago/Berkeley) Journal of Economic History (New York) Journal of Southeast Asian History (Singapore) Journal of Southeast Asian Studies (Singapore) Legajo (bundle); in AHN Lopez Memorial Museum (Pasay City) Michigan Historical Collections (Ann Arbor) Museo Naval (Madrid) Mercados Públicos, Ambos Camarines; in PNA xi

xii

Abbreviations

MRGGP MS MTISE NLAC O.R.S.A. O.F.M. O.P. O.S.A. P PHC PHR P.I. PNA PNL PRO PS PSSHR R RG RIC R.P. RPC RSN S.J.

u

UMJEAS USNA

Manuscript Reports of Governors General of the Philippines; in U S N A , RG 350 Manuscrito (manuscript), in B N M and M N Manila Times: Investors and Settlers Edition (Feb. 1910) Newberry Library (Chicago), Ayer Collection Ordinis Recollectorum Sancti Augustini (Augustinian Recollect) Ordinis Fratrum Minorum (Franciscan) Ordinis Praedicatorum (Dominican) Ordinis Sancti Augustini (Augustinian) Peso Peele, Hubbell & Co. Philippine Historical Review (Manila) Philippine Islands National Archives of the Philippines (Manila) National Library of the Philippines (Manila) Public Record Office (London) Philippine Studies (Manila/Quezon City) Philippine Social Sciences and Humanities Review (Manila) Robles number; in NLAC Record Group; in U S N A U . S . , Industrial Commission, Reports Republic of the Philippines U . S . , War Department, Divison/Bureau of Insular Affairs, Reports of the Philippine Commission, 1 9 0 0 - 1 9 1 7 U . S . , Congress, Senate, Report from the Secretary of the Navy, 1842 Societas Jesu (Jesuit) Ultramar; in A G I and A H N University of Manila Journal of East Asiatic Studies U . S . , National Archives and Record Service (Washington, D . C . )

PREFACE

Kabikolan is hauntingly beautiful. Situated at the southeastern corner of the island of Luzon, in the Philippines, it is open to both monsoons and thus is perpetually green. Mount Mayon rises nearly 8,000 feet above the town of Legazpi like a tropical Fujiyama, and the blue waters of the Pacific lap the gulf nearby. The Bikolanos, indigenous inhabitants of the region, are a beautiful people, and the traveler is always refreshed by their courtesy and generosity. Yet the history of Kabikolan, like any other regional or local history, must also justify itself to those who do not know the region or its people if it hopes to transcend its resemblance to a mere filiopietistic chronicle. For this potentially larger audience it must contribute to the understanding of some larger historical problem. Nineteenth-century Kabikolan lends itself particularly to a study of the transition from an overwhelmingly subsistence-oriented agrarian economy ("material life," in Braudel's term) to one characterized by a strong export sector based on the production of a single crop for sale to a global market. Such a study may be useful in two complementary ways. First, it is one piece of an enormous mosaic depicting the epic expansion of the European-based world-economy to the remotest corners of the earth. The origins of that modern world-system have been analyzed in the controversial but stimulating works of Braudel and Wallerstein, among others. The end results we see around us today: all of Asia, all of Africa, all of Latin America have now been or are now being incorporated into this global system. 1 But the full history of this incorporation—the mosaic—still remains to be (re)constructed of a myriad of pieces, each unique. Even within the Philippines, the impact of capitalism on nineteenth-century Kabikolan must be distinguished from its impact on eighteenth-century Pampanga or twentieth-century Mindanao. This book, then, is one of the "necessary building blocks that will someday 1. Fernand Braudel, Capitalism and Material Life, 1400-1800 (New York, 1973); Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System (New York, 1974). xiii

xiv

Preface

help in the construction of a substantial edifice," not just for Philippine historiography, but for world history. 2 The history of Kabikolan need not lie unused until all the other pieces of the mosaic or edifice are assembled, however. It may also serve as a case study of the process and results of incorporation into the worldsystem, suggesting—though certainly not dictating—what form the larger picture may eventually assume. No single case study will prove or disprove any general historical theory, but there are reasons to believe that the history of Kabikolan may be particularly suitable for comparative analysis. The region is geographically well defined, and this helps the writer to situate the historical actors in a specific physical context, so that they are not, in Michelet's words, "walking on air, as in those Chinese pictures where the ground is wanting." 3 The indigenous population at the start of the nineteenth century was almost ethno-linguistically homogeneous, so that "outsiders" to the region can often be distinguished even when their precise origins are unknown. Only one major export industry—the growing, processing, and transportation of abaca, or "Manila hemp"—emerged during the nineteenth century as a possible basis for regional economic development. Abaca was not exported until 1818; by 1918 it reached its peak as the major export of the Philippines and the mainstay of the regional economy; by the Great Depression it had collapsed again. Thus there is also a logical period to study, one great economic cycle (or "intercycle") just over a century in length. A well-defined area, population, industry, and era may aid us in isolating the critical factors in economic continuity and change. 4 Among the regions of the Third World incorporated into the modern world-system, Kabikolan was relatively fortunate. It was never subjected to extensive forced labor or to the intrusion of huge Westernowned plantations, two of the classic colonial modes of inducing export production. Thus it seems to be an exception to the general rule that the peripheries of the world-economy were characterized by coerced labor, as in sixteenth-century eastern Europe and the Americas. 5 Instead, the 2. John A. Larkin, "The Place of Local History in Philippine Historiography," JSEAH 8 (Sept. 1967): 317; cf. J. H. Hexter, "Fernand Braudel and the Monde Braudellian . . .," Journal of Modern History 44 (Dec. 1972): 510-11, 5 3 2 - 3 3 . 3. Préface de l'histoire de France (1869), quoted in Lucien Febvre, in collaboration with Lionel Bataillon, A Geographical Introduction to History, trans. E. G. Mountford and J. H. Paxton (1924; reprint ed„ New York: Barnes & Noble, 1966), pp. 9 - 1 0 . 4. Fernand Braudel, "Time, History, and the Social Sciences," trans. Sian France, in The Varieties of History: from Voltaire to the Present, ed. Fritz Stern, rev. ed. (New York: Random House, 1972), pp. 4 0 3 - 2 9 ; Hexter, pp. 5 0 2 - 6 ; Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, The Peasants of Languedoc (Urbana, 1974), pp. 2 8 9 - 3 1 1 . 5. Wallerstein, pp. 9 9 - 1 0 5 , 3 0 0 - 4 4 ; cf. Karl J. Pelzer, "The Resource Pattern of Southeast Asia," in South Asia in the World Today, ed. Phillips Talbot (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950), p. 109, who states that colonial powers increased agricultural production either

Preface

xv

commercialization of its agriculture came about through the response of indigenous landowners to economic incentives, a fact which challenges those theorists who posit cultural conservatism or some immaturity of values for the failure of Southeast Asia to develop economically. Colonialism, moreover, was generally less oppressive in the Philippines than in other areas, such as French Indochina and the Netherlands Indies. Both Spain and the United States were too preoccupied with other concerns and too ambivalent in their colonial aims to exploit this remote colony efficiently. Meanwhile, the global demand for the principal product of Kabikolan increased continually, if erratically, for more than a century— long enough to bring some material improvement to the region, in contrast to the pauperization suffered elsewhere in the world under the impact of colonialism and capitalism. This, then, is a case study of almost optimum relations between the Third World and the Western world-system. Its theme is not degredation and oppression but real—if slight and short-lived—improvement in the material welfare of the Bikolanos. To this extent it would seem to refute those who argue that the Third World invariably suffers from contact with the West or with capitalism, and perhaps even to corroborate some claims of the putative blessings of imperialism. In the long run, however, this temporary prosperity failed to lead to real progress, as if it contained within itself its own limits and thus its own demise. 6 Reflection on this may teach us more about the problem of persistent poverty and the relationship between underdevelopment and the position of a given economy on the periphery of the world-system than would a study of more blatant exploitation for which simple human cruelty and greed might be held responsible. Most analyses of Third World poverty take as their basic unit of analysis the nation-state. A case study of a regional economy, therefore, can scarcely resolve all the controversies among various theorists of development and dependency. 7 The history of Kabikolan may, however, help to discredit a simplistic Rostovian developmentalism which credits economic performance entirely to internal factors such as entrepreneurship, social values, and industrial discipline. The rises and falls of the abaca industry and, by extension, of the regional economy as a whole are through "the application of pressure on the peasantry" or through "large-scale plantation agriculture." 6. Cf. Le Roy Ladurie, p. 293, "The tragedy of Languedoc, in the third phase, was not. . . the decline [of agricultural production], but its failure to grow significantly." 7. Susanne Bodenheimer, "Dependency and Imperialism: The Roots of Latin American Underdevelopment," in Readings in U.S. Imperialism, ed. K. T. Fann and Donald C. Hodges (Boston, 1971), pp. 1 5 5 - 8 1 ; Aidan Foster-Carter, "From Rostow to Gunder Frank," World Development 4 (Mar. 1976): 1 6 7 - 8 0 ; Charles W. Bergquist, Alternative Approaches to the Problem of Development (Durham, N. C., 1979).

xvi

Preface

inexplicable without reference to international economic forces over which neither the Bikolanos nor their rulers had any real control. Moreover, the capacity of Bikolanos to respond to these market forces was always constrained by the presence of colonialism, which set the local rules of the game. This book is a study of how the rise and eventual decline of abaca in Kabikolan affected the development of that region. The first half of the book explores the rise of the export industry, showing how a strong market sector evolved from a traditional subsistence economy without either governmental coercion or substantial investment of foreign capital in plantations. In the second half of the book the rest of the regional economy is explored in an effort to analyze the failure of Kabikolan to capitalize on the rise of abaca or to transcend its decline. Through examination of the persistence of a strong subsistence sector, the vicissitudes of other commercial enterprises, and the uneven growth of the tertiary sector, we may begin to understand one often-ignored aspect of Third World history—the paradox of truncated development. All of this analysis of the significance of the history of Kabikolan is in a sense incidental to the history itself. Whatever the historian's original aims, history comes to have its own life and demands to tell its own tale. Even for the Anuales school this is true, and beneath their efforts to write an histoire totale can be seen an appreciation of the particularities of, for example, the peasants of Languedoc as well as of the generalities and conjonctures which their history supports. The Bikolanos—600,000 of them at the turn of the century; 3,000,000 by now—deserve their own history, and if this is not their histoire totale it is at the least a contribution toward it: "the repeated movements, the silent and half-forgotten story of men and enduring realities." 8 The sources available for the study of nineteenth-century Kabikolan are limited almost entirely to travelers' accounts and bureaucratic archives. 9 The former, even when perceptive, are necessarily superficial. In the latter, though the Bikolanos sometimes speak, it is not with their own voice. The words are in Spanish and spoken to Spaniards, shaped to fit themselves to a colonial ear. It is possible to write from these sources a history of the Bikolanos, yet such a history has its limitations. It will necessarily be more behavioral than phenomenological, stronger on the material facts of ecology, technology, and economics than on culture, religion, or local perceptions of events. 8. Braudel, Capitalism, p. xv; cf. Hexter, pp. 5 2 2 - 2 9 . 9. N o r m a n G o o d n e r O w e n , "Kabikolan in the N i n e t e e n t h C e n t u r y : S o c i o - e c o n o m i c C h a n g e in the Provincial Philippines" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1976), pp. xii-xvii, 5 7 7 - 6 2 9 .

Preface

xvii

It is unjust, of course, to limit the history of Kabikolan to economic continuity and change. "The people of that age," Ladurie reminds us, "had other things on their mind besides the gross product." 10 Bikolanos were poets, musicians, priests, and tale-tellers; many of them were inveterate gamblers, and some were wine-bibbers. They also were and are devout Christians, perhaps more solidly Roman Catholic than any other Philippine people. 11 Regrettably, however, in attempting to analyze the integration of Kabikolan into the modern world-system we can hardly hope to do justice to these other truths. Often, instead, we wind up reducing the romance of Bikol history to its bare socioeconomic bones. The devout and colorful fiesta of Our Lady of Periafrancia, the songs and the plays (most now forgotten), the piety and the family life, the customs, costumes, and cuisine all seem to slip away from us. They are at this time insufficiently known to be combined with economic history in a true histoire totale. It will take new sources—perhaps even a native's familiarity with the subtleties of a largely unwritten culture—to reintegrate the Bikolanos fully into their own history. 12 The culture of Kabikolan was so vital that even though it was not considered important by colonial authorities, it kept spilling over into bureaucratic documents as well as travelers' tales. The historian is constantly reminded that his conclusions are merely arbitrary abstractions from the lives of real and vibrant people, people whose lives embraced more than the maximizing of economic opportunity or the search for avenues of social mobility. If this fact does not shine through this study, the fault is not the Bikolanos', but mine. 10. Le Roy Ladurie, p. 291. 11. The implications (for the Weber thesis, etc.) of such staunch Catholicism associated with responsiveness to capitalist incentives are beyond the scope of this study. A pioneering debate on religion and economics in the Philippines may be found in Philippine Economic Journal, vols. 1 - 3 (1962-64). 12. Contributions toward a cultural history of Kabikolan include James J. O'Brien, S. J., ed., The Historical and Cultural Heritage of the Bicol People (City of Naga, 1968); Luis General, Jr., Lydia SD. San Jose, and Rosalio Al. Parrone, eds., Readings on Bikol Culture (City of Naga, 1972); Francis X. Lynch, S.J., " A n Mga Asuwang: A Bicol Belief," PSSHR14 (Dec. 1949): 401 27; Cecilia M. Carpio, "A Study of Bikol Metrical Romances" (M. A. thesis, University of the Philippines, 1959); Lilia Ma. Fuentebella Realubit, "A Study of Popular Drama in Bikol" (M.A. thesis, University of the Philippines, 1961); and Merito B. Espinas, "A Critical Study of the Ibalong, the Bikol Folk Epic-Fragment," Unitas 41 (June 1968): 173-250.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Ten years of research and writing (on a project which also represents the culmination of nearly ten prior years of college) create personal obligations which are manifold and profound. As the reader will see, the direction, assistance, and cooperation that I have received around the world have been so extensive that if there is any fault in the work, it must be mine alone. I can in no way complain of lack of guidance or of opportunity. The principal overseas research for this study was undertaken in 1971-73 on a trip funded primarily by the Foreign Area Fellowship Program of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council, supplemented by support from the Department of History of the University of Michigan. Later, the Henry Luce Fund for Asian Studies not only subsidized the Harvard Seminar on Philippine-American History but also paid for my research in Washington, D.C., and Massachusetts en route. A Grant-in-Aid from the American Council of Learned Societies financed cartographic and typing assistance in the preparation of the final manuscript. Finally, the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies of the University of Michigan provided a generous subvention which partially defrayed the considerable expense of publishing a lengthy study of a topic for which the prospective market was, to say the least, unproven. Throughout the world, wherever I attempted to pursue this topic, from great national libraries to the smallest parish archives, I was gratified to receive full cooperation. Whatever I requested was willingly searched for and supplied to me if found. I should like to thank the staffs of the British Museum (now the British Library) and the British Museum Newspaper Library, Cambridge University Library, the Foreign Office Library, and the Public Record Office in Great Britain; the American Historical Collection, Ateneo de Manila University (Rizal Library and the Institute of Philippine Culture), the Lopez Memorial Museum, the National Archives (Bureau of Records Management), the National Library, the University of Nueva Caceres, and the University of Santo Tomas in the Philippines; the Archivo Franciscano Ibero-Oriental, the xix

xx

Acknowledgments

Archivo General de Indias, the Archivo Histórico Nacional, the Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid, the Biblioteca-Museo Balaguer (Villanueva y Geltrú), and the Museo Naval in Spain; and the Essex Library (Salem), Harvard University (Baker Library and University Library), the Library of Congress, Michigan State University, the National Archives, the Newberry Library, the Peabody Museum (Salem), the Stanford University Libraries, and the University of Michigan (Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library and Michigan Historical Collections) in the United States. If I single out for special appreciation the late Dr. Domingo Abella, Lena Concepcion, and Evelyn Dizon of the Philippine National Archives, it is because that collection was most central to this study. Permission to quote from restricted manuscripts was supplied by Carolyn Brown and Elizabeth P. Kincade (Peirce Family Papers), the Lopez Memorial Museum (Foster Papers), and the Peabody Museum (Tucker Papers). I was given access to certain of the private papers of Dr. Abella, the late Atty. Juan T. Ataviado, Atty. Luis General, Jr., LTC Fausto O. Ola, Carlos Quirino, and Warner, Barnes & Co. as well as to those of Jardine-Matheson (now Matheson & Co.) in the Cambridge University Library; all these I also thank. In the parishes of Kabikolan I benefited from the cooperation of Msgr. Teopisto Alberto (Archbishop of Caceres), Msgr. Teotimo Pacis (Bishop of Legazpi), Msgr. Jose Belleza, Msgr. Teodulo Borrero, and Fr. Hermenegildo Rosalvo, O.F.M. I was offered similar courtesy by several other priests whose archives I did not have time to explore. While in the Philippines I was affiliated with the Institute of Philippine Culture, Ateneo de Manila University, as a Visiting Research Associate, which proved to be a pleasant as well as a valuable connection. Outside the realm of institutional obligations I was helped by so many scholars, friends, and previous strangers that I can name only a few: Dr. Manuel I. Abella; Dr. Barbara Anderson; the late Atty. Juan T. Ataviado and Josefina Ataviado Llamas; Dr. and Mrs. Floro V. Dabu; Leonor R. Dy-Liacco; Dr. Salvador P. Escoto; Mauro Garcia; Atty. Luis General, Jr., and Honesto C. General; Fr. Cantius Kobak, O.F.M.; Dr. Benito Legarda, Jr.; Julian J. Locsin; the late Fr. Frank Lynch, S.J.; Mercedes Meliton Vda. de Teague; Julian Napal; Fr. James J. O'Brien, S.J.; LTC Fausto O. Ola; Rosalio Al. Parrone; Fr. Apolinar Pastrana Riol, O.F.M.; Carlos and Liesel Quirino; Fr. Cayetano Sánchez, O.F.M.; Floyd and Ligia Cea Sanchez; Marcelo C. and Ricardo Sanchez; Atty. Domingo Sison and Lazara Duran Sison. My intellectual debts to predecessors and colleagues in the study of Philippine history are legion. The notes indicate many of these, yet may not do justice to the unique contributions of Dr. Bruce Cruikshank, Michael Cullinane, and the late Dale Miyagi. For many years, each of

Acknowledgments

xxi

these friends both shared with me specific information on Kabikolan and debated with me the larger questions of Philippine history. The dissertation from which parts of this book are derived was completed under the able and amiable co-chairmanship of Drs. David Joel Steinberg and John K. Whitmore. Various drafts of all or part of the manuscript of this book were read and commented upon by Drs. John Broomfield, Daniel Doeppers, Liam Hunt, Joel Samoff, Peter C. Smith, Thomas Trautmann, and two anonymous readers for the University of California Press. Though I grumbled at first at all criticism, I almost always found, once the hurt to my pride was assuaged, that I profited from it—though my revisions may not satisfy any of these readers. I should also like to pay tribute here to two of my early mentors, Drs. Poon-Kan Mok and Malcolm Caldwell, neither of whom lived to see me complete this. Each helped, in very different ways, to make me the scholar I am today, and I hope this book is worthy of their memory. Finally, I must thank those who worked directly for and with me on this project. Akil A. Pawaki and Rafael G. Roque, my two research assistants in the Philippines, were capable, dedicated, and goodhumored beyond the call of duty or the wages I was able to pay them. Marge Wilson typed the dissertation and Dorothy Foster the manuscript of the book; both were conscientious, competent, and uncomplaining. Dr. Judith Siegel drew most of the maps and figures and helped me decide what they should include and how the data might best be presented. Above and beyond all I owe a debt of gratitude to my wife, Roberta. Not only did she sustain me through the long years of research and writing, coping with the world when I could not, and coping with me when no one else could, but she also undertook the tedious but essential tasks of editing my final draft and proofreading the final copy. To her I owe utang na bob, a "debt of the inside," a debt that can never be repaid.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Throughout this book the careful reader will notice what appear to be inconsistencies with regard to Hispanic names and terms. These stem from the fact that although most of the documentation employed is in Spanish, and most Filipinos today have "Hispanized" names, the Philippines is not a Spanish-speaking country and has adapted Spanish usages according to its own customs. In this volume accents are given as they appear in the original in direct quotations, such as the titles of documents. Otherwise the names of Spaniards and Spanish institutions are generally spelled in accordance with current Iberian usage, including accents; thus José Ma. Peñaranda, Sección de Ultramar. Names of Filipinos and "Philippinized" institutions, on the other hand, are recorded in accordance with local usage, so most accents are omitted; thus Jose Rizal, Elección de Gobernadorcillos. Similarly, as Filipinos tend to incorporate the Hispanic prefixes "de" and "de la" into their surnames, they are cited in this form; thus Horacio de la Costa (Filipino) is cited as "de la Costa," whereas Félix de Huerta (Spaniard) is simply cited as "Huerta." For ease of reference, however, both are alphabetized under the (capitalized) surname proper. A different kind of inconsistency may appear with regard to dates. A single fiscal year that does not coincide with the calendar year is indicated by two dates separated by a slash (e.g., 1796/97). The use of a hyphen (e.g., 1796-97), on the other hand, refers to the entire two-year period or to events or data located sometime within it.

xxii

PROLOGUE

The End of the Eighteenth-Century World

Repeated tremors came first, the night before, followed on the morning of the first by a strong shock.. . . Instantly from its mouth it ejected a cloud which rose like a pyramid and formed the shape of a very fancy plume. As the sun was bright, the desolating phenomenon presented diverse views: the black base went up like a shadow, the middle was of various colors, and the top was of an ashy shade. Hardly had this been observed when a great earthquake was felt, followed by great claps of thunder. It continued thus ejecting lava with violence when, shortly after, the cloud which was forming grew; the earth darkened, the atmosphere was on fire, and from out of the ground came rays of light and flashes of lightning, which were crossing each other and creating a horrendous storm. This was instantly followed by a most terrible rain of great rocks, inflamed and burning, which destroyed and burned whatever they encountered. Shortly after [came] smaller rocks, sand and ash; this lasted more than three hours, and the darkness about five. It set on fire and entirely destroyed the towns of Camalig, Cagsaua, and Budiao, with half that of Albay and the same of Guinobatan, and less of Bu[bu]Iusan. . . . The darkness reached places as distant as Manila and Ilokos; the ashes, some have vouched, went even to China; and the thunderclaps were heard in many parts of the Archipelago. 1 Thus on 1 February 1814, Mount Mayon, the fiery focus of Kabikolan (the Bikol region) exploded with a violence that devastated the heart1. Francisco Tubino, O.F.M., "opúsculo" of 1816, as quoted in Félix de Huerta, O.F.M., Estado geográfico, topográfico, estadístico, histórico-religioso, de la Santa y Apostólica Provincia de S. Gregorio Magno . . . desde su fundación en el año de 1577 hasta el de 1865 (Binondo, 1865), p. 255 (translation mine). Another English version may be found in U.S., Bureau of the Census, Census of the Philippine Islands . . . 1903 (Washington, D.C., 1905), 1:223 (hereafter cited as Census of 1903).

1

2

Prologue

land of the region and brought terror to its inhabitants. This was neither the first nor the last great natural disaster to strike this fertile and vulnerable peninsula of southeastern Luzon, but in its suddenness and destructiveness it was probably the greatest. 2 To the Bikolanos who lived in the Iraya valley towns, it must have seemed like the end of the world; for many of them it was. Over 1,200 were killed in the eruption, including hundreds in the town of Cagsaua who had fled for refuge to the parish church, where they were buried under the tons of suffocating volcanic ash and sand that covered all but the bell tower. The tower still stands, amid the green fields that cover the buried church and town. With the majestic mountain in the background, it is the best-known view in Kabikolan, and one of the most picturesque—a mute memorial to the uncertainty of human life under the will of God and the face of mysterious Mayon. The impact of the fateful eruption on the demography, economy, and psychology of the Bikolanos was considerable. Over 20,000 refugees were created in the devastation of the Iraya towns, having lost their houses, much of their crops, and all the rest of their possessions—tools, animals, clothes, furniture—which they had not been able to carry with them to the hills. The survivors of the towns of Guinobatan and Camalig re-formed their communities in sites more distant from the volcano, although they moved back to the original sites in 1816 and 1837, respectively. Cagsaua relocated permanently in a site called Daraga, retaining the old name for most of the nineteenth century. Budiao and Bubulusan never did reemerge as civic units; their survivors were absorbed back into Cagsaua, Guinobatan, and Ligao, from which they had separated not long before. 3 The average annual collection of direct taxes in Camarines province had risen steadily in each gubernatorial administration from 1772-75 to 1808-13; yet in the triennium after the eruption it fell 16 percent. 4 Ten 2. Among other major disasters were the 1766 eruption of Mayon (described in Guillaume Joseph Hyacinthe Jean Baptiste Le Gentil de la Galaisiére, A Voyage to the Indian Seas [Manila, 1964], pp. 9 - 1 0 ) and Typhoon Deling (Kelly), which killed over 200 Bikolanos in the Iraya Valley in July 1981. 3. Francisco Aragoneses, O.F.M., Suceso espantosoacaecido en la erupción del volcán de Albay en la isla de Luzon, uno de las llamadas Filipinas (Madrid: Imp. de Nuñez, 1815); Percy A. Hill, "Bikolandia: Philippines Future Playground," ACC] 7 (June 1927): 6 - 7 ; Huerta, passim; PNA, EPA, V, "Camarines. Año de 1814. Espediente . . . sobre los perjuicios que resultan de establecer este en la Visita de Daraga," and "Albay 1845. Dn Miguel de San Andres solicita autorización para formar un pueblo en el puerto de Putiao." Sixty years later the descendants of the Budiao survivors were still feebly petitioning to regain the town's independent status; PNA, EPA, VI, untitled expediente on Malabog. 4. AGI, F, 875. In 1814 all of the affected towns except Albay and Bacacay were in Camarines; later they were transferred to the province of Albay. The direct taxes involved were tributos, sanctorum, and the donativo de Zamboanga.

Prologue

3

years after the eruption, a Franciscan priest blamed the great poverty that afflicted the region on "the tragic lavas of the Volcano, which have rendered useless many fertile fields; the almost total destruction which they have caused of the important plant Abaca [Manila hemp]; the repeated fires, the forced transfer of towns, the bad harvests, the dispersion of the natives." At the end of the century another Franciscan recorded having heard a blind bard, "the Homer of Ibalón," recite a song he had written on the theme of the 1814 explosion, "poetry worthy of being read for the sweetness of the expression and the elevation of the Christian sentiments with which it abounded." 5 No other single event ever so fixed itself in the imagination of the Bikolanos or so immediately affected their welfare; it seems to mark a pivotal date in Bikol history. To the historian, however, who looks back at the growth of the Bikol economy and the transformation of Bikol society during the late colonial period, there are other events of the decade 1810-19 which, though less conspicuous at the time, were emblems of more profound changes that were to occur. On 26 October 1818, in Tabogon Bay (off the Caramoan Peninsula), the provincial fleet of the province of Albay, under the command of eighty-year-old Pedro Esteban, met and rousingly defeated a fleet of Muslim raiders, including "Prince Nune, son of the Sultan of Mindanao." For many decades, such marauders from the southern Philippines had devastated the coasts of Kabikolan, but this battle, in which the Albay fleet sank fourteen Moro vessels, captured nine more, rescued over thirty Christian captives, and forced over five hundred Moros to take refuge in the mountains of Caramoan, seems to mark a turning point in the long struggle to eliminate this threat, a struggle which was a necessary precondition of growth. 6 Meanwhile, on 16 September 1810, in far-off Mexico, the War of Independence had begun with the grifo de Dolores, and on 19 March 1812, in far-off Spain, the Constitution of Cadiz brought to an end an era in the history of the metropolitan power. These two events, along with many others in the years 1808-24, marked the end of the old Spanish empire in the New World (though Cuba and Puerto Rico remained, vestigially) and the beginnings of a new age of political turmoil in the Iberian peninsula. Such distant developments would induce a radical change in both 5. Jacinto de Corrias, O.F.M., report of 12 July 1824, AHN, U, L502, E99; José Castano, O.F.M., "Breve noticia acerca del origen, religion, creencias y supersticiones de los antiguos indios del Bicol," in W[enceslao] E[milio] Retana [y Gamboa], Archivo del bibliòfilo filipino (Madrid, 1895-1905), 1:32 - 3 3 . "Ibalón" is one of the earliest recorded names for Kabikolan. 6. PNA, EPA, III, "Albay. 1818 à 19. Espediente . . . acerca del combate que tuvieron los Moros con las armadillas de aquella provincia." In my dissertation I incorrectly referred to Esteban as a retired Spanish naval officer; although he had been honored by the Spanish government for his earlier exploits, there is no reason to assume he was anything other than a Bikolano.

4

Prologue

the quantity and the quality of Spanish presence in the Philippines. The end of the Mexican trade (adumbrated in an 1813 decree of the Cortes ending the galleon monopoly, consummated in the 1820 seizure by General Agustín Iturbide of the shipload of Mexican silver destined for Manila) forced the Spaniards to explore new directions for the Philippine economy, which could no longer depend on the imperial subsidy. 7 The loss of the American colonies and the political chaos at home vastly increased the number of Spaniards who went to the Philippines, a previously neglected backwater of the empire, now almost all that was left of opportunity (or refuge) outside Spain itself. The Bikolanos may have been little aware of these events at the time, but they would certainly come to feel their consequences. 8 The appointment of Andrew Stuart as first United States consul in Manila in 1817 would not have appeared to most contemporary observers to be as significant as volcanic eruptions, naval battles, or political revolutions. 9 In itself it did not signal great change. Despite formal restrictions on alien trade and residence, foreign merchants had regularly been trading in Manila since the late eighteenth century, and apparently some were even living there. 1 0 Nor did Stuart's appointment mark the final culmination of the Spanish liberalization of commerce. The port of Manila would not be officially opened to foreign trade until 1834, and many other restrictions would remain in effect until the re7. William Lytle Schurz, The Manila Galleon (New York, 1939); Pierre Chaunu, Les Philippines et le Pacifique des Ibériques (XVIe, XVIIe, XVIII' siècles) (Paris, 1960); Benito Fernandez Legarda, Jr., "Foreign Trade, Economic Change and Entrepreneurship in the Nineteenth Century Philippines" (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1955), pp. 22-103; idem, "The Philippine Economy under Spanish Rule," Solidarity 2 (Nov.-Dec. 1967): 3-10; AGI, U, 660-61; Nicolas Zafra, éd., Philippine History through Selected Sources (Quezon City: Alemar-Phoenix Publishing House, 1967), p. 120; H[oracio] de la Costa, S.J., ed., Readings in Philippine History (Manila, 1965), p. 143. The last galleon actually sailed from Acapulco to Manila in 1815. 8. Beyond the general policy of Spanish colonialism to keep the Filipinos isolated from world developments, there was a particular concern to prevent the spread of any news or rumors of the revolutions in the Americas. PNA, EPCS, I, "Año de 1832. Provincia de Camarines Sur. Diligencias practicadas . . . con motivo de haber algunos malvados esparcidos la voz." 9. DUSCM. 10. Besides the sources cited in note 7, above, see Serafín D. Quiason, English "Country Trade" with the Philippines, 1644-1765 (Quezon City, 1965), pp. 165-201; Elisa Atayde Julian, "British Projects and Activities in the Philippines, 1759-1805" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 1963); W[eng] E[ang] Cheong, "Anglo-Spanish-Portuguese Clandestine Trade Between the Ports of British India and Manila, 1785-1790," PHR 1 (1965): 80-94; idem, "Changing the Rules of the Game (The India-Manila Trade: 1785-1809)," JSEAS 1 (Sept. 1970): 1-19; idem, "The Decline of Manila as the Spanish Entrepôt in the Far East, 1785-1826," JSEAS 2 (Sept. 1971): 142-58; Nathaniel Bowditch, Early American-Philippine Trade (New Haven, 1962); Frank Hodsoll, Britain in the Philippines (Manila, 1954?); John Foreman, The Philippine Islands, (London, 1899), pp. 287-88.

Prologue

5

forms of the 1870s. But as an act symbolizing the establishment of an ongoing commercial relationship with the Anglo-American trading empire, this appointment introduced the dominant theme in the modern economic history of the Philippines. This relationship was given meaning for Kabikolan when the appointment of Stuart was followed the next year by the exportation of some fourteen tons of abaca to Salem, Massachusetts. 11 The plant was native to the Philippines, and the Filipinos had been extracting the fiber for local uses from time immemorial. The Spanish had employed it in marine cordage for centuries. Small quantities of this cordage were exported in the late eighteenth century; in 1796/97 it accounted for nearly 1 percent (P15,000) of Philippine products exported. But the raw fiber does not seem to have been exported until a parcel of two tons was sent to the British colony of Penang in 1812. 12 It was the direct shipment of abaca to the manufacturing centers of the industrializing West that was to affect Kabikolan more profoundly than any development since the conquest and Christianization of the region two and a half centuries before. 11. There is some confusion over the first shipment of abaca to the United States. The date 1818 is given in [Yldefonso A. de Aragón], Yslas Filipinas: Manila: Año de MDCCCXVUl (Manila, 1819); A[ntonio] de Keyser y Muñoz, Medios que el Gobierno y la Sociedad Económica del Amigos de País de Filipinas pueden emplear para obtener el desarrollo de la agricultura en el país (Manila, 1869), p. 7; and the later merchant circulars of Peele, Hubbell & Co. (PHC). Other sources claim that the first shipment was made by Lt. John White of the U.S. Navy. White, however, was in Manila only in the summer of 1819, and in his own account of his travels, although he refers to abaca as one of the products "suitable" for export, he gives no indication that he actually took any back to the United States; John White, A Voyage to Cochin China (Kuala Lumpur, 1972), p. 133 and passim; cf. Robert Huke et al., Shadows on the Land (Manila, 1963), p. 324. Whatever the date of its departure from Manila, the first shipment apparently did not reach Salem until 1820; Samuel Eliot Morison, The Ropemakers of Plymouth (Boston, 1950), p. 34n. 12. AGI, U, 658; AGI, F, 979, "Filipinas 1813. Consulado de Manila. Remite Testimonios de las cuentas de derecho de subvención de los años de 1811, y 1812." The shipment of abaca is found in the manifest of the goleta Golondrina, signed by Captain Antonio Morgado.

CHAPTER ONE

Setting the Stage

Kabikolan Except for the accident of a few mountainous miles separating the Ragay Gulf (and the Sibuyan Sea) from Calauag Bay (and the Pacific Ocean), Kabikolan would be an island itself rather than the tail of the island of Luzon. 1 Historically, the region has been, in fact, as separate and distinctive as any of the major islands of the Philippines. In area, peninsular Kabikolan (the present-day provinces of Camarines Norte, Camarines Sur, Albay, and Sorsogon) is almost the size of the island of Samar, and the addition of Catanduanes and the smaller offshore islands to the north and east increase its total area to about 5,245 square miles, nearly 5 percent of the total area of the Philippines. 2 Kabikolan is the home of the Bikolanos (or Bikolnon, as they call themselves), lowland Filipinos whose mother tongue is the language known as Bikol. 3 In the 1903 cen1. The isthmus, in fact, was so narrow that small boats could be portaged across it; José Camps to Lieutenant Governor Pascual Enrile, 22 Sept. 1829, MN, M S 1666, D18. Geographical information in this and the succeeding paragraphs is drawn largely from Lydia SD. San Jose, "Bikol, Kabikolan, Bicolandia, Bicol Region," in Readings on Bikol Culture, ed. Luis General, Jr., Lydia SD. San Jose, and Rosalio Al. Parrone, pp. 1 - 9 ; Frederick L. Wernstedt and Joseph E. Spencer, The Philippine Island World (Berkeley, 1967), pp. 4 0 9 - 2 7 and passim; U.S., War Dept., Bureau of Insular Affairs, A Pronouncing Gazetteer and Geographical Dictionary of the Philippine Islands (Washington, D.C., 1902) (hereafter cited as Pronouncing Gazetteer); Census of 1903; Robert E. Huke et al., Shadows on the Land. 2. Kabikolan, as defined here, excludes the major islands of the Sibuyan Sea immediately to the west and south of the Bikol peninsula; Masbate, Ticao, and Burias. Many sources include these islands within the region, and at various times they have been administratively attached to the Bikol provinces, but in general they have been ecologically, culturally, linguistically, and even administratively closer to the Bisayas. Data on these islands have been separated from those on Kabikolan whenever possible. 3. There is no standardized contemporary usage of the term Bikol (Bicol, Vicol) and its derivatives. In this study, I have employed them as follows: Kabikolan—the region, i.e., the

7

MAPI

Setting the Stage

9

sus, the first demographic description of the Philippines which comes close to being comprehensive, 99 percent of the Bikol "tribe" lived in the provinces of Ambos Camarines, Albay (including Catanduanes), and Sorsogon, and over 93 percent of the inhabitants of those provinces were of that "tribe." The rest of the region's population (which totaled 600,000, about 8 percent of the population of the Philippines) consisted of Tagalogs (about 5 percent of the Bikol total, concentrated heavily in Camarines Norte), "uncivilized" peoples (non-Christians, living in the hills and remote islands), and a scattering of other Filipinos, Chinese, and a few Caucasians. 4 The question of ethnic definition in Kabikolan (as elsewhere in the Philippines) was complex, since acculturation may have altered how certain individuals were perceived or identified, but in broad terms we are safe in saying that Kabikolan was the nearly homogeneous homeland of the Bikolanos. This homogeneity was attributable, at least in part, to the relatively isolated position of Kabikolan on the eastern (Pacific) side of the archipelago. Here it was bypassed by most invaders from the West, such as Limahong in 1575, Draper in 1762, and Dewey in 1898. There seem to have been no Muslims in the region at the time of the Spanish conquest, 5 and the Philippine-American War did not reach there until 1900. Kabikolan also lay off the major routes of international commerce, and thus was not exposed to a wide range of trade or ethnic interaction. It did lie on the route of the Manila galleon, which often stopped in Sorsogon or the adjacent islands of Samar and the Sibuyan Sea, yet under colonial restrictions no trade was allowed except in foodstuffs and ships' stores. 6 peninsula of southeastern Luzon and the islands to its east; Bikol—the language, the name of the major river, and the adjective for the region as a whole (e.g., "the Bikol economy"); Bikolano (fem. Bikolana)—a Filipino whose mother tongue is Bikol; Bicol—that district (partido) of Camarines Sur which centered on the city of Nueva Caceres (now Naga) and the lower basin of the Bikol River. Other scholars may use these terms differently, or replace them with other terms (e.g., Bikolnon, Bikolandia). 4. Census of 1903,2:344 - 8 7 . The Bikolanos were not a "tribe" in the ethnographic sense; in today's terminology they were a "socio-linguistic group" or unit. Nor, of course, were the non-Christians "uncivilized"; such usages tell us more about the colonialists than about the peoples they attempted to categorize. 5. References to a "Muslim stronghold" in Catanduanes at the time of the conquest seem to be based on a misreading of Guido de Lavezaris, letter to King Felipe II, 30 July 1574, which in fact stated only that "the natives of that island are famous sea-pirates"; in the sixteenth century this hardly constituted evidence that they were Muslims. BRPI, 3:283; cf. Gregorio F. Zaide, Philippine Political and Cultural History (Manila, 1957), 1 : 3 0 7 - 8 . 6. William Lytle Schurz, The Manila Galleon, pp. 221 - 8 3 ; Antonio de Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 164 - 6 5 , 1 8 4 - 8 6 ; AG I, F, 1033, "Testimonio de la Prosecucion de la 2? Parte de la Visita Diocesana" (1791-92); PNA, EPA, I, "Albay . . . 1807. Diligencias practicadas . . . contra D. Antonio Laurenisano"; Guillaume Joseph Hyacinthe Le Gentil, A Voyage to the Indian Seas, p. 163; Joaquin Martinez de Zuniga, O.S. A., Status of the Philippines in 1800 (Manila, 1973), pp. 4 2 7 - 2 8 .

10

Setting the Stage

The world outside, in the experience of most Bikolanos, was otherwise limited to a few other regions of the Philippines. By land, a few Spanish officers and Tagalog traders made their way across the narrow and rugged isthmus between Tayabas (now Quezon Province) and Camarines, and a mail route was established there in the early nineteenth century, but the land connection between Kabikolan and the rest of Luzon was of scant importance until the completion of the ManilaLegazpi railroad in 1938. 7 By sea, there was regular minor coasting traffic between Camarines and Tayabas to the north and between Sorsogon and Samar to the south, but neither of these neighboring regions was either commercially advanced or economically complementary to Kabikolan. Trade generally involved the exchange—varying with local conditions of surplus and shortage—of commodities common to all of these districts (rice, coconut oil, textiles, contraband tobacco) rather than significant regional specialization of production. Kabikolan's principal trading partners—and its points of connection to the world beyond the Philippines—were the cities of Manila and Iloilo. The route to both of these ports lay westward from Kabikolan, through the Sibuyan Sea. The west coast of the Bikol peninsula was poor and sparsely populated, however; its ports, except for Sorsogon, were shallow, exposed to the elements, vulnerable to Moro attacks, and deficient in communications with the prosperous and populous towns of the interior. On the east coast, the ports offered much better access to the wealth and population of the region, but they were also shallow and unprotected, exposed to a variety of contrary winds as well as to the typhoons that periodically buffet the region. Moreover, the only passage between the east and west coasts was the Strait of San Bernardino, the infamous Embocadero, which not only crushed galleons (as well as lesser ships) on its cruel rocks but had become by the eighteenth century another haunt of Moro pirates. During the nineteenth century the hazards were reduced by the suppression of the Moros and the coming of the steamship, but as late as 1903 it was still asserted that "the east coast of Luzon, exposed as it is to the northeast winds and the heavy seas of the Pacific Ocean, is not an attractive place for small steamers, . . . and navigation along this coast is at all seasons slow, expensive, and more or less dangerous." 8 The Bikolanos were never entirely isolated from the rest of the Philippines or the world beyond, but it is not surprising that their language, culture, and historical experience developed in distinctive ways. 7. Whereas the archives contain literally thousands of references to the sea-traffic of Kabikolan, there are just a handful on the overland route and the mail service; see Norman Goodner Owen, "Kabikolan in the Nineteenth Century," p. 427, n. 18.

8. RPC1903,1:745.

Setting the Stage

11

The geography of Kabikolan not only decreed its isolation from the rest of the Philippines, but established certain constraints and opportunities for economic development. On the negative side, the Bikolanos had to live with a measure of enforced separation due to the physical fragmentation of the region. Flanking the central valley, dividing the coastal plains, and intruding into the center of Sorsogon and Catanduanes are mountains which not only impede communications themselves but give rise to myriad streams that further hamper travel along their flanks. The most spectacular of these mountains are the great volcanoes of the "Samar Arch" (or Eastern Bikol Cordillera), which form the Pacific ridge of the Bikol peninsula: Labo, Isarog, Iriga, Malinao, Masaraga, Mayon, Pocdol (Bacon), and Bulusan. These range in height from under 1,000 meters to over 2,500, and one or another of them seems to dominate the skyline from almost any point on the peninsula. Mayon and Isarog, in particular, have come to stand as symbols for their res-

MAP2

12

Setting the Stage

pective provinces and the region as whole. 9 The older, lower, forestcovered hills on the Sibuyan Sea side of the peninsula (west of the central valley) and in the interior of Catanduanes and the Caramoan peninsula, although not so spectacular, form no less an obstacle to travel. Another impediment to economic development has been the extraordinary exposure of Kabikolan to natural disaster. Besides having a formidably active volcano in its heartland, with attendant seismological instability throughout the region, it sits in the middle of the typhoon belt. Recent studies indicate that 40 percent of all storms with highvelocity winds in the Philippines pass through Kabikolan; as one native of Albay put it, "The land is so good, the people so kind, the Almighty had to invent the typhoon to even things up." 1 0 The Bikolanos certainly had an excuse, if they ever needed one, for refusing to attempt to lay up on earth treasures susceptible to physical destruction. Kabikolan, however, also provided the ideal geographic environment for a new resource that was developed in the nineteenth century— abaca. The rise of this industry depended on a unique combination of two other geographical factors: year-round rainfall and the juxtaposition of hills with well-populated lowlands. There is considerable variation in patterns of precipitation within Kabikolan; annual averages run from under 100 inches to well over 200 (in Baras, Catanduanes), and the dominant monsoon seasonality of the Pacific coast and interior is reversed along the Sibuyan Sea. Nevertheless, throughout most of the region there is a pronounced absence of a real dry season. In all districts but one (Bicol) rainfall averages rarely fall below 4 - 6 inches during the driest months, and even in Bicol the "dry season" (February to April) is substantially wetter than it is in most of the central or western Philippines. 11 (See table 1.) For abaca, such a rainfall regime is ideal, since any prolonged dry spell (some say as little as two weeks) may kill it. This precipitation pattern, which is due to exposure to both monsoons, is characteristic of the whole eastern coast of the Philippines, particularly from Kabikolan south through Samar and Leyte to Surigao and Davao in Mindanao. 9. S.M., " E n t r e el M a y o n y el Isarog: impresiones de viaje," Revista de Filipinas 1 (1875), article in six parts. Cf. Bienvenido Santos, The Volcano ( Q u e z o n City, 1965); Miguel A . B e m a d , S. J., " M y First Glimpse of Mayon," in History Against the Landscape (Manila, 1968), pp. 3 - 1 1 . 10. Wernstedt a n d Spencer, pp. 412 - 1 3 ; "Albay: By a Native," m i m e o g r a p h , Rotary International District Conference, 1 0 - 1 2 M a r c h 1960, L e g a z p i City (copy in P N L file of d o c u m e n t s entitled "Bicol Region"). F o r a tentative list of natural disasters in Kabikolan, 1 7 9 6 1900, see O w e n , "Kabikolan," pp. 4 3 2 - 3 3 , n. 38. 11. Wernstedt a n d Spencer, pp. 5 3 - 5 7 , 4 1 2 , 6 1 0 - 1 1 .

Setting the Stage

13

Table 1. Rainfall Regimes Mean monthly precipitation, in inches, 20th century City of Naga (Bicol partido)

Legazpi City (Tabaco partido)

Baras (Catanduanes)

Jan.

4.5

14.8

18.0

Feb.

3.2

10.6

16.0

Mar.

2.7

8.4

15.1

Apr.

3.4

5.9

5.8

May

6.1

6.8

8.1

June

8.0

7.7

8.9

July

10.8

9.4

12.1

Aug.

7.4

8.1

8.6

Sept.

11.5

9.8

14.6

Oct.

11.5

12.5

31.6

Nov.

12.2

18.9

43.2

Dec.

11.4

20.2

32.0

92.6

133.1

215.8

Totals

Source: Frederick L. Wernstedt a n d J o s e p h E. Spencer, The Philippine Island World, p. 610. Baras h a s the highest r e c o r d e d rainfall of a n y meteorological station in the Philippines.

That coast is thus a singularly favorable environment for abaca, which seems to be indigenous to the area. Another factor in abaca cultivation, however, helped Kabikolan take an early lead in commercial development. Abaca must be grown on slopes, since it cannot survive standing water for more than a brief time, and the levels of precipitation required to keep it well watered almost invariably result in some flooding of the lowlands. This in itself is no problem, since there are hills all along the eastern coasts of the Philippines. But Mindanao, and to some extent the eastern Bisayas, lacked nearby lowlands already supporting the population required to cultivate, harvest, and transport the fiber in significant quantities. In Kabikolan, on the other hand, there were long-established and populous lowland settlements in close juxtaposition to many of the volcanic slopes. The Bikolanos had taken advantage of this proximity to

14

Setting the Stage

develop an economic complementarity, typical of Southeast Asia, between wet-rice cultivation in the valleys and exploitation of the hills for upland crops (such as yams and tobacco), fruit, timber, rattans, bamboo, game, wax and honey, and a host of other forest products. When the world demand for fiber expanded in the nineteenth century, Kabikolan would be uniquely qualified to cash in on the market for abaca by fitting it into this existing ecological complex. 12 Partidos, Missions, and Mountains For as far back as the historical records go, the majority of Bikolanos have lived in several distinct districts, rice-growing valleys and coastal plains separated from each other by the natural boundaries of mountains and seas. The Spanish recognized these physical and demographic subdivisions by establishing eight administrative units, known as partidos, corresponding roughly to the principal rice-growing districts: Bicol, Rinconada, Iraya, Tabaco, Sorsogon, Catanduanes, Lagonoy, and Camarines Norte. A formal map of these partidos, however, would be a misleading guide to the human geography of the region. Typically Western in their scorn of ambiguities, the Spanish fixed boundaries (on paper) which included all of the territory of Kabikolan, whether populated or not; nothing was left unincorporated. Thus each partido not only included a core area of settlement but also virtually uninhabited rain forests, mangrove swamps, coastal islets, or volcanic summits. A similar problem existed at the municipal level, where what the Spanish called a pueblo and the Filipinos today call a "municipality" was more like a "township" than a "town" in contemporary American terminology—that is, it was a geographical unit including both settled and unsettled areas that extended to the borders of the next unit. At its core would be the town proper (población or casco), containing the offices of municipal government and the parish church as well as, in most cases, the largest single group of residences. At some distance from the center would be other settlement clusters: visitas (which had a recognized chapel visited by the parish church on certain feast days), barrios, sitios, caseríos, and rancherías. In the absence of any standardization of size or distance for these sub-units, it is virtually impossible to sort out actual demographic patterns within each municipality prior to the twentieth century, when more detailed censuses were taken. 13 12. Martínez d e Zúñiga, Status, pp. 4 2 1 , 4 2 5 . 13. A d d i n g further to the confusion w a s the fact that a barrio m i g h t be a quarter within the población rather than a settlement r o u g h l y equivalent to a visita, but w i t h o u t a chapel. A barangay, o n the other hand, w a s not a settlement at all, in the u s a g e of n i n e t e e n t h - c e n t u r y Kabikolan. It w a s a n administrative unit of 4 0 - 5 0 families ( w h o might or might not live in the s a m e visita or barrio) u n d e r the authority of a h e a d m a n (cabeza de barangay).

Setting the Stage

15

The Bikolanos themselves seemed to think of towns more as organic communities than as geographical areas with fixed borders. In the early nineteenth century a new settlement was generally regarded as pertaining to the "matrix" pueblo from which its residents had come, even if it fell within the nominal boundaries of another town, sometimes even another province. It required a vigorous Spanish campaign, led by the indefatigable José Ma. Peñaranda, to halt the routine implementation of this concept and rationalize the borders of Bikol provinces and towns.14 The discrepancy between the official maps and the demographic realities, however, persisted long beyond this "reform." Thus there are many pitfalls for the historian in attempting to ascertain Bikolano settlement patterns in the colonial period with any precision. Most of the time, fortunately, references to both partidos and pueblos (except as otherwise indicated) appear to be primarily to the settled areas of their cores rather than to their entire geographic jurisdictions, and it is in that sense that the terms are generally used in this book.15 The traditional heartland of Kabikolan is the central valley through which the Bikol River flows. The small streams pouring off Mayon form the beginnings of a river near the town of Cagsaua. From there, instead of flowing five miles east to the Pacific at Legazpi, the river flows over sixty miles northwest to San Miguel Bay on the northern coast of Camarines Sur. The Naga plain, which consists of the lower (northern) reaches of the river basin, along with the basin of the confluent Libmanan River, was known as the Bicol partido. This was the largest single expanse of land suitable for wet-rice cultivation in Kabikolan, and supported the densest population in the region as far back as the historical record goes. The district centered on the city of Nueva Caceres (Naga), founded by the Spanish in the sixteenth century on the site of existing Bikolano settlements as the administrative and ecclesiastical capital of the entire region. Its inhabitants still claim to speak the purest, the real Bikol language, against which all other dialects are measured.16 South of the Bikol basin the valley narrows, and a relatively compact cluster of towns lies in the "corner" between Mount Iriga and Lake Bato; the Spanish called this district Rinconada ("corner"). Like all other partil i . Francisco Valverde, O.F.M., to Franciscan Provincial, 16 April 1829, MN, M S 1662, D58; P N A , EPA, V, v a r i o u s expedientes, 1830 - 3 4 ; P e ñ a r a n d a to Enrile, 25 A u g . 1832, M N , M S 2 2 3 7 , D6. 15. Information o n the founding of m a n y of the municipalities of Kabikolan a n d their population and principal p r o d u c t s in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries m a y be found in Félix d e H u e r t a , Estado geográfico, topográfico, estadístico; Juan A l v a r e z G u e r r a , Viajes por Filipinas: de Manila á Albay (Madrid, 1887); Adolfo P u y a Ruiz, Camarines Sur (Manila, 1887); a n d M a r i a n o G o y e n a del Prado, Ibalón (Manila, 1940). 16. L e o n o r R. Dy-Liacco, "Bikol S y n t a x , " in General, S a n Jose, and Parrone, pp. 1 5 0 - 5 1 ; see also s o u r c e s o n linguistics cited in n. 19, below. O n N a g a / N u e v a C a c e r e s , see D o m i n g o

16

Setting the Stage

dos except Bicol, Rinconada combined rice-growing with hunting, gathering, and upland cultivation on the nearby hills; the narrowness of the valley reduced the area available for rice paddies but offered the possibilities of a more diversified economy. Two of its towns (Buhi and Bato) also depended heavily on lacustrine fishing. Upstream (south) from Lake Bato was a line of settlements running northwest to southeast under the shadow of Mount Mayon, whose volcanic ejecta made this partido, known as Iraya, the most fertile district in Kabikolan. In the nineteenth century Iraya was generally regarded as the wealthiest partido in the region, as it became the first to engage in the commercial cultivation of abaca on a significant scale. 17 Abella, Bikol Annals, vol. 1: The See of Nueva Càceres (Manila, 1954), pp. 5 - 6 and passim; "Naga City: The Heart of Bikol," in General, San Jose, and Parrone, pp. 113-15; Jaime Arejola, "History of Naga—Its Progress and Achievements," in The Historical and Cultural Heritage of the Bicol People, ed. James J. O'Brien, pp. 110-21. 17. José Felix de Gaztelu (Alcalde Mayor, Camarines Sur) to Ramon del Palacio (Alcalde

Setting the Stage

17

The other partidos of Kabikolan all occupy coastal plains and thus have been more exposed to the depredations of Moro raiders over the centuries. Since, as it happened, the ecclesiastical administration of the parishes in these partidos was in the hands of secular priests rather than of friars for much of the Spanish period, there are also certain historiographie differences between the coastal plains and the interior valley. Whatever else the difference between the two clergies might be, it is obvious that the friars were more diligent record-keepers, publicists, and historians. The available documentation, therefore, tends to exaggerate the importance of the friar-controlled parishes of the central valley compared with that of the secular parishes of the coasts, a bias inherent and almost inescapable in Bikol history. 18 The partido of Tabaco, which took its name from its largest town, ran along the Pacific coast of Albay north of Legazpi. It included the eastern slopes of Mayon and, with Iraya, formed a V embracing the volcano. Economically and ecologically the two partidos were much alike, although Tabaco offered additional opportunities for oceanic fishing. The boundary between the two partidos was the border between the neighboring towns of Cagsaua and Albay, which was also, until 1834, the provincial boundary as well. This rather arbitrary division never made much sense, and in the twentieth century both towns have at times been subsumed in Legazpi City. Nevertheless, it is often useful to consider the partidos separately, and there is no obviously superior place to draw the line. Because Tabaco included the provincial capital (the town of Albay), it is better documented than most of the other coastal partidos. The partido of Sorsogon corresponded roughly to the present-day province of that name, the southernmost peninsula of the island of Luzon. Forming a giant loop around a mountainous interior (capped by Mount Bulusan) lay a number of settlements on narrow coastal plains. These towns of the outer coast were small, isolated from each other, extremely vulnerable to Moro attacks, and closely related, linguistically and demographically, to Samar. The provincial governor once referred to the inhabitants of Bulan as "for the most part vagabonds from Samar, Leyte, and Capiz" and claimed that it was a "rare year" in which there Mayor, Albay), 9 Sept. 1830, in PNA, EPA, V, "Putiau. Contestaciones entre los Alcaldes mayores de Camarines Sur, y de Albay"; Calisto Rodriguez (Escribano Público, Camarines) to Governor General, n.d. [Jan. 1848?], PNA, EPCS, III, untitled document. 18. Friars were members of one of the established monastic or missionary orders, to which they owed immediate obedience; they were sometimes known as "regulars" because each order had a rule (regula) by which its members lived. Secular priests belonged to no order but lived in "the world" (sécula), and owed obedience to their immediate ecclesiastical superior, usually a bishop. The rivalry between these two clergies has been a major theme of Philippine history, but few scholars have commented on the historiographie implications of differing parish administrations.

18

Setting the Stage

were not "great desertions to Samar" from the town of Matnog. 19 Around Sorsogon Bay (north and west of the mountains, on the Sibuyan Sea coast) the plain was wider, the settlements were closer together, and the harbor was not quite so exposed to maritime raiders. This area was densely settled when the Spaniards arrived, and might well have ranked with the central partidos of the region in importance. In fact, Sorsogon town was the capital of the province of Albay (then known as Ibalón) when it was first separated from Camarines in the seventeenth century; but Moro raids wore it down, the capital was moved to the less vulnerable Pacific coast, and the bay area reverted to conditions very little different from the rest of the partido. In 1792 a traveler remarked that "Sorsogon is a town which finds itself in decay; its population does not exceed 200 householders [vecinos], much less than the 600 which I was assured it used to have." 2 0 Only in the nineteenth century, with the reduction of the Moro threat, did the district revive, which culminated in its separation as a province in 1894. 21 Catanduanes, the major island east of the peninsula, was also a partido until it too was separated (as a "sub-province") in 1894. Like Sorsogon, it consisted of a ring of isolated towns around a central mountain group, towns of rice-farmers and fishermen scratching out an existence while trying to stave off piratical invaders. It was the partido most exposed to Moros and most isolated from the rest of the region (and the rest of the Philippines); thus it was the latest to become commercialized and the least known in almost all respects. It has also been the least affected by outside ideas over the last two centuries. Today, Catanduanes remains the most Roman Catholic province in the Philippines, with that faith claiming over 99 percent of the population as opposed to 84 percent for the country as a whole. In the early days of Spanish rule, Catanduanes 19. José Velarde (Alcalde Mayor, Albay), report of 1 Nov. 1844, in PNA, Memoria de Albay. For other references to historical contact between Samar and Sorsogon see Robert Bruce Cruikshank, "A History of Samar Island, the Philippines, 1768-1898" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1975), pp. 8 8 - 9 8 , 2 8 1 - 8 3 . On the linguistic connection, see Frank Lynch, S.J., et al., Social Class in a Bikol Town (Chicago, 1959), pp. 2 4 - 2 5 ; Barbara B. Anderson to Frank [Lynch], 12 Feb. 1961, Institute of Philippine Culture library, Ateneo de Manila University, Quezon City; Anderson to author, 28 May 1973; cf. Wernstedt and Spencer, p. 624. 20. Luis Neé, "Diario d1 Botanico D" Luis Neé desde el Puerto de Sorsogon a Manila por tierra en 1792," MN, MS 312, fol. 7 7 - 9 7 (hereafter cited as Neé, "Diario"). (I have followed the original text here; an early editor, perhaps Alejandro Malaspina, crossed out the phrase after "householders.") On Sorsogon as capital of Ibalón, see Gaztelu to Palacio, 9 Sept. 1830, in PNA, EPA, V, "Putiau." Both Huerta and Goyena del Prado also record the existence of towns on the coasts of Sorsogon which had disappeared or been driven inland by Moros before the nineteenth century. 21. PNA, EPA, VII, "Ano de 1894. . . . Expediente relativo a la division territorial de las provincias de Albay, Sorsogón y Catanduanes."

Setting the Stage

19

had been acclaimed as a center of shipbuilding, but that industry declined later, although fishing remained important in the local economy. 22 The district of Camarines Sur known today simply as Partido was in the Spanish period called the partido of Lagonoy. It consisted of the coastal plain between Lagonoy Gulf (south of the Caramoan peninsula) and Mount Isarog, not far north of Tabaco partido but separated from it by mountains that come right down to the sea. Like Sorsogon and Catanduanes, it was the victim of endemic attacks and raids, but these sometimes came from the land as well as from the sea. Mount Isarog was a traditional haven for bandits, who came down from the mountain to ambush whatever travelers dared the arduous paths from Lagonoy to Bicol or Rinconada along the flanks of the mountain, as well as to raid isolated hamlets and unprotected herds within the partido itself. Until 1845 Lagonoy belonged to the province of Albay, with which it was at least in communication by such small sailing vessels as might brave contrary winds and the danger of Moros. At the core of this isolated partido was a cluster of small towns and missions with a mixed economy of agriculture, fishing, and forest utilization. The Contra Costa, or opposite coast (of Luzon), was what the Spanish first called the partido on the northern coast of western Kabikolan. In 1829 it was separated off as the province of Camarines Norte for the first time, although later it was twice recombined with Camarines Sur to form the province of Ambos ("both") Camarines. 23 The western half of Camarines Norte was predominantly Tagalog-speaking, with an economy based on gold-mining and fishing; the eastern half was more Bikolspeaking (although with a substantial admixture of Tagalog), and its economy was based on agriculture in the Daet plain and the surrounding hills. Administratively, Camarines Norte was always part of Kabikolan, and economically, it resembled the rest of the region except for the gold mines of Paracale and Mambulao. Yet the sizable Tagalog minority, looking toward Tayabas and other Tagalog provinces rather than toward Kabikolan, and the importance of gold-mining in the local economy have made Camarines Norte at times atypical of the region. 24 22. R. P., D e p a r t m e n t of C o m m e r c e and Industry, B u r e a u of the C e n s u s and Statistics, Facts and Figures about the Philippines:

1963 (Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1965?); M o r g a , p.

264; Martinez de Zuriiga, Status, p. 427; Martinez Ji

? (signature illegible), L i e u t e n a n t

G o v e r n o r of Catanduanes, report of 1 A u g u s t 1913, U S N A , RG 3 5 0 , M R G G P . 23. At various times d u r i n g its initial separation from C a m a r i n e s S u r ( 1 8 2 9 - 5 4 ) the province of C a m a r i n e s N o r t e also included the t o w n s of Sipocot, Lupi, Ragay, S i r u m a , a n d p e r h a p s Tinambac; A H N , U, L5159, Ario 1847, E 3 9 . A t the s e c o n d ( 1 8 5 9 7 - 9 3 ? ) a n d third (1919 to the p r e s e n t ) separations these small t o w n s w e r e all assigned to C a m a r i n e s Sur. F o r p u r p o s e s of this study these t o w n s are g r o u p e d with the other missions f o u n d e d d u r i n g the s e c o n d wave of evangelization of Kabikolan. 24. O n gold-mining, see c h a p t e r 5, below.

20

Setting the Stage

These eight districts are the obvious sites for lowland agriculture in Kabikolan and have supported a large majority of the population since pre-Hispanic times. The Spanish, by their policy of consolidation (reducción) , which aimed to force all inhabitants to reside within sound of the church bells, further reinforced existing concentrations of population and gave the partidos an administrative reality. Such new towns as were founded between the time of Spanish conquest and the nineteenth century seem to have been in most cases old visitas of existing pueblos which had successfully petitioned for political separation, rather than genuinely new settlements. 25 Despite minor disputes over jurisdictions and boundaries, the eight partidos of Kabikolan were a constant from the sixteenth century through the nineteenth, and their history probably includes that of 90 percent of the region's inhabitants. There remained a minority of the population which did not live in the lowland plains and valleys, and Spanish attempts to include their upland settlements within the jurisdiction of established partidos led only to confusion. One governor of Camarines Sur referred to three "centers" of that province—Bicol, Rinconada, and Lagonoy—from which the population "overflowed" into the "great unpopulated spaces" in between, with people escaping from the centers "like water out of a net." Another commentator, however, took the unusual and felicitous view of referring to four partidos in the province: Bicol, Rinconada, Lagonoy, and "the mountain and beach towns." 2 6 When the Spanish had conquered and converted the Bikolanos in the sixteenth and the early seventeenth century, they had concentrated on the densely populated lowlands rather than the isolated hamlets of the hills and remote islands. After the first wave of evangelization, there was a respite of a century before the missionary effort was renewed. From about 1684 onward, Franciscan friars began once more to seek out those thousands of Bikolanos who had avoided the cross and crown by living in settlements remote from existing municipalities and churches. Over the next 125 years the friars sporadically founded a number of missions among these "infidels," chiefly in three areas: on or near Mount Isarog, in the forests south of Camarines Norte and west of Bicol, and on the sparsely populated northeastern coasts of Kabikolan, along San Miguel Bay and the Caramoan Peninsula. 27 Despite indigenous 25. PNA, Erección de Pueblos, Albay and Camarines Sur; see also sources cited in n. 15, above. 26. José Feced y Temprado (Alcalde Mayor, Camarines Sur) to Governor General, 13 June 1865, AHN, U, L2212, E28; PNA, EPCS, III, "Camar- Sur. 1845. Los de Milaor se quejan." Cf. PNA, MPAC, I, on various administrative groupings of town markets in Camarines. 27. Goa, Tigaon, Sagñay, Manguirin, Mabatobato, and Pili were the missions near Mount Isarog; Lupi, Sipocot, and Ragay were west of the Bicol plain; Siruma, Tinambac, and Cara-

Setting the Stage

21

hostility and natural hardships—in unhealthy Manguirin seven different friars served as missionaries in one year (1753), all of them fell sick, and five of them died—these missions were generally successful, although there is no way of telling just how many uplanders slipped away even farther into the hills. The missions in time became established communities of Christians, under the same type of civil and religious administration as the older towns, except that they had "missionaries" and "lieutenants" instead of "parish priests" and "captains" (or gobernadorcillos). By the start of the nineteenth century some Spanish officials had begun to list these missions, which accounted for about 3 percent of the regional population, as municipalities pertaining to the partidos of Lagonoy and Bicol. 28 In many respects, however, the missions remained quite different both from original lowland pueblos and from their later offshoots. They occupied much smaller ecological enclaves—coastal coves or upland valleys—isolated both from the partidos and from each other. In 1855 the average population of the eleven Franciscan missions in Kabikolan was just 1,523 inhabitants, while that of the twenty-three lowland Franciscan parishes was 6,808. 2 9 The missions were also notoriously poor, having little or no agricultural surplus. They depended to a greater extent than the lowland towns on hunting, gathering, fishing, and supplementary root crops to fill out their diet. Their churches, parish houses, and town halls were still made of bamboo and nipa in the late nineteenth century, when most of the lowland towns had public buildings of stone or of stone and board. The missions also went for long periods without regular ecclesiastical administration. Whenever the Franciscans were short of personnel, the available friars were assigned to the rich and populous lowland parishes rather than to the missions. In 1855 all twenty-one Franciscans in the regions were in lowland parishes, leaving the missions, nominally Franciscan, in the hands of interim secular priests. 30 moan were on the northeast coast. All but the last of these remained nominally under Franciscan ecclesiastical administration until the end of Spanish rule. 28. Josseph Casanes, O.F.M., "RELACION de lo practicado por medio de sus mandamientos el Alce, de esta Provincia, D. Fermin de Aldibar, en orden de las Misiones del Monte Ysarog," 24 Jan. 1775, AFIO, typescript copy, Abella papers; Huerta; Goyena del Prado; PNA, EPA, I, expedientes on Lagonoy, 1806-1807. 29. Huerta. If comparable statistics were available for all the non-Franciscan parishes and the one non-Franciscan mission (Caramoan), this differential would probably be reduced; some of the smaller secular parishes of Sorsogon and Catanduanes were not much larger or more prosperous than the average mission. Analytically, however, it remains far more useful to treat the missions separately than to average them in with the lowland towns of Bicol partido. 30. Huerta; cf. Puya Ruiz; Eusebio Gómez Platero, O.F.M., Catálogo biográfico de los Religiosos Franciscanos de la Provincia de San Gregorio Magno de Filipinas (Manila, 1880). See also the annual Estados of the Franciscan province of San Gregorio Magno.

22

Setting the Stage

There are exceptions to some of these characterizations, particularly in Goa, Sagñay, and Tigaon, three missions that were close enough to Lagonoy to be genuinely integrated with that partido (as they are regarded hereafter in this study), but generally the missions were isolated, economically backward, and late to respond to the currents of change in the nineteenth century. There were also, even to the end of Spanish rule, a few inhabitants of Kabikolan who remained "infidels," entirely outside the effective reach of Spanish administration and thus very inadequately represented in the historical records. The Spanish were obsessed by the existence of such renegades (cimarrones), bandits (tulisanes), savages (aetas), vagabonds (vagamundos), and other hill-dwellers (monteses), who were often lumped together as rebels against church and state, "always fleeing from the drum and the bell, contrary to morality, to the Treasury, to the development and prosperity of the country." 3 1 There was great concern over "certain tax-owing natives [naturales tributantes] wandering about without paying their tribute to the King Our Lord . . . and without complying with the precepts of Our Holy Mother Church nor reporting for corvée and servicios personales to their respective municipalities"; it is hard to tell which of these failings distressed the authorities most. These "vagabonds," it was claimed, deliberately chose "to live more at their liberty, abandoned to the vices to which they have a propensity, and far from the view of those who can correct them and serve as a brake"; thus all manner of aggressive actions against them were justified. 32 A close reading of the reports of officials, priests, and travelers suggests that the monteses were in fact less dangerous and numerous in the late colonial period than Spanish rhetoric implied. The hills of Kabikolan were home for many different ethnic and occupational groups, from 3 1 . Bishop Francisco Gainza, O.P., s u m m a r i z e d i n - P N A , EPA, VI, "Albay. E s p e d i e n t e sobre erigir en Parroquia independiente el pueblo d e M a t n o g " (1863) a n d q u o t e d by diocesan fiscal E u g e n i o Galan, 14 A u g . 1876, A H N , U, L 2 2 2 9 , E26; cf. Paen (?) (Assessor, Manila), e n d o r s e m e n t of 9 July 1858, in P N A , EPA, VI, "Albay 1859 Pueblo d e Magallanes." The t e r m acta (or agta) w a s u s e d loosely to refer to all upland inhabitants of the Philippines w h o s e cultural identity w a s distinct from that of the s u r r o u n d i n g lowlanders; often it also implied a racial distinction w h i c h m a y or m a y n o t have existed in fact. In the eastern Bisayas today the t e r m agta refers to certain environmental spirits: "fierce, tall, black-skinned" savages in S a m a r , "small p e o p l e " in Leyte; D o n n V. Hart, " D i s e a s e Etiologies of S a m a r a n Filipino Peasants," in Culture and Curing, ed. Peter Morley a n d Roy Wallis (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1979), pp. 6 0 , 9 0 - 9 1 . The military d r u m (tambor) and the c h u r c h bell (campana) w e r e standard symbols of Spanish authority. 3 2 . José Pascual d e H u e r t a s (Alcalde Mayor, Albay), order of 14 Jan. 1797, in P N A , EPA, V, "Putiau. C o n t e s t a c i o n e s entre los Alcaldes m a y o r e s de C a m a r i n e s Sur, y de Albay"; Bishop D o m i n g o Collantes, O.P., to parish priest of C a g s a u a , 5 Mar. 1801, in P N A , EPA, V, " C a marines. A ñ o de 1803. E s p e d i e n t e sobre traslación del pueblo d e C a g s a u a , al sitio d e Daraga."

Setting the Stage

23

peaceful Negrito hunters and gatherers to Bikolano rustlers and renegades. Such bandits and rebels as there were in the region usually took to the hills, particularly the slopes of Mount Isarog, which were said to be the haunt of "more than a thousand indios" in 1656 and of the nascent New People's Army in 1972. 33 But Kabikolan never suffered the epidemics of social banditry and rebellion that afflicted some other Philippine regions, and the majority of the monteses seem to have been subsistence farmers whose chief crime was tax evasion, particularly the illegal cultivation of tobacco during the period of the government monopoly (1782-1882). This last activity also reinforced a certain symbiotic relationship with tax-paying Christian lowlanders, which was apparently more acceptable to the parties involved than to the colonial authorities. No reliable demographic evidence exists for these people who were, by definition, outside the effective reach of civil authority. The highest plausible nineteenth-century estimates suggest a total of 20,000-30,000 monteses of all races (Bikolano, Negrito, and mixed), presumably reduced from even higher levels by attrition and the success of Spanish missions. Sporadic but energetic Spanish efforts during the nineteenth century to "civilize" them further through military expeditions and evangelization brought the total to fewer than 7,000 "wild people" by 1903, while the extension of American roads and bureaucracy into the hills left fewer than 3,000 "pagans" by 1918. The role played by uplanders in Bikol history has yet to be fully understood, but it clearly was diminishing during the late colonial period, when their number fell from as much as 10 percent of the regional population to well under one-half of one percent. 34 33. Bishop Antonio de San Gregorio, O.F.M., to the King, 18 July 1656, AFIO, typescript copy, Abella papers; personal travel in Kabikolan, September 1972. See also nineteenthand early twentieth-century descriptions of the bandits of Isarog in MN, MSS 1774 and 2237; Raul Borjal, "Caramoan," in O'Brien, Heritage, p. 143. 34. Owen, "Kabikolan," pp. 3 8 1 - 8 3 , 560, 5 6 6 - 6 7 ; idem, "The Principalia in Philippine History," PS 22 (1974): 3 1 7 - 1 8 , 3 2 4 ; Peñaranda to Enrile, 5 Mar. 1834, MN, MS 2237, D18; Peñaranda to Enrile, 18 July 1834, MN, MS 2228; Fedor Jagor, Travels in the Philippines (Manila, 1965), pp. 99-101, 149 - 63; Puya Ruiz, pp. 14, 3 8 - 4 1 ; Manuel Ma. Crespo, O.F.M., Memoria sobre la reducción de monteses del Isarog en Camarines Sur (Manila, 1881); Census of 1903; Merton L. Miller, "The Non-Christian People of Ambos Camarines," Philippine Journal of Science, Sec. D, 6 (Dec. 1911): 321 - 2 5 ; P.I., Census Office, Census of the Philippine Islands ...in the Year 1918 (Manila, 1920-21) (hereafter cited as Census of 1918); Frank Lynch, "Some Notes on a Brief Survey of the Hill People of Mt. Iriga, Camarines Sur, Philippines," Primitive Man 21 ( J u l y - O c t . 1948): 6 5 - 7 3 ; cf. John Garvan, The Negritos of the Philippines, ed. Herman Hochegger, Wiener Beitrage Zur Kulturgeschichte Und Linguistik, vol. 14 (Vienna: Verlag Ferdinand Berger, 1964), pp. 8 -10. The 1903 census divides the population into "civilized" and "wild" (infielm the Spanish text); the 1918 census distinguished "Christian" (which apparently included Buddhist and "Mohammedan"!) from "Non-Christian" or "pagan" inhabitants.

24

Setting the Stage

Moros Though the Spanish at times seemed obsessed with the monteses, there is no doubt that a much greater threat to the peace and prosperity of Kabikolan was posed by the sea-borne Muslim raiders known locally (in a term borrowed from earlier Spanish struggles in Iberia and North Africa) as Moros. The origins and development of the Moro wars in the Philippines lie well outside the scope of this study. On one level these wars were simply a local manifestation of a tradition of slave-raiding, trade, and piracy, which ran deep in Southeast Asia, making virtually no distinction between legal and illegal uses of naval force. 35 On another level, they represented a collision between two powerful religio-political movements, both with expansionist tendencies. Muslims were already masters of the Sulu Archipelago and parts of Mindanao when Legazpi reached the Philippines in 1565, and had recently made significant inroads in Luzon as well. The Spaniards were conquistadores, dedicated to the dual advancement of cross and crown, committed to the conversion of the heathen and the extirpation of enemies of the Faith—among whom Muslims were the most notorious. Although both sides nominally forswore conversion by coercion, each had a theology that offered ample scope for the use of force to advance the interests of its religion. The struggle for hegemony in the archipelago, defined primarily, though not exclusively, along these religious lines, was to last for more than three centuries. Both sides always claimed that they were—and may have genuinely believed themselves to be—the victims of aggression, acting only in self-defense. The Spaniards, who have had the better of it historiographically, asserted that peaceful coexistence with the Muslims was impossible because the Moros would not refrain from raiding defenseless towns in the Christianized zone for slaves and plunder. 36 Recently the Muslim case has been more clearly articulated: unprovoked Spanish incursions into their maritime world—above all, the 35. O. W. Wolters, The Fall ofSrivijaya in Malay History (London: Oxford University Press, 1970); David E. Sopher, "The Sea Nomads: A Study Based on the Literature of the Maritime Boat People of Southeast Asia," Memoirs of the National Museum (Singapore) 5 (1965): 1 - 4 2 2 ; M.A.P. Meilink-Roelofsz, Asian Trade and European Influence in the Indonesian Archipelago Between 1500 and About 1600 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962); cf. Nicholas Tarling, Piracy and Politics in the Malay World (Melbourne: F. W. Cheshire, 1963). These and other sources adequately refute the suggestion of K. M. Panikkar, Asia and Western Dominance, new ed. (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1959), p. 35, that the Europeans "introduced" terrorism and piracy to Asian waters. 36. The classic Spanish version of the Moro wars is represented in Vicente Barrantes [y Moreno], Guerras piráticas de Filipinas contra mindanaos y joloanos (Madrid, 1878), and José Montero y Vidal, Historia de la piratería malayo-mahometana en Mindanao, Jolo y Borneo (Madrid, 1888). Many later Filipino and American scholars have depended heavily on these authorities.

Setting the Stage

25

establishment of a garrison at Zamboanga, right on their major shipping lanes—posed a threat to the very livelihood and integrity of the sultanates which could not go unanswered. The recent research of James Warren suggests that at least for the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries economic considerations (involving increased trade with British and Chinese merchants) were paramount in the expansion of Sulubased slave-raiding. 37 But a comprehensive and dispassionate history of the whole Muslim-Christian struggle in the Philippines remains to be written. Despite these larger historical ambiguities, the Moro wars were simple and deadly for the Bikolanos. When the Spaniards conquered the Philippines, they established a virtual monopoly on the exercise of force within the colony. Thereafter the Bikolanos could not themselves launch any attack on the Moros. Instead, they were at best passive defenders, at worst defenseless victims. "The enemy" appeared to them as fearsome and faceless aggressors, unprovoked corsairs who systematically attacked traders, fishermen, and coastal towns. 38 It was not within the power of the Bikolanos to stop these wars or even to change their course. They could only try to endure them, as they endured the constant typhoons and the eruptions of Mount Mayon. There are references to Sulu raids on Kabikolan as early as 1573, but after a wave of attacks on Spanish shipyards along the Sibuyan Sea coast between 1616 and 1629, the evidence for further raids before the mideighteenth century is sparse. 39 This uneasy truce—what one historian calls an "interlude" in the wars—was broken with a vengeance in 1754. The Moros that year attacked Kabikolan in great force, sacking the towns of Bulan, Bacon, and Albay itself, while sweeping from the other 3 7 . C e s a r Adib Majul, Muslims in the Philippines ( Q u e z o n City, 1973); R e y n a l d o C l e m e ñ a Ileto, Magindanao,

1860-1888,

Data Paper no. 8 2 (Ithaca: Cornell University, D e p a r t m e n t of

Asian Studies, S o u t h e a s t Asia P r o g r a m , 1971), pp. 1 - 1 1 ; J a m e s F. Warren, "Trade-RaidSlave: The S o c i o - e c o n o m i c Patterns of the Sulu Z o n e , 1 7 7 0 - 1 8 9 8 " (Ph.D. dissertation, A u s tralian National University, 1976). 3 8 . It should be noted that there is s o m e evidence that not all the " p i r a t e s " in Bikol w a t e r s were actually Muslims. T h e r e a r e scattered references to " r e n e g a d e " Christians, " d e s e r t e r s and v a g a b o n d s from the s u r r o u n d i n g country," Hongos, Tagalogs, a n d even in one case to S p a n i s h - s p e a k i n g pirates led by Spaniards. In m o s t cases, however, the raiders were M u s lims; s o m e t i m e s these could even be distinguished as " S u l u s " (Taosugs and Samals), " M i n d a n a o s " (Magindanaos), or M a r a ñ a o s . A n t o n i o S i g ü e n z a (Corregidor, C a m a r i n e s Norte) to Enrile, 2 4 Nov. 1830, M N , M S 1666, D19; P e ñ a r a n d a to Enrile, 19 Nov. [1831], M N , M S 2237, D2; P e ñ a r a n d a to Enrile, 7 Mar. 1833, MN, M S 2228; P e ñ a r a n d a to Enrile, 17 Apr. 1833, M N , M S 2237, D13; Jagor, Travels, p. 86; Report of C o n s u l Ricketts, 2 4 July 1870, P R O , F O 7 2 , 1 2 4 6 ; cf. P N L , HDP, Albay, Ligao (Bo. Cabarian). 39. BRP1, 34:275; Majul, pp. 123, 1 2 6 - 2 7 ; Barrantes, p. 10. References to raids in 1691, 1 7 3 7 , 1 7 4 0 , and 1747, a n d to the forced shift of the provincial capital from S o r s o g o n to Albay are found in O'Brien, Heritage, p. 106; G o y e n a del Prado, pp. 1 8 3 - 84; P N A , EPA, V, "Putiau."

26

Setting the Stage

coast up through Putiao right to the inland town of Cagsaua. The next year it was Catanduanes that felt the brunt, as Virac and Calolbon were sacked and burned. In 1757, the Moros are said to have destroyed ten towns and two missions entirely, killing or capturing some 8,000 Bikolanos and threatening even Nueva Caceres, at the heart of Camarines Sur. 4 0 These raids, though they were never to be matched for destructiveness, ushered in an epoch of systematic raiding in Kabikolan. During every southwest monsoon, fleets of vessels from Sulu, Magindanao, or Lanao would come sweeping up through the Bisayas toward Kabikolan. Some struck at the Sibuyan Sea islands and the towns and shipping along the western coast of the Bikol peninsula, while others sailed right through the San Bernardino Strait to attack Catanduanes and the Pacific coast, often as far north as Camarines Norte or beyond. The Moros usually arrived in the region a month or two after the end of the rice harvest and stayed in Bikol waters up to six months. They would sink or capture any vessels they could catch, land on the beach or ascend the river at small towns and isolated visitas, seize any people or cattle foolish enough to remain, set fire to the buildings, and leave the survivors (who had fled to the hills) to rebuild and replant in time for the next year's raid. As time went by, the Moros struck increasingly at local weakness rather than strength, preying on the undefended rather than challenging any Spanish or local forces. In some coastal towns and visitas the inhabitants simply gave up the effort and either retreated to the interior as a unit (retaining their political identity) or dispersed to find new homes in the hills or in other, safer communities. 41 40. Majul, pp. 1 6 9 , 2 4 4 ; M o n t e r o y Vidal, Pirateria, 1 : 3 0 9 - 1 2 , 3 2 7 - 3 8 ; G o y e n a del Prado, pp. 1 7 0 - 7 1 , 186, 1 9 4 - 9 5 , 2 3 5 - 3 8 ; P N A , EPA, V "Albay. Expediente . . . que los Naturales residentes en el Sitio n o m b r a d o Manito, p a s a s e n al M o n t e C a p u n t u c a n , " and "Afio de 1830 a 832. Expediente . . . sobre . . . la Visita y P u e r t o de P u t i a o " ; Virac Parish Records (Bishop's Palace, Legazpi City); D. Abella, Bikol Annals, pp. 1 0 5 - 7 ; P N L , HDP, Albay, G u i n o b a t a n . (The last of t h e s e s o u r c e s dates the greatest raid to 1759, but this should be 1754 or 1757.) The d a t e of the start of the great slave-raiding offensive of the late eighteenth century is variously given as 1754 by Joaquin Martinez d e Zuniga, An Historical View of the Philippine Islands, trans. John Maver, Publication 10 (1803; reprint ed., Manila: Filipiniana Book Guild, 1966), p. 167; by M o n t e r o y Vidal, Pirateria, 1:309; and by B e m a d , pp. 1 2 5 - 2 9 ; as 1755 by Warren, pp. 55, 274; and as 1757 by Majul, p. 247. N o n e of these s o u r c e s explains convincingly w h y the Muslims chose to e x p a n d their raiding activity at just this time. 4 1 . For references to towns and visitas such as G a t e and Ibalon which totally disapp e a r e d , see G o y e n a del Prado, pp. 8 0 - 8 3 , 1 0 0 - 1 5 , and the (1771?) m a p in P N A , EPA, V, "Albay. Expediente . . . que los Naturales residentes e n el Sitio n o m b r a d o M a n i t o " ; see also n. 42, below, for references to the forced relocation of Putiao and Donsol. O n the increasing propensity of raiders to strike at weakness rather than strength, see Mariano de G o i c o e chea (?), report of 2 Nov. 1829, P N A , EPA, V, "Albay 1822 1834. Pueblo d e D o n s o l " ; Warren, p.296.

Setting the Stage

27

The fragmentary historical records provide direct evidence of a pattern of tragedy so recurrent as to become almost tedious. In the 1760s the Moros are said to have penetrated as far inland as Mount Isarog, where they destroyed a mission and killed the priest. In 1771 a fleet of over forty vessels attacked the town of Albay but was driven off; the whole gulf of Albay was described as a "den of pirates," and the small settlement of Manito was forced to relocate. The Sibuyan Sea visita of Putiao was desolated and burned in 1773; after being rebuilt, it was desolated and burned again in 1774, and this time its survivors simply dispersed, not to regroup again for a quarter of a century. In the local defense against Moro raids in 1781-82, Pedro Esteban first distinguished himself for valor and was rewarded with a specially minted medal. In 1790 and again in 1804 the town of Donsol was sacked and burned; sometime during these years it moved several miles upstream from its original site at the bar to a safer (though otherwise less favorable) site, and its population is said to have fallen by more than 70 percent. Between 1794 and 1798 we know of raids on Sirona (Siruma?), Himoragat, Capalonga, and Mambulao (all on the northern coasts and bays of Camarines), on the Caramoan Peninsula, and on the island of Catanduanes. In 1806 the Moros actually blockaded Sorsogon Bay, the largest and best-defended harbor in the region. In 1809-10 they raided Libmanan, Talisay, and Indan, on the northern coasts of Camarines. Before the battle of Tabogon Bay in 1818 the Moros had already attacked and burned the towns of Sagñay, Talisay, and Indan, and had seized the ships carrying the revenues of Catanduanes to the mainland. 42 For the same period, there are also accounts of the establishment of Moro satellite settlements on many of the islands off Kabikolan, of disrupted trade (most notably the seizure in 1769 of eight boats returning from Albay to Iloilo with 200 men and P10,000 on board), of numerous sightings of Moro vessels when actual contact was not recorded, and of the great fearfulness the Moros inspired in the Bikolanos. In 1799, responding to a request for a report on their defense needs, the towns of 4 2 . Barrantes, pp. 5 3 - 5 6 , 1 3 3 , 1 4 9 , 1 7 3 , 2 0 2 ; M o n t e r o y Vidal, Piratería, 1 : 3 3 5 - 3 6 , 3 5 3 - 5 4 , 3 6 2 , 3 6 5 - 6 6 , 3 7 1 - 7 3 ; P N A , EPA, I, "Albay. A ñ o de 1799. Juntas celebradas por los GovernUos y Práles de la Prov ? de Albay, so* la necesidad de Viritas, Lanchas, Cañones, Polvora y balas p ? perseguir á los Moros, y contener sus hostilidades," and "Año de 1806. Oficio del A l o M o r de Albay, participando hallarse c r u z a n d o sobre las costas de S o r s o g o n y C a s i g u r a n 4 0 Pancos de Moros q. han apresado u n Pontin &c."; P N A , EPA, III, "Albay. 1818 á 19. Espediente acerca del combate que tuvieron los Moros"; P N A , EPA, V, "Albay. Expediente . . . que los Naturales en el Sitio n o m b r a d o Manito," "Albay 1822 1834. Pueblo de Donsol. Espediente sobre la traslación . . . al Sitio de la Barra," and "Año de 1830 á 832. Expediente . . . sobre . . . la Visita y Puerto de Putiao"; PNA, EPCS, III, "Año de 1810 .. . Presentación y acusaciones hechas

p o r los C a v ? d e B a r a n g a y

del P u e b l o

de L i b m a n a n , "

and

"Camarines

S u r . . . 1831. Arancel. E s p e d i e n t e p r o m o v i d o en 1 8 3 7 . . . el pueblo de L i b m a n a n . "

28

Setting the Stage

Albay indicated just how universal and oppressive this danger had become. Every town in the province (which at the time was almost entirely coastal) considered itself regularly and seriously threatened. Town after town reported "assaults" or "forays" by Moros, who destroyed "the rice-fields and other crops," slaughtered the cattle, captured or killed "many people, old persons and children," constantly "ambushed" ships along the coast, and left the towns impoverished and depleted of manpower. One town claimed, "We experience . . . most grave and notable damage . . . with evident danger of the town itself being lost." As significant as the content of these reports is the language used in framing them, particularly the adverbs: "continually," "annually," "ordinarily," "most frequently," and "always." The Moro raids had become a fearsome commonplace. 4 3 Against these raids, the Bikolanos were not entirely defenseless. They built watchtowers, fortified their towns (often with the stone church as the ultimate bulwark), and occasionally even ventured out to sea to do battle with the invaders. The Spanish government in Manila began, erratically and inefficiently, to create and coordinate a regional defense program by supplying cannons to the towns, establishing a provincial coast guard, and assigning a few naval vessels to patrol the San Bernardino Strait. It took half a century before most of the measures were implemented with any success in Kabikolan. But in time the Moro threat there did diminish. 4 4 The first signs that the tide was turning appeared in 1818. Not only did the Bikolanos win the battle of Tabogon Bay in that year, but the defense of the island of Ticao (in the Sibuyan Sea) became much more active. 4 5 Although Moro raids on Bikol towns continued for some decades, they never again had the success they enjoyed in the years before 1818. There seems to have been some decline in the size of raiding expeditions— from forty boats or more to fewer than thirty—and their targets were more often remote visitas and towns on the offshore islands rather than the towns of peninsular Kabikolan itself. In the 1820s and 1830s a group of able and energetic young Spanish military officers (of whom the best known was José Ma. Peñaranda) implemented a wide range of coastal 4 3 . Barrantes, p. 202; Martínez de Zúñiga, Status, p. 428; Warren, pp. 2 7 8 - 7 9 , 2 9 4 - 9 9 ; P N A , EPA, I, "Albay . . . 1807.

Diligencias . . . contra D. A n t o n i o L a u r e n i s a n o " ;

Neé,

"Diario"; MN, M S 467, Lib. 4, Cap. 6; P N A , EPA, I, "Albay. A ñ o de 1799. Juntas celebradas." 4 4 . O n coastal defense plans, see Barrantes, pp. 1 4 3 - 2 8 5 ; M o n t e r o y Vidal,

Piratería,

1 : 3 5 7 - 6 8 ; Warren, pp. 2 8 3 - 9 3 , 4 5 7 . O n the difficulties in i m p l e m e n t i n g these plans, see also s o u r c e s cited in n. 4 2 , above. 4 5 . P N A , EPA, III, "Albay. 1818 á 19. Espediente c r e a d o por el Alcalde m o r " ; P N A , EPA, V, "Albay. 1819. E s p e d i e n t e . . . varios naturales de la prov? de Cebu." By 1822 the t o w n of Donsol asserted that it had suffered n o M o r o raids since a minor one in 1816 and that trade had notably increased since 1819; P N A , EPA, V, "Albay 1822 1834. Pueblo de Donsol."

Setting the Stage

29

defense measures far more vigorously than ever before. 46 By the 1830s, the Spanish-Bikolano forces clearly had the upper hand; by the 1850s Manila could claim that "it is not to be feared that in the future the incursions of the Moros will be repeated." 47 Matters were never quite as simple as Manila would have them, of course; in 1860 the governor of Albay reported ten pirate vessels lying undisturbed off San Miguel Island, right opposite the wealthy town of Tabaco. But that same year, the introduction into Philippine waters of eighteen shallow-draft steam gunboats marked the beginning of the end in the long archipelagic struggle for naval supremacy. Not until the twentieth century would the coasts of Kabikolan be totally free of maritime depredations, but the battle for the Bikol peninsula and the major shipping lanes was effectively won by the 1830s at the latest, the battle for Catanduanes a few decades later. 48 The psychological effect of the Moro raids on Kabikolan was substantial. One early-nineteenth-century source reported that even in the interior "they tremble just on hearing the name" of Moros, and as late as 1832 it was said that the whole western bank of the Bikol River was unpopulated because of "the fear of the Moros, the memory of some disastrous events which the passage of many years has not been able to erase." Such conflict with the Muslims no doubt also gave verve and a sense of verisimilitude to the popular dramas known as "Moro-Moros." 4 9 Even in the local histories of the mid-twentieth century the Moro raids are recounted again and again, some taking on mythic significance. Two legends are particularly recurrent, in different local forms. One tells of church bells, kept in a tower that also served as a watchtower for sighting invaders; when the town was attacked the bells (said 46. The papers of Pascual Enrile y Alcedo (Lieutenant Governor of the Philippines, under Governor General Mariano Ricafort, 1 8 2 5 - 3 0 ; Governor General, 1830-35), in the Museo Naval, are the best source on these young men and on the period in general. Three of these young officers—Peñaranda, Manuel Esquivel, and Nicolas Enrile—were relatives of Enrile; all three, as well as Antonio Sigiienza, wrote him at length about coastal defense. 47. Peñaranda to Salazar, 18 May 1836, PNA, EPA, V, untitled expediente; PNA, Memoria de Albay; PNA, EPA, II, "Oficio del Gobernador de Albay." This improvement in regional security is more remarkable in that 1 8 3 0 - 4 8 was the peak period for Moro raiding in the Philippines as a whole, according to Warren, p. 312. 48. Fedor Jagor, "Jagor's Travels in the Philippines," in The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes, ed. Austin Craig (Manila, 1916), pp. 211-14; Montero y Vidal, Piratería, 2:471; idem, Historia general de Filipinas (Madrid, 1887-95), 3:87, 3 2 7 - 2 8 ; Warren, p. 323. Cf. PNL, HDP, Albay, Libón (Bo. Pantao) and Bacacay (Bo. Sogod), which refer to raids in 1868 and 1897, respectively. 49. Manuel Royo, O.F.M., report of 14 Dec. 1814, PNA, EPA, V, "Camarines. Año de 1814. Espediente creado a representación del Cura de Cagsaua"; Peñaranda to Enrile, 25 Aug. 1832, MN, MS 2237, D5 (also in PNA, EPA, V, untitled expediente); Alvarez Guerra, pp. 1 6 0 65.

30

Setting the Stage

in one version to be golden) were sunk in a nearby lake to prevent their capture and were never recovered. The other tells of a local hero who singlehandedly defeated several boatloads of invading Moros through the power of his magic amulet and brought back proof of his feat in the form of hundreds of enemy ears. This character is sometimes called Teban-Teban (or Tibang-Tibang), and may very well represent the historical naval hero Pedro Esteban, whose exploits have not been diminished by the passage of 150 years. 5 0 More germane to this study, however, is the impact of the Moros on demographic, commercial, and agricultural development in Kabikolan during the late eighteenth and the nineteenth century. The threat to settlement, to trade, and to capital accumulation represented by these raids must have been a major impediment to growth; this might help explain why Kabikolan, like the Bisayas, was relatively slow in responding to the new economic opportunities and initiatives of the Manila government under the Bourbon Reforms. In the period after 1818 only the demographic growth of the coastal settlements, particularly those on the Sibuyan Sea coast, can be directly correlated with the diminution of this longtime danger. Yet although the achievement of relative security of the coasts and sea-lanes was not sufficient to bring about the expanded growth and commerce of abaca in the nineteenth century, it was a necessary precondition of such expansion. 51 Thus the winding down of the Moro wars helped clear the stage for the rise of the abaca trade and the transformation of the Bikol economy. T h e Colonial Superstructure The Spanish, typical colonialists, generally claimed for themselves full credit for all progress occurring in the Philippines, including the rise of export industries. Certainly we must recognize colonialism as a significant factor—contributing or limiting—in the history of the Philippines, but we cannot take at face value either the universal credit claimed by Spaniards or the universal blame attached to them by Filipino nationalists. Pending further research, we can only outline crudely the first two hundred years of Spanish colonialism in Kabikolan. But beginning with 50. PNL, HDP, Albay, passim, esp. Guinobatan, Libon, and Bacacay; O'Brien, passim; Goyena del Prado, p. 219. Cf. Goyena del Prado, pp. 2 8 2 - 8 4 , on the similar exploits of a legendary "Comisario Juan." 51. For the similar effects of Moro raids on Bisayan economic development, see John Leddy Phelan, The Hispanization of the Philippines (Madison, 1957), pp. 1 0 0 , 1 3 7 - 3 8 ; Cruikshank, "History," pp. 6 0 - 8 2 , 2 5 3 - 5 9 ; cf. Eric A. Anderson, "Traditions in Conflict: Filipino Responses to Spanish Colonialism, 1565-1665" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Sidney, 1976), pp. 8 7 - 9 5 , 1 4 5 - 4 6 , 2 7 0 - 7 1 .

Setting the Stage

31

the late eighteenth century, we have sufficient evidence to refute any claim that Spanish initiatives produced economic growth in the region. On their arrival in Kabikolan in the 1570s, the Spaniards found an indigenous people not significantly different from those in the rest of Luzon or the Bisayas, perhaps most resembling those of Samar. 52 The Bikolanos were farmers, fishers, traders, and skilled gold-workers and boat-builders; the Spaniards found them to be "the most valiant and best-armed men of all these islands," who "would not surrender unless conquered by force of arms," so that "more . . . perished in that land than in any hitherto conquered." 53 Within a generation or two thé Spaniards had converted the majority of Bikolanos to Christianity, "reduced" their scattered settlements into communities more nearly resembling Spanish towns, "entrusted" them to encomenderos (who collected their agricultural surplus as tribute), seized and shipped out all the gold they could find, and established in Nueva Caceres a "city" with about one hundred Spanish householders and the full paraphernalia of Hispanic urban administration, quite distinct from the separate polity of the much larger Bikolano settlement at the same site. 54 They introduced cattle and such new crops as corn (maize), cacao, and tobacco to the local economy. They built naval shipyards to take advantage of the attractive combination of local labor, timber, and cordage fiber which Kabikolan offered. And presumably they co-opted the local chiefs (datus or maguimos) to serve as municipal officials and tax-collectors; certainly by the late eighteenth century such an indigenous bureaucratic elite existed, with some claim to descent from pre-Hispanic aristocrats. 52. F o r the early S a m a r e ñ o s , the major source is a s e v e n t e e n t h - c e n t u r y manuscript by Francisco Ignacio de Alzina, S. J., "Historia natural del sitio, fertilidad y calidad de las Islas e Indios d e Bisayas." O v e r the past t w e n t y y e a r s Paul Lietz and Fred E g g a n have b e e n preparing a translation of this m a n u s c r i p t for publication, and m a n y scholars have already availed themselves of the draft translation; see Cruikshank, "History," pp. 3 1 - 3 8 , 323; Lynch, Social Class, pp. 1 6 8 - 7 0 ; Ronald S. H i m e s , " A Study of Selected P r e - S p a n i s h Bisayan Institutions as Derived from the Alzina M a n u s c r i p t " (M. A. thesis, A t e n e o d e Manila University, 1964). 53. Martín de Rada, O.S.A., to Viceroy Martin Enriquez, 30 June 1574, BRPI, 3 4 : 2 8 6 - 8 7 ; Lavezaris to Felipe II, 17 July 1574, BRPI, 3:273. O n the c o n q u e s t a n d evangelization of Kabikolan, see also p r i m a r y a c c o u n t s in BRPI, 5 : 9 2 - 1 0 1 ; 7:40 - 4 2 , 2 6 8 - 7 0 ; 1 8 : 9 4 - 9 6 , 2 2 3 - 2 4 ; 3 4 : 7 6 - 9 1 ; W. E. Retana, Archivo del bibliófilo filipino, 4 : 2 5 - 2 6 , 7 4 - 8 8 ; M o r g a , pp. 6 1 , 2 4 7 , 2 6 4 65; H . d e la Costa, Readings in Philippine History, pp. 2 7 - 2 8 ; Marcelo de Ribadeneira, O . F . M . , Historia del archipiélago y otros reynos: History of the Philippines and Other Kingdoms

(Manila,

1970), 1 : 5 9 - 7 0 , 2 6 2 - 6 4 ; Francisco Colín, S.J., Labor evangélica: ministerios apostólicos de los obreros de la Compañía de Iesvs . . . en las Islas Filipinas (Barcelona, 1900 - 1 9 0 2 ) , 1:21 - 2 7 . 54. F o r 1591 e n c o m i e n d a s , see Retana, 4 : 3 6 - 5 0 ; o n early N u e v a Caceres, see M o r g a , p. 288.

32

Setting the Stage

The Bikolanos, of course, did not accept Spanish initiatives passively. They adopted and adapted selectively, although the bases and mechanics of selection may not always be clear to us. Along with the "Hispanization" of Kabikolan there was undoubtedly a Bikolano variant of the complementary "Philippinization" of Spanish culture and institutions described by John Leddy Phelan. Certainly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries elements of pre-Hispanic mythology, medicine, and kinship and settlement patterns still survived in the region, which retained its own identity even under colonialism. 55 The detailed history of this mutual acculturation—who did what and to whom?—remains to be written, however. The economy of early Spanish Kabikolan seems to have been typical of traditional agrarian societies in that part of the world. A peasant majority, bound to its home village by law and to its superiors by nominal ties of loyalty, produced the means for its own subsistence and a surplus of goods and corvée labor extracted (or expropriated) by an essentially nonproductive ruling class. Although the Spanish rulers were connected by the Manila -Acapulco trade with the international market system, it does not follow, as some have argued, that the Filipinos themselves were incorporated into a global capitalist system at this time. Indeed, they were artificially isolated from it by Spanish restrictions on trade, including prohibitions against private Asian trade and limitations on trans-Pacific cargo space which left no room for relatively bulky local produce such as sugar, abaca, tobacco, or rice. 56 In this respect the Filipino had more in common with the Burman, subject to a land-bound traditional agrarian court, than with the peasant of western Java required to produce coffee or pepper for the Dutch overseas trade. The period from 1650 to 1750 is known as the "forgotten century" in Spanish colonial history, and Spanish Kabikolan was no exception. The major recorded developments of these years were the invention by the Franciscan priest Pedro Espallargas of an improved abaca-stripping device, and a second wave of "mission" activity, directed at those Biko55. Phelan; C a s t a ñ o in Retana, 1 : 3 2 3 - 7 9 ; P e ñ a r a n d a to Enrile, 18 Apr. 1833, M N , M S 2237, D14; Jagor, Travels, p a s s i m ; Alvarez Guerra, pp. 1 0 2 - 1 7 ; Walter Robb, " D e m i g o d s of Bikolandia," in Filipinos: Pre-War Philippines Essays, rev. ed. (Victoneta Park, Rizal: A r a n e t a University Press, 1963), pp. 8 5 - 9 5 ; Francis X. L y n c h , " A n M g a A s u w a n g " ; O ' B r i e n , Heritage, pp. 1 9 8 - 3 8 1 ; General, S a n Jose, and Parrone, pp. 171 - 9 7 . 56. Pierre C h a u n u , Les Philippines et la Pacifique des Ibériques, pp. 11 - 2 4 , 2 4 1 - 6 9 , a t t e m p t s to a r g u e that the Manila galleon trade incorporated the Philippines into " t h e first worlde c o n o m y c o m m a n d e d by E u r o p e , " but fails to note that the Filipino e c o n o m y — a s o p p o s e d to the C h i n a - M e x i c o c o m m e r c e passing t h r o u g h Manila, with w h i c h he is primarily c o n c e r n e d — w a s artificially s e p a r a t e d from the global s y s t e m h e describes. The c o n c e p t of a capitalist w o r l d - s y s t e m , as d e v e l o p e d by Braudel and Wallerstein, helps to explain Filipino history only in the late eighteenth century, and Bikol history only in the nineteenth.

Setting the Stage

33

lanos in the hills who had not been reached by (or who had fled) the evangelization of a century before. There were also various Spanish schemes for mining iron and gold in Camarines, all abortive. 57 Otherwise, this was, for all we know, simply a time of peaceful consolidation and adaptation. When the curtain began to rise again after 1750, one other development of the first two hundred years of Spanish contact became clear. After a brisk start, the size and intensity of Spanish presence in the region had actually declined. The encomenderos had disappeared, the shipyards were soon to close, the gold mines had proved a disappointment, and the only Spanish city in the region had been reduced to the level of an overgrown indigenous town. A l t h o u g h N u e v a C a c e r e s is c a l l e d a " c i t y , " it l a c k s a cabildo, miento,

a n d regidores

ayunta-

. . . , a n d u n i o n or a c c o m p a n i m e n t w i t h the Alcalde

M a y o r i n p u b l i c a c t s is f o r m e d o n l y b y t h e gobernadorcillos

of the [indige-

n o u s ] t o w n s of T a b u c o , S a n t a C r u z , N a g a , a n d C a m a l i g a n , w h i c h c o m prise this provincial capital. . . . [ T h e y are] incapable of giving a n o p i n i o n o n [the notification of t h e a c c e s s i o n of C a r l o s IV], since t h e y h a r d l y k n o w h o w to s p e a k S p a n i s h . 5 8

The latter half of the eighteenth century is often taken as a turning point in Philippine history. The Bourbon Reforms, instituted throughout the Spanish world, were an effort to rationalize an almost medieval bureaucracy and to liberalize a narrowly mercantilist economy, thus shaking the empire out of centuries of slumber and stagnation. In the Philippines, the urgency of the need for reform was emphasized by the British occupation of Manila (1762 -64), which both indicated the weakness of the colony and permitted the British to initiate a few reforms of their own, such as opening the port to more Asian trade. The succeeding decades saw a number of Spanish government initiatives, the most important of them associated with the administrations of Governors General Simón de Anda y Salazar (1770 -76) and José Basco y Vargas (1778-87), which brought about more significant innovations in the eco57. Valentín Marín y Morales, O.P., Ensayo de una síntesis de los trabajos realizados por las corporaciones religiosas españolas de Filipinas (Manila, 1901), 2 : 3 6 6 ; de la Costa, Readings, p. 68; María L o u r d e s Díaz-Trechuelo [Spinola], " E i g h t e e n t h C e n t u r y Philippine E c o n o m y : Mining," PS 13 (Oct. 1965): 7 6 3 - 6 5 . 58. José L e c a r o z (Alcalde Mayor, C a m a r i n e s ) to G o v e r n o r General, 3 0 J u n e 1790, P N A , EPCS, I, " C a m a r i n e s . A ñ o de 1790. El Ale? m o r a c o m p a ñ a el Testimonio d e las R ? s o r d e n e s y C é d u l a s q u e ha recivido"; cf. Martínez de Zúñiga, Status, p. 416. By 1818, only three S p a n i s h residents of N u e v a C a c e r e s were reported, although p r e s u m a b l y this figure does not include officials a n d priests; [Yldefonso A. de Aragón], Estados de la población de Filipinas correspondiente

a el año de 1818 (Manila, 1820). Cabildo and ayuntamiento are types of munici-

pal councils; regidores are councilmen.

34

Setting the Stage

nomic sphere than had been seen in the nearly two centuries since the establishment of the galleon trade. Between 1750 and 1799 the government began to open the Philippines to foreign trade (although this remained encrusted with regulations and set about with hindrances for generations more); it sponsored the formation of the Economic Society of Friends of the Country and the Royal Philippine Company, both of which joined it in promoting trade and the production of new goods for export; it established the tobacco monopoly, which enabled it to end two centuries of deficits, traditionally made up by a subsidy (situado) from Mexico, and even to remit a surplus to Spain; it instituted new bureaucratic structures and fiscal controls, ending some of the abuses endemic to the old system; it expelled most of the resident Chinese, which opened the way for the commercial rise of the Chinese mestizo community; it expelled the Jesuits, which produced some redrawing of ecclesiastical jurisdictions and encouraged the growth of the Filipino secular clergy; it proposed dozens more projects, schemes, plans, innovations, and reforms, although many of these were never implemented; it was responsible for the introduction of, or significant increases in, the production of sugar, cotton, and indigo, as well as less successful ventures in cinnamon, pepper, iron, and silk. This was unquestionably a period of unprecedented activity by the government—a welcome contrast to the traditional policy which seemed to enshrine inaction as the highest good, characterized by the watchwords "Don't do anything new" (No se haga novedad).59 It remains to be asked, however, how effective these official initiatives were in changing the Philippine economy. The Royal Philippine Company, even in its halcyon days, was more concerned with Latin American profits than with Philippine development. The Economic Society was dormant nearly as many years as it was active, and its efforts were usually feeble and fruitless. Recent analysis of the tobacco monopoly refutes an earlier view that it had a salutary effect on the Philippine economy. Despite the relative liberalization of trade, the port of Manila was not officially open to foreign vessels until 1834, and even then was encumbered with countless restrictions; thanks to the loss of the Mexi59. Schurz, pp. 53 -60; Nicholas P. Cushner, S.J., Spain in the Philippines (Quezon City, 1971), pp. 1 4 6 - 5 1 , 1 7 4 , 1 8 6 - 9 6 ; Serafín D. Quiason, English "Country Trade" with the Philippines, 1644-1765; Benito Fernandez Legarda, Jr., "Foreign Trade. . . in the Nineteenth-Century Philippines," pp. 1 0 6 - 6 8 ; idem, "The Philippine Economy under Spanish Rule," pp. 6 - 1 0 ; de la Costa, Readings, pp. 1 0 6 - 4 2 ; idem, "The Formative Century, 1760-1860," in Asia and the Philippines (Manila, 1967), pp. 6 7 - 7 7 ; Salvador P. Escoto, "The Administration of Simón de Anda y Salazár, Governor-General of the Philippines, 1770-1776" (Ph.D. dissertation, Loyola University [Chicago], 1973); Onofre D. Corpuz, The Philippines (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1965), pp. 31 - 3 4 , 4 9 . See also five articles on the eighteenth-century Philippine economy by Diaz-Trechuelo in Philippine Studies, vols. 1 1 - 1 4 (1963-66).

Setting the Stage

35

can trade, the commerce of Manila seems to have reached an all-time low around 1825. 60 As regional histories of the Philippines begin to appear, the variable effect of the Bourbon Reforms on provincial life emerges more clearly. In provinces close to Manila, the impact was strong, for better or worse. The cultivation of sugar and other export crops expanded; conditions of tenancy worsened on the friar estates, which were increasingly operated on a capitalist basis; Chinese mestizos began to prosper in trade and move into landowning and local politics; the tobacco monopoly was strictly enforced, leading in some districts to temporary prosperity, in others to smuggling and banditry. Farther from the capital, however, the effect seems negligible. Few significant socioeconomic changes are recorded in the histories of late-eighteenth-century Samar, Cebú, Negros, or the Cagayan Valley; not until the nineteenth century would these regions enter on the path to commercialization. 61 In Kabikolan, as in other outlying areas, most of the Bourbon Reforms were without visible significance. In a region which had always fallen within the Franciscan sphere of influence, the expulsion of the Jesuits meant little. 62 Bureaucratic reforms hardly penetrated to the provincial level. The expulsion of the Chinese was probably less important here than in Manila and the provinces of Central Luzon, where they had previously played a more important role in local commerce. The export boom which accompanied the de facto opening of Manila was dominated by products such as indigo, sugar, timber, and birds' nests that came from regions other than Kabikolan. Only a few of the new export 60. James F. Cloghessy, "The Philippines and the Royal Philippine Company," MidAmerica 42 (Apr. 1960): 8 0 - 1 0 4 ; María Lourdes Díaz-Trechuelo Spinola, La Real Compañía Filipina (Seville, 1965); María Luisa Rodríguez Baena, La Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País de Manila en el siglo XVIII (Seville, 1966); Edilberto C. de Jesús, "The Tobacco Monopoly in the Philippines, 1782-1882" (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1973), pp. 1 7 - 6 2 , 2 8 1 84; W. E. Cheong, "The Decline of Manila as the Spanish Entrepot in the Far East, 1 7 8 5 1826"; Legarda, "Philippine Economy," pp. 9 - 1 2 , 1 9 ; idem, "Foreign Trade," pp. 171-90. 61. John A. Larkin, The Pampangans: Colonial Society in a Philippine Province (Berkeley, 1972), pp. 4 7 - 6 2 ; de Jesús, pp. 5 9 - 6 4 , 7 4 - 8 3 , 9 2 - 1 1 5 , 1 3 5 - 3 6 , 1 4 5 - 6 2 , 1 6 7 - 9 1 ; Dennis Morrow Roth, The Friar Estates of the Philippines (Albuquerque, 1977), pp. 140-78, 199-206; Cruikshank, "History," pp. 3 2 - 3 5 ; Angel Martínez Cuesta, O.R.S.A., Historia de la Isla de Negros, Filipinas: 1565-1898 (Madrid: n.p., 1974), p. 148; Michael Cullinane, personal communication, Jan. 1979. 62. One indirect result of the expulsion was to leave even more of the Franciscan parishes in Kabikolan vacant or administered by secular priests, as the Franciscan "province," already overextended, took over the former Jesuit parishes in Samar. The scarcity of Franciscans in early-nineteenth-century Kabikolan, however, is attributable more to inadequate recruitment than to the allocation of parishes among the religious orders. On the expulsion of the Jesuits, see Horacio de la Costa, The Jesuits in the Philippines, 1581 -1768 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961), pp. 5 8 2 - 9 5 ; Franciscan recruitment and assignment can be calculated from Gómez Platero.

36

Setting the Stage

products—sea slugs (also known as balate, trepang, beche-de-mer, or sea cucumbers), cordage, sulphur, and gold—were commodities which Kabikolan could have provided, and many of these goods were also produced in other regions. 63 Two of the "reforms," however, were directly applied to eighteenthcentury Kabikolan: the tobacco monopoly and the development projects sponsored by Basco y Vargas, the Economic Society, and the Royal Philippine Company. Both were intended to provoke increased monetarization and growth in the local economy, yet there is no proof that they succeeded in this effort. The tobacco monopoly was introduced to Kabikolan in 1785 and was made fully effective early in 1786. In less than two years it produced a considerable crisis in the region, which led to extensive official discussion of the problems involved. Some of these were the almost inevitable mistakes accompanying the installation of a clumsy bureaucratic apparatus—shortages, delayed payments, and so forth. But the major problem was simple: the monopoly drained the local economy of cash (one municipal mayor claimed it took all the silver the natives had accumulated since "primitive times"), leaving the Bikolanos without the means to buy the tobacco they had come to depend on. In the short run, they turned to barter, offering abaca cloths (guinaras) in exchange for cigars, although this led to further complications and abuses. Meanwhile, the lack of money led to declining contributions to the churches and increasing delinquency in tribute and tax payments. The consultations produced no clear-cut solutions to these problems. The official position which emerged was that the solution to the monetary shortage would be found in the rise of commercial production of other commodities. It was hoped that the "demand" for money would be a positive incentive to such growth. Yet no such profitable industry emerged at the time; it was still thirty years to the beginning of the abaca boom. The tobacco monopoly was not a stimulus to Kabikolan; it was a drain on the local economy, a means of supporting a Spanish superstructure at the expense of the Filipino consumers. Somehow the Bikolanos adjusted to it: those who could paid the price; others wound up smoking other leaves that they found in the forest. Smuggling (from the Bisayas, which lay outside the monopoly) and growing contraband tobacco in the local hills may have increased the technical incidence of "crime" or 63. AG I, U, 6 5 8 - 6 1 ("Consulado y Comercio"), statements of exports of Philippine products for 1792,1796/97,1797/98,1802/03, and 1810/11. Four major exports (indigo, sugar, timber, and birds' nests) accounted for over 75 percent of total export value in the first four of these years, falling to under 70 percent in 1810/11. Of the goods which may have come from Kabikolan, the most important were sea slugs, which averaged only 4 - 5 percent of total export value. (See table 3, below.)

Setting the Stage

37

even decreased respect for the law as such, but there is no evidence of the sporadic violence and endemic outlawry that plagued other regions after the introduction of the monopoly. One source suggests that the Negritos, who were gradually being drawn into lowland society through wage labor, were driven back into the hills because they could not pay the monopoly price for one of their prime necessities. By and large, however, the tobacco monopoly in Kabikolan created a short-run shock and a long-run drain and discomfort, but no profound change in the society. 64 Spanish officialdom of these years in the Philippines was characterized by the reformers known as proyectistas, "project-ers" who were forever dreaming up new and elaborate schemes for the economic development of the empire. 65 Some of these schemes were substantially successful; most were a mixture of success and failure. It was the luck of the Bikolanos that the project which affected them most directly was an unparalleled disaster. This was the great silkworm scheme introduced by the Economic Society, encouraged by Basco y Vargas, implemented by the energetic provincial governor Carlos Conely, and reinforced by the Royal Philippine Company, with the support of the church. In 1786 Conely was sent to Camarines with authority to order every cabeza de barangay in the thirty towns of the province to plant 15,000 mulberry bushes. It was claimed that by 1788, counting both the original bushes and those which had grown from their suckers, there were nearly five million plants growing. A Chinese silkworm expert was retained to supervise production; the church assisted in the creation of schools to teach sericulture and weaving; the Company established a "factory" in Nueva Caceres to collect the silk from each town. According to the official projections, about sixteen tons of silk a year should soon be produced, worth up to one million pesos to the local growers at Company prices. Then it all fell apart. Conely left, his successor died, the Society went through a change of leadership, and Basco y Vargas was replaced as 64. AGI, U, 638; AGI, F, 1033, Bishop Juan A n t o n i o d e Orbigo, O.F.M., to G o v e r n o r G e n eral, 14 Apr. 1787, and "Testimonio d e la Junta Celebrada," 10 Sept. 1787; Martínez d e Zúñiga, Status, pp. 4 2 2 - 2 3 ; de Jesús, pp. 8 2 - 8 3 , 9 2 - 1 0 0 ; Neé, " D i a r i o " ; P N A , EPA, I, " A l b a y . . . 1807. Diligencias practicadas . . . contra D. A n t o n i o L a u r e n i s a n o " ; A n t o n i o F r e n e d o y Regrete (Tobacco Administrator, C a m a r i n e s ) to P e d r o d e la Peña (General Administrator, Tobacco Monopoly, Manila), 6 Sept. 1819, M N , M S 1576, D21; S i g ü e n z a to Enrile, 12 July 1831, MN, M S 1666, D19; P e ñ a r a n d a to Enrile, 2 9 Nov. 1 8 3 2 , 1 7 Apr. 1833, a n d 2 7 A u g . 1834, M N , M S 2237, D8 and D13, M S 2228; P N A , EPA, II, "Oficio del G o b e r n a d o r de Albay d e 15 de O c t ? [1851]"; Cruikshank, "History," p. 98; Jagor, Travels, pp. 1 5 0 - 5 1 . 65. " T h e y remind o n e a little of the formidably c o m p e t e n t experts w h o m the 'developed' countries of today unleash from time to time on the ' u n d e r d e v e l o p e d ' o n e s " ; de la C o s t a , Readings, p. 108.

38

Setting the Stage

governor general by Félix Berenguer de Marquina, who refused to permit the provincial authorities to compel production. The period of "voluntary" labor coincided with four years of "plague and hunger" in Kabikolan, so the trees were neglected and the silkworms abandoned, despite the efforts of the Company representative to keep the scheme alive through a pilot project in one Iraya town which, it was hoped, would inspire imitation in the rest. But by the end of 1792 the whole project was abandoned; it had cost the Company nearly P7,500 and the Bikolanos considerable, if uncounted, efforts, producing a grand total of just 969 lb. 15 oz. of silk. Throughout the early nineteenth century there were wistful references to this disappointing scheme and vague hints that it ought to be revived, but so far as is known, no serious effort, public or private, was ever made to restore the silk industry in Kabikolan. 6 6 There were other developmental efforts in the region during the late eighteenth century, none of them substantially more beneficial to the economy or the morale of the Bikolanos. Chief among these was a project for the cultivation of black pepper—which went the way of the mulberry bushes—but there were also lesser efforts to promote the growing of cotton and indigo, the mining of iron and gold, and the export of local textiles. 67 In general, the effect of the Bourbon-era development schemes seems to have been neutral or negative. In economic terms, their effect is suggested by a reference to the "miserable" state of the provinces in 1792. 68 In psychological terms, a submerged popular memory of the silkworm scheme as oppressive shows up in the "Folk Tales" recorded in a barrio of Polangui, Albay, a century and a half later: Father Zosimo Ravago a Spanish missionary came to the Philippines in the early part of 1890 [sic]. He brought with him many kinds of oriental and occidental plants. One of the oriental plants he brought and which aroused the interest of many women was the mulberry tree, because many of the early women were interested in weaving and several Chinese merchants brought with [them] silkworms, which feed in the mulberry leaves. 66. Neé, " D i a r i o " ; " E l R a m o d e la S e d a " (1792?), M N , M S 136, D13; " Y n f o r m e de el C o m i s i o n a d o D. Juan Francisco U r r o z sobre el E s t a d o d e la Agricultura é Industria de las Yslas en 3 0 de Junio d e 1802," M N , M S 1662, D77; Tomás de C o m y n , State of the Philippines in 1810 (Manila, 1969), pp. 8 - 1 0 ; R o d r í g u e z Baena, pp. 1 6 8 - 7 1 , 177; Maria L o u r d e s DiazTrechuelo, " E i g h t e e n t h C e n t u r y Philippine E c o n o m y : Agriculture," PS 14 (Jan. 1966): 1 1 9 - 2 0 ; idem, Real Compañía, p. 270; " P r o y e c t o sob® Agricult ? y M a n u f a c t u r a por el P. J u a n B o n i f ? y D. M a r n 0 A r r u n d a " (1824), MN, M S 1667, D7. 67. Neé, "Diario"; Urroz, " Y n f o r m e , " MN, M S 1662, D77; Díaz-Trechuelo, Real Compañía, pp. 2 6 7 - 6 8 ; idem, "Mining," pp. 7 6 6 - 7 0 , 7 9 0 - 9 6 . U r r o z refers in passing to the forced cultivation of abaca, p r e s u m a b l y for g o v e r n m e n t usage, but this has n o a p p a r e n t c o n n e c tion with the abaca b o o m t w o d e c a d e s later. 68. Neé, "Diario."

Setting the Stage

39

The planting of the tree became a fade [sic], that almost everybody planted it without even knowing what the use of the tree was. In a sitio of Balinad, every family reared it. Gardens were covered with mulberry tree, but when the tree was almost five feet tall they die. The people tried again and again, but never got the fruit of their toil because the tree would not thrive in the place. The people of Balinad began to curse the place and called it NAPHO ["Deserted"]. 6 9 Before the B o o m After nearly t w o a n d a half centuries of Spanish rule—including the period of the Bourbon R e f o r m s — K a b i k o l a n still a p p e a r e d in c o n t e m p o rary sources as a backwater in the Philippines, largely unaffected by the w a v e s of c h a n g e s w e e p i n g the provinces n e a r e r Manila. It w a s u n d e r populated, with a m e r e 2 0 0 , 0 0 0 inhabitants in a region that w o u l d s u p port three times that n u m b e r by 1900, a n d fifteen times by 1980. T h e population w a s g r o w i n g , as indicated by increasing r e v e n u e s from capitation taxes b e t w e e n 1760 a n d 1814. M o r e than a d o z e n n e w pueblos w e r e separated from old o n e s during these years. A t the s a m e time, h o w e v e r , a n u m b e r of older settlements declined or disappeared, a n d there is s o m e evidence that e c o n o m i c g r o w t h w a s not keeping p a c e with d e m o graphic, so that " h u n d r e d s " of Bikolanos left for Manila each y e a r " t o be cooks, servants [mosos], a n d v a g a b o n d s . " 7 0 The Bikol e c o n o m y r e m a i n e d o v e r w h e l m i n g l y oriented t o w a r d subsistence, although there w a s e n o u g h local specialization in fishing (especially for sea slugs), extraction of civet, c o c o n u t - g r o w i n g , h a t - m a k i n g , textile-weaving, a n d gold-mining to d e m o n s t r a t e the existence of indig69. PNL, HDP, Albay, Polangui (Bo. Balinad). 70. [Aragón], Estados de la población; AGI, F, 875; Collantes, report of 18 June 1801, AGI, F, 1033. For other references to outmigration from Kabikolan, see "Estadística militar, civil, y eclesiástica de Filipinas en 1739," Revista de Filipinas 1 (1875): 2 5 2 - 5 3 ; J[ean Baptiste] Mallat [de Bassilan], Les Philippines, (Paris, 1846), 1:275-76. Newly founded (or "separated") pueblos included Budiao (1773), Manito (1777), Tinambac (1781), Gubat (1787), Bacacay (1792), Baao (1793), Juban (1794), Camaligan (1795), Malilipot (1798), Baras (1805), Borabod (1806), and Bubulosan (1808). In addition, Bombon was separated ecclesiastically from Quipayo in 1804 (the two towns had been a single parish), G o a was promoted from a mission to a pueblo around 1807, and two new missions (Pili and Mabatobato) were founded in 1818. Declining or disappearing were Tabyon/Tagbon, Hibalon, Gate, (visita) Putiao, Cubaso (?), and Buga (?), while the new pueblos of Baras and Borabod reverted to visitas. The eruption of 1814 destroyed Budiao entirely, reduced Bubulosan to a visita, and forced the relocation of Cagsaua, Camalig, and Guinobatan. Huerta; Goyena del Prado; PNA, EPA, I, "Albay. Año de 1799. Juntas celebradas" and five expedientes on Lagonoy, 1806-7; PNA, EPA, III, "Albay 1810. Expediente promovido á representación del cura de Malilipot" and "Albay. 1818 á 19. Espediente . . . acerca del combate que

40

Setting the Stage

enous entrepreneurial talent and an awareness of the possibilities of commerce. 71 Government and church revenues, however, were only partially assessed in cash. Rice, fish, coconut oil, abaca, textiles, gold, and other local produce were also used in tax payment and other transactions. Above all, wealth consisted of human labor, and power lay in the ability to obtain such labor on demand. Most recorded disputes in this period reflect a three-cornered struggle among Spanish governors, Spanish friars, and the Bikolano gentry (principalia) for the right to control peasant labor. 72 During these disputes, each faction would allege abuses of labor control by the other two, providing us with some evidence as to the mechanisms of control. The government employed corvée labor (polos), local guard and sentry duties (guardias and tanorías), and the draft (quintas) to obtain the labor it required. The church had "servants of the church," who were otherwise exempt from labor service, as well as the right to demand servicios personales from all parishioners. The principalia, besides misappropriating the corvée labor they were supposed to administer, also seem to have had some general right to agricultural labor: T h e datus,

titles b y w h i c h a m o n g t h e m s e l v e s t h e y d i s t i n g u i s h t h e nobil-

ity, a r e a l m o s t t h e o n l y o n e s w h o h a v e l a n d s ; t h e s e a r e w o r k e d f o r t h e m b y t h e Timanguas,

or plebeians, w h o d o not h a v e lands t h e m s e l v e s , so that in

s p i t e o f t h e f e r t i l i t y o f t h e i s l a n d , it d o e s n o t a l w a y s s u p p l y f o o d t o its i n h a b i t a n t s . T h e tinaguas

[sxc] m a i n t a i n a g r e a t r e s p e c t f o r t h e i r p r i n c i p a l

nobles, never d o they m a r r y with them, they obey them, and

cultivate

their lands, w h e n they p o s s e s s public office.73

A handful of Spanish officials and priests—probably fewer than fifty in the whole region—held the highest positions in both provincial government and the church, but their rule had to be implemented at the local level by the principalia, the elite of an almost homogeneously Bikolano society. Some principales became highly adept at manipulating colotuvieron los M o r o s " ; P N A , EPA, V, " C a m a r i n e s . A ñ o de 1803. Espediente sobre traslación del pueblo de C a g s a u a , al sitio de Daraga," and "Albay. Expediente . . . que los Naturales r e s i d e n t e s e n el Sitio n o m b r a d o M a n i t o " ; P N A , E P C S , III, untitled expediente o n Bubulosan; G u i n o b a t a n Parish Records; AGI, F, 1033, t w o expedientes on the episcopal visitations of 1791 - 9 2 ; "Descripción Geographica," MN, M S 136, D3; [Lorenzo Pérez, O.F.M.], "Indice de los d o c u m e n t o s q u e se custodian en el Archivo del Convento de P a s t r a n a — ( G u a d a l a j a r a ) : Provincia Franciscana d e San Gregorio M a g n o de Filipinas," 1908, typescript, A F I O ; P N A , EPCS, III, "Año de 1817 á 831. E s p e d i e n t e . . . p r o p o n i e n d o el establecimiento de d o s Misiones n u e v a s . . . Pili. . . Mabatobato." 71. S e e c h a p t e r 5, below. 72. Cf. Bruce Cruikshank, " S a m a r in the L a t e Eighteenth Century," The Americas 3 7 (July 1980): 4 9 - 5 0 . 73. [Antonio Pineda], " A p u n t e s d e S o r s o g o n , e n la P r o v a de Albay Ysla d e L u z o n " (1792), M N , M S 136, D l l b .

Setting the Stage

41

nial law to their own and their town's advantage. Don Antonio Laurenciano, mayor of Lagonoy, once kept his nominal superior, the Spanish governor of Albay, at bay for almost six months, refusing to pay the excessive taxes demanded by the latter from the town until the case could be successfully appealed to higher authorities. 74 If there was peasant dissatisfaction with the system, it probably expressed itself in shifting from an abusive patron to one more just, rather than in any kind of general protest or in social banditry. "In this province," claimed the governor of Camarines in 1807, "the evil doers that infest others are unkown; [people] live with security and they travel by day and night over the highways without arms, without precautions, without fears." 7 5 Things were happening, therefore, in Kabikolan between 1760 and 1820: the eruption of Mount Mayon; population growth, new towns, and out-migration; Moro raids and local defense efforts; the tobacco monopoly and the silkworm scheme; some commercial enterprises; political struggles among governors, friars, and the principalia, and so forth. This was not some timeless "traditional" society in which change was unwanted or unknown. Nevertheless, it is hard to see any clear direction in the changes occurring during these years, and only the most optimistic or prescient observer in 1820 would have predicted that a century of dynamic economic expansion was about to begin. Between niggling colonial restrictions and the threat of the Moros, trade outside the region was still greatly inhibited. More significant, there was but a limited market for any of the goods which Kabikolan produced, and government-sponsored schemes had singularly failed in their efforts to create more profitable industries. What would eventually make the difference would be, not any local happening at all, but the discovery of abaca by the booming industrial powers of the post-Napoleonic West. 74. PNA, EPA, I, five expedientes on Lagonoy, 1806-7. 75. José de Eguia, 24 Oct. 1807, MN, MS 1774, D51, fol. 171 -73.

CHAPTER TWO

Merchant Houses and Manila Hemp

T h e Global Fiber Market The explosive growth of the abaca export industry in Kabikolan cannot be isolated from its national and international contexts. The external trade of the Philippines rose fromP2.8 million in 1825 to over P60 million in 1895 and to over P460 million in 1918. The number of merchant vessels calling on Philippine ports in 1837 was 134, with a combined capacity of under 50,000 tons; in 1892 the total was 471 ships and over 500,000 tons. In the late eighteenth century, sugar exports were under 5,000 tons; by 1895, the figure was 340,000 tons. Indigo became a major export commodity in the late eighteenth century, coffee in the late nineteenth, copra in the early twentieth. The tobacco monopoly was extremely profitable, eventually supplying about one-half the total revenues in the insular budget. From the profits of export agriculture, the Philippines bought ever-increasing amounts of imported textiles, machinery, and rice. In the nineteenth century the steamship, the telegraph, the railroad, and steampowered sugar and rope mills all were introduced to the islands. The population of the country grew from just over a million and a half to over 7 million during the century, an average annual increase of IV2 percent. The beginnings of real urbanization were seen in Manila, a city of a third of a million by the end of the century, and in some of the major provincial towns. Thus the abaca industry of Kabikolan was not unique and its growth cannot be explained in purely local terms. 1 1. Benito Fernandez Legarda, Jr., "Foreign Trade . . . in the Nineteenth Century Philippines," p. 202; idem, "The Philippine Economy under Spanish Rule," pp. 10-20; Hugo H.

42

Merchant H o u s e s and Manila H e m p

43

Similarly, the economic expansion of the Philippines must be seen in the context of the world economy. Many historians have followed contemporary observers in focusing on Spanish commercial policies and Manila merchant activities as the principal dynamics of change. The nineteenth century, however, saw not only the industrialization of the West, but the commercialization of primary industries all over what we now call the Third World. Prior to 1850 the combined rice exports of Burma, Siam, and Vietnam never exceeded 150,000 tons a year; in the decade 1902-11 they averaged over 4 million tons. Indonesia increased her sugar exports from an average of 150,000 tons in 1865-69 to 850,000 in 1900-1904; in the same period her tobacco exports grew from 7,600 tons to 51,000. The first significant exports of henequen (sisal) from Yucatan were 3,200 tons, shipped in 1847; in 1903 the figure was 150,000 tons. Exports of Brazilian coffee increased fivefold between the 1820s and 1840s; exports of Brazilian rubber increased eightyfold between the 1840s and the first decade of the twentieth century. 2 Argentine wheat and beef, Japanese silk, Chilean copper and nitrates, Malayan tin, and Egyptian cotton also poured into the growing world market for primary products. The growth of the abaca industry in Kabikolan was a small facet of a global phenomenon—the expansion of a capitalist world-system. The roots of this expansion include world population growth (accelerating to over 0.5 percent a year between 1850 and 1900), the international specialization of labor fostered by the Industrial Revolution, vast improvements in transportation (freight rates on some sea routes dropped more than 75 percent during the nineteenth century), and the increased political dominance of the industrialized West over the Third World. This last factor, which we call "imperialism," did not by itself cause the enormous increase in world trade and production for trade. What it did was to Miller, Principles of Economics Applied to the Philippines (Boston, 1932), pp. 5 2 2 - 2 3 ; Conrado Benitez, Philippine Progress Prior to 1898 (Manila, 1969), p. 193; Nathaniel Bowditch, Early American-Philippine Trade, pp. 31 -32; H. de la Costa, Readings in Philippine History, pp. 141 42; Edilberto C. de Jesús, "The Tobacco Monopoly in the Philippines, 1782-1882," pp. 224 3 1 , 2 6 3 - 6 5 ; Gregorio Sancianco y Goson, El progreso de Filipinas (Madrid, 1881), pp. 16-19; Census of 1903,2:18,4:29; Robert R. Reed, "Hispanic Urbanism in the Philippines," UMJEAS 11 (Mar. 1967): 1 6 3 - 6 9 , 1 9 0 - 9 7 ; John Foreman, The Philippine Islands, pp. 3 9 7 - 4 1 4 ; Edgar Wickberg, The Chinese in Philippine Life: 1850-1898 (New Haven, 1965), p. 129. 2. Norman G. Owen, "The Rice Industry of Mainland Southeast Asia: 1850-1914," journal of the Siam Society 59 (July 1971): 8 4 - 8 7 ; J. A. M[alcoIm] Caldwell, "Indonesian Export and Production from the Decline of the Culture System to the First World War," in The Economic Development of South-East Asia, ed. Qharles) D. Cowan (London, 1964), pp. 79,83; Keith Hartman, "The Henequen Empire in Yucatan: 1870-1910" (M. A. thesis, University of Iowa, 1966); Celso Furtado, The Economic Growth of Brazil, trans. Ricardo W. de Aguiar and Eric Charles Drysdale (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965), pp. 1 2 4 , 1 4 2 - 4 3 ; W. Arthur Lewis, ed., Tropical Development, 1880-1913 (London, 1970).

44

Merchant Houses and Manila Hemp

forcibly remove most impediments to international trade and capitalist production, thus procuring the incorporation of hitherto isolated areas into a system that had developed over several centuries. In the nineteenth century the whole world became as interconnected as was the sixteenth-century Mediterranean of Braudel. 3 The process and consequences of this forced incorporation into the world-system varied from place to place and time to time. In each individual case we must study not only the particular ecology and culture of the affected region, but also the particular demand for the produce of that region, and the particular institutions, public or private, which transmitted this world demand to the region and extracted the produce. Such an approach does not deny the integrity of any country or reduce its inhabitants to mere puppets on a global stage. It simply faces the fact that they were no longer (if they ever had been) in full control of all the factors affecting their own history. An "autonomous" history of modern Southeast Asia, said John R. W. Smail, does not mean that "domestic developments must be seen in artificial isolation, as if there were no Europeans impinging." 4 To analyze local modes of reaction and resistance, adjustments and adaptations, we must know the particular forms that the secular dynamic of economic expansion took. For Kabikolan, a region with essentially just one commodity that the world wanted in the nineteenth century, we must begin with the international fiber market and the merchant houses of Manila. When the first fourteen tons of "Manila hemp" reached Salem in 1820, the world market for fiber and cordage was entering an era of unprecedented expansion. For the next half-century, the primary impetus was generated by the enormous demand of the shipping industries of England, the world's greatest naval and mercantile power, and the United 3. Carlo Cipolla, The Economic History of World Population, 3 d ed. (Baltimore: P e n g u i n Books, 1965), pp. 9 9 - 1 0 1 ; D. C. North, " T h e Role of Transportation in the E c o n o m i c Develo p m e n t of N o r t h America," in Les grandes

voies maritimes

dans le monde,

Bibliothèque

générale de l'école pratique d e s h a u t e s études, VI e section (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1965), pp. 2 1 5 - 2 0 ; Celso Furtado, Economic Development of Latin America, trans. S u z e t t e Macedo, C a m bridge Latin A m e r i c a n Studies, no. 8 ( C a m b r i d g e : C a m b r i d g e University Press, 1970), p. 28; F e r n a n d Braudel, The Mediterranean

and the Mediterranean

World in the Age of Philip II, trans.

Siân Reynolds, 2 vols. (New York: H a r p e r & Row, 1972); idem, Capitalism and Material Life, 1400-1800;

idem, Afterthoughts

on Material Civilization and Capitalism (Baltimore, 1977); Im-

m a n u e l G. Wallerstein, The Modern World-System.

Pierre C h a u n u , in Les Philippines et le Paci-

fique des Ibériques, sketches the early e x p a n s i o n of the E u r o p e a n w o r l d - s y s t e m to the Pacific (as he had earlier a n a l y z e d its Atlantic dimension), and Lewis describes the nineteenthc e n t u r y g r o w t h of e x p o r t industries in the Third World, t h o u g h without the p a r a d i g m of a "world-system." 4. Smail, " O n the Possibility of a n A u t o n o m o u s History of M o d e r n S o u t h e a s t Asia," JSEAH 2 (July 1961): 101.

Merchant Houses and Manila Hemp

45

States, her newest rival. The age of the whaler had begun, and the clipper ship was just a generation away. Ships increased not only in number but in size, from approximately 1,000 tons (maximum) in 1820 to 2,500 tons or more at mid-century. Merchant marine tonnage throughout the world increased from 6.7 million tons in 1840 to 12.8 million in 1860, and again to 43 million by 1913. Although in the latter part of the nineteenth century, steamships would begin to displace sailing vessels in passenger and rapid-freight trades, sailing ships continued to carry much of the world's bulk produce, such as wood, jute, nitrates, and grain, on long voyages. Abaca itself traveled from Manila to New York on sailing ships until 1898. 5 Each sailing ship needed rope, literally miles of standing and running rigging, cables and towlines. The 44-gun frigate Constitution carried over one hundred tons of rope, while even a small schooner would carry a ton or so. Early in the century most naval cordage in the West was made of common hemp (Cannabis sativa), of which Russia was the world's major supplier. But Russian hemp had to be heavily tarred to protect it from salt water, a process which made the rope not only more costly, heavy, and dirty, but also much less flexible. This was of little importance for the shrouds and other standing rigging, but was a great disadvantage for cables and running rigging, particularly in low temperatures, when the tar became even stiffer. Furthermore, the near-monopoly of Russia as a source of supply (American hemp, dew-retted rather than waterretted, was much inferior and unsuitable for maritime use) subjected the buyers to the threats of commercial abuses in peacetime and of interrupted supplies in time of war. 6 Western shippers, cordage-makers, and naval suppliers were quick to test abaca and were pleased when it proved a worthy competitor to tarred hemp. Abaca was naturally resistant to salt water (though rather 5. Samuel Eliot Morison, The Ropemakers of Plymouth, pp. 4 9 - 5 0 ; Furtado, Economic Development, p. 238; Gerald S. Graham, "The Ascendancy of the Sailing Ship, 1 8 5 0 - 8 5 , " Economic History Review, 2d ser., 9 (Aug. 1965): 74 - 8 8 ; Great Britain, Parliament, Parliamentary Papers (Commons), 1887, vol. 86, "Report by Consul Gollan on the Consular District of the Philippine Islands for the year 1885," p. 8 (hereafter cited as "Report by Consul Gollan"); Cordage 1 (15 Jan. 1895): 260; CTJ19 (21 Dec. 1899): 1 8 5 - 8 6 ; RIC, 13:117,151. 6. Alfred W. Crosby, America, Russia, Hemp, and Napoleon (Columbus, 1965), pp. 1 5 - 2 2 ; Morison, pp. 5 - 7 , 2 0 n , 34 - 3 5 , 1 4 7 - 4 8 ; RSN, pp. 2 - 3 8 , 5 4 ; Cordage 1 (14 July 1894 and 15 Oct. 1894): 65 - 6 6 , 1 6 1 . Standing rigging, so called because it is normally not moved, consists of the ropes and chains employed to support the masts. Running rigging, on the other hand, is regularly moved, as it consists of the ropes and chains used to work or set the yards, sails, etc. The former requires more resistance to the elements, the latter requires greater flexibility. "Retting" refers to the wetting of hemp in order to soften it for working. This could be done either by soaking it in vats or exposing it to the dew; the latter process was easier but produced an inferior product.

46

Merchant Houses and Manila Hemp

less so to fresh water) and thus needed no tarring; it had great natural flexibility and elasticity; it was lighter and under certain circumstances more durable than hemp. Various nineteenth-century tests indicated that an abaca rope was 2 0 - 2 6 percent stronger than a tarred hemp rope of equal diameter, and weighed a third less. 7 Abaca soon proved itself without peer for running rigging, an honor it held uncontested until improvements were made in artificial fibers such as nylon in the second half of the twentieth century. 8 From 1820 to 1860 American merchants, shippers, and rope-makers led the way in capitalizing on the superior qualities and lower price of abaca. 9 The rope walks of Salem started using it in 1820; the Plymouth Cordage Company began in 1830 and by 1839 was making approximately one-third of its total cordage output from "Manila hemp." As early as 1833 the American consul in Manila remarked that "Plantain Bark" (abaca) was "the article of most importance to the commerce of the United States." 1 0 The United States Navy, despite its general conservatism, and despite political pressure on it to use American hemp, also used abaca in significant quantities, particularly after the Wilkes expedition of 1842, which had reported that "the exportation has much increased within the last few years, in consequence of the demand for it in the United States." 1 1 Although a few conservative Boston shipowners continued to 7. Francisco Tacón to Enrile, 12 Apr. 1830, MN, MS 1666, D34; RSN, pp. 53-58; Karl von Scherzer, "Narrative of the Circumnavigation of the Globe by the Austrian Frigate 'Novara,'" in Gabriel Lafond de Lurcy et al., Travel Accounts of the Islands (1832-1858) (Manila, 1974), pp. 243 -44; José Felipe del Pan, "El Abacá," Boletín Oficial del Ministerio de Fomento 32 (1 Dec. 1859): 396 -98; U.S., Department of Agriculture, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Useful Fiber Plants of the World, by Charles Richard Dodge (Washington, D.C., 1897), p. 248 (hereafter cited as Descriptive Catalogue); Morison, pp. 34-35; P.I., Department of the Interior, Bureau of Agriculture, Abacá (Manila Hemp), by H. T. Edwards and Murad M. Saleeby (Manila, 1910), p. 33 (hereafter cited as Edwards and Saleeby). 8. RSN, p. 58; Morison, p. 34. Abaca also made the best whale-warp or towline (RSN, pp. 53 -54), but was too elastic and too susceptible to rain to replace tarred Russian hemp for standing rigging; cf. Morison, pp. 63 -64; Crosby, p. 17; Cordage 1 (15 May 1894): 1 -2; CTJ19 (16 Nov. 1899): 152-53; RIC, 13:115,148,161. 9. Even when it cost more per pound, an abaca rope was cheaper than an equivalent length of hemp cordage; Tacón to Enrile, 12 Apr. 1830, MN, MS 1666, D34; Morison, pp. 3 4 48; RSN, p. 53. 10. Morison, pp. 34-35; Descriptive Catalogue, p. 248; Alfred H. P. Edwards, 27 Jan. 1833, DUSCM; cf. John Wise, "Account of the Philippine Islands" (1837), in Centenary of Wise and Company in the Philippines: 1826-1926 (n.p., n.d.), p. 87. The abaca plant is a member of the banana or plantain family, and "plantain bark" was often used to refer to its fiber in the early days of the export trade. 11. Charles Wilkes, "Narrative of the U.S. Exploring Expedition," in Lafond de Lurcy, p. 29; RSN, p. 54. Cf. Tacón to Enrile, 12 Apr.1830, MN, MS 1666, D34; Consul Ricketts, report of 30 Jan. 1870, PRO, FO 72,1246.

Merchant Houses and Manila Hemp

47

use tarred hemp for a while, the trend toward abaca usage was irresistible. By 1854 abaca was "in such favor in the United States that. . . this demand has in no year been fully supplied," and by the time of the Civil War nothing but abaca was used on American vessels for running rigging12 The British lagged behind the Americans in the early employment of abaca, perhaps because they were closer to and better established in the Russian hemp market. In 1851 the United Kingdom imported nearly thirty times as much Russian hemp as abaca, and as late as 1853 the British, despite their large shipping industry, took less than 6 percent of all abaca exports. 13 But the Crimean War and the American Civil War completely changed the situation, the former by cutting off supplies of Russian hemp, the latter by temporarily eliminating American shippers from the Philippine trade. Thereafter the British navy and merchant marine competed freely with the Americans for abaca supplies until the end of the century. London and Liverpool soon came to import as much "Manila hemp" as Boston and New York—sometimes even more. 1 4 The rest of the world never seriously rivaled the British and Americans in the abaca trade. Not only did the United States and the United Kingdom together take 70 - 9 0 percent of the total trade, but much of the rest was taken by the Anglo-American frontiers of Australia and California. England actually reexported abaca, both as fiber and as cordage, to other European countries, and at times even to the United States. 15 Although for centuries Spain had known of the maritime uses of abaca cordage, she never imported the fiber in significant quantities nor adopted it for her domestic navy. In a late and pathetic effort to protect Spanish industry, an order of 1854 actually required that governmentbuilt ships, even in the Philippines, be rigged with (hemp) cordage from the rope-makers of Cartagena. A few years later one Catalan merchant who wanted abaca had to buy it from Marseilles, whence it had arrived by way of Boston and London. 16 12. W. P. Peirce, 24 Apr. 1854, DUSCM; Morison, pp. 3 4 - 3 5 . 13. Great Britain, Parliament, Parliamentary Papers (Commons), 1852 -53, vol.99, "Salt, &c.: Return to an Order of the Honourable the House of Commons, dated 11 July 1853," p. 5; PHC circular, 13 Jan. 1854; cf. J. Mallat, Les Philippines,2:343,352-53. 14. Pan, "Abacá," pp. 3 9 3 - 9 4 ; Legarda, "Foreign Trade," pp. 2 2 9 - 3 0 ; Jo Ann Roland, "Philippine-American Abaca Trade, 1817-1917" (M. A. thesis, Ateneo de Manila University, 1969), p. 62; Cordage 1 (15 Jan. 1895): 266; 2 (15 Jan. 1896): 2 6 6 - 6 7 ; cf.Nicholas P. Cushner, Spain in the Philippines, pp. 204 - 5 . 15. Legarda, "Foreign Trade," pp. 2 2 9 - 3 0 ; C[harles] H[arcourt] Forbes-Lindsay, The Philippines: Under Spanish and American Rule (Philadelphia, 1906), pp. 2 6 1 - 6 2 ; cf. Pan, "Abacá," p. 393; Cordage 1 (15 Jan. 1895): 260; CTJ1890 -1900, passim. 16. Marqués de Molinas (?), 10 Mar. 1854, AHN, U, L1301, E388; L438, E15; L1366, E24; Pan, "Abacá," pp. 393 -94; Enrique Taviel de Andrade, Historia de la Exposición de las Islas

48

Merchant Houses and Manila Hemp

During the second half of the nineteenth century the demand for maritime cordage slackened somewhat, although sailing ships were still being constructed and steamships still used rope for towlines, warps, and even auxiliary sails. Technology had begun to find substitutes for natural fibers in certain applications: steel banding replaced hemp and abaca ropes for binding cotton bales, "wire rope" replaced tarred hemp for standing rigging on many ships, and steel competed with abaca in the making of ship cables. 17 But technology also generated entirely new, nonmaritime uses for cordage, so that there was a demand not only for more abaca but for other natural fibers as well. The world fiber market soon became much more complex than it had been. Shipbuilding and the supplies of Russian and Manila hemp were no longer the only major variables. Now the spring wheat crop in the Dakotas, the opening of new oil fields in Pennsylvania, and the policies of the state government of Yucatan were among a host of other factors affecting the market. The most important new usage for fiber was "binder twine" for the mechanical grain-binders developed by Cyrus McCormick and others in the late 1870s and early 1880s. The adoption of these binders was so fast, and the demand for twine so great, that before the end of the century it was estimated that over one-half the hard fiber imported into the United States was used for this purpose. 18 Other new uses for abaca included "transmission rope," a multistranded lubricated rope used in place of gears or belts in many factories for transmitting power from steam or electrical engines to the operating machinery; "Manila drilling cables" for drilling oil and gas wells, absolutely indispensable in the turn-of-thecentury boom; and lariats. 19 Filipinas en Madrid el año de 1887 (Madrid, 1887), 2:81. In 1846 Russell & Sturgis were quoting import prices for Russian hemp, as well as export prices for abaca, in their Manila merchant circulars. 17. Graham,pp. 7 5 - 7 7 ; Morison,pp. 63 - 6 4 , 1 3 8 - 4 0 ; CT] 10 (1 June 1895): 174; 13 (15 Aug. 1896): 58; 14 (15 May 1897): 146; Cordage 1 (15 May 1894): 1 - 2 ; 2 (15 Jan. 1896): 273. "Wire rope" in fact contained a core of abaca or other natural fiber. 18. Hartman, pp. 8 5 - 8 9 ; Morison, pp. 64 - 6 6 ; RIC, 13:112; John F. Minier, "Abaca: The Rope and Twine Industry ...',' The Philippine Craftsman 1 (Jan. 1913): 5 2 5 - 3 0 . No precise breakdown of consumption patterns within the American fiber market is possible, since cordage manufacturers refused to divulge any data which might aid their competitors, a fact which Cordage Trade Journal repeatedly noted and deplored; thus only estimates can be made of the proportion of binder twine to other cordage uses in the late nineteenth century; CT} 13 (1 Oct. 1896): 1 0 5 - 6 ; 13 (15 Nov. 1896): 1 5 4 - 5 5 ; 16 (19 May 1898): 152-53; cf. RIC, 13:119-20. 19. Morison, pp. 64 - 6 8 . O n oil drilling, which required derrick lines, sand lines, catlines, crackers, and bull ropes as well as drilling cables, see CT] 14 (15 June 1897): 188; 15 (19 Aug. 1897): 60; 17 (18 Aug. 1898): 50; 17 (15 Sept. 1898): 84. On transmission rope, see CT] 15 (21 Oct. 1897): 113-14; 20 (15 Mar. 1900): 9 0 - 9 1 .

Merchant Houses and Manila Hemp

49

Of the new fibers, the most important was henequen, or "Sisal hemp" (Agave rigida elongata and Agave rigida sisalens), from Yucatan. The plant had been known in Latin America for centuries, and the fiber had even been used for some Spanish maritime cordage in the eighteenth century, but it was not until the development of improved processing machinery in the late nineteenth century that exports became of commercial significance, and not until the introduction of binder twine that the industry really took off. 2 0 Other hard fibers of importance were "New Zealand hemp" (Phormium tenax, also called "New Zealand flax") and "Mauritius hemp" (Furcraea gigantea); there were also a number of soft fibers, such as "Sunn hemp" (Crotalaria juncea) and "Tampico hemp" (Agave heteracantha; "Istle"), which could replace hard fibers in certain uses. Although most of these fibers are from different families, and none of them is of the genus Cannabis, all were called "hemp," with a modifier frequently indicating neither the botanical nor the indigenous name, but the name of the port from which they were shipped. As far as the world market was concerned, they were interchangeable fibers without a cultural or an agricultural context, "as commerce and utility do not stop to inquire into scientific relationships." 21 Among these fibers the superiority of abaca for strength and flexibility was generally unquestioned. Except in a very few cases (such as running rigging and lariats), however, differences in price could overcome such differences in quality. The pages of Cordage Trade Journal, month after month, are full of both theoretical and practical demonstrations of the idea that any fiber could find a market if its price was low enough or if that of its competitors went too high. 2 2 Manila and the World Market The course of prices and exports of abaca between the 1820s and the 1930s generally reflects far more sensitivity to the world fiber market than to any local events except the Philippine-American War. Superimposed on such Western business phenomena as the depressions of 1857, 1873, 1893, 1907, and 1929 are commerce- and industry-specific variables, such as the availability of shipping, the demand for binder twine, 20. Hartman, pp. 1 8 - 8 7 ; Descriptive Catalogue, pp. 4 1 - 5 3 ; CTJ 20 (15 Feb. 1900): 4 9 - 5 0 . Morison, p. 35, refers to Yucatan henequen as Agave fourcroydes, a term not mentioned in Dodge's comprehensive Descriptive Catalogue, and distinguishes it from the "true sisal" (Agave sisalana [sic]) grown in the Bahamas. 21. Hamilton M. Wright, A Handbook of the Philippines (Chicago, 1909), p. 191. 22. CTJ 1895-99, passim; cf. Horatio Nelson Palmer to Richard Dalton Tucker, 25 July 1881, Tucker Papers (Peabody Museum, Salem); Morison, p. 36.

50

Merchant Houses and Manila Hemp

and the price of competing fibers, but a chart of abaca prices in Manila would be almost instantly familiar to anyone who had studied the economic history of the United States or England. (See figure 1.) Prior to 1818 there was virtually no market "price" for abaca, but for tax and bookkeeping purposes its value was usually calculated at from PI.25 toP2.25 per picul (1/16 ton), withP1.75 a typical quotation. (It is not always clear whether this includes transportation from the provinces to Manila, which might add about a peso to its cost.) 23 Once the export 2 3 . Besides general questions of reliability of colonial statistics of this era, these figures are extraordinarily imprecise b e c a u s e the units of m e a s u r e used—libras, chinantas,

arrobas,

quintals, and p i c u l s — w e r e not standardized at the time. The chinanta in particular s e e m s to have r a n g e d from u n d e r 14 to 2 3 or m o r e libras. F o r p u r p o s e s of these calculations, it h a s been a s s u m e d that a s t a n d a r d (Manila) picul (nominally 6 3 . 2 5 kg) consisted of 1 3 7 . 5 libras,

Merchant Houses and Manila Hemp

51

trade was established, most Manila prices from the 1820s to the mid18308 were in the range of P 5 - 6 per picul, a significant increase over previous values. In the early 1840s, however, prices fell belowP4.00; the correspondence with the "Hungry Forties" and the industrial depression in the West is too close to be coincidental. But as the United States began to pull out of the slump, so did the Manila abaca market, abetted by the development of the clipper ship 24 and by the outbreak of the Crimean War, which cut off the supply of Russian hemp. By July 1854, prices reached a new peak of over P10 per picul. (See table 2.) Another industrial depression (the "Panic of '57") struck the Manila market just as abaca production, stimulated by the high prices of 1854, was reaching new heights. The result was another local slump, exacerbated and lengthened by the shortage of American shipping during the Civil War. By 1861 the average price had fallen to P3.50 again, with troughs under P3.00. 2 5 Postwar recovery was slow, but the eventual boom of 1867-72 was higher and stronger than ever—before it gave way again to yet another industrial depression (the "Panic of '73"), compounded (again) by local overproduction. And so it went for the next quarter-century: slump in the mid-1870s, boom in the early 1880s, recession in the mid-1880s, extraordinary boom in 1889 (when the National Cordage Company attempted to corner the world supply of hard fibers), slump in the mid-1890s industrial depression (which included the collapse of the National Cordage Company). Only in 1898 would events in the Philippines play a major role in establishing abaca prices, and even then the wartime peaks of 1899-1900 were built on a world demand for fiber that had been increasing since 1897 because of improved American wheat crops and expanded oil drilling. 26 From the 1870s onward Manila prices were also affected by the declinor 10 chinantas, or 5 . 5 arrobas, or 1.375 quintals, with adjustments attempted in those cases where these equivalencies apparently did not apply. "Estadística . . . de Filipinas en 1739," pp. 2 5 3 - 5 4 ; AGI, F, 875 (accounts of Alexo Rodriguez, Alcalde Mayor of Albay, 1790-94); PNA, EPCS, I, "Año de 1789 . . . Jarcia en la Provincia de Camarines"; AGI, F, 979 (customs declaration of goleta Golondrina, 1812); Francisco Molleda (parish priest, Tabaco) to Governor General, 5 June 1816, in PNA, EPA, III, "Albay. 1816. E s p e d i e n t e . . . del Gobernadorcillo y cura de la Cavecera"; cf. Manuel de Castro to Governor General, 11 Jan. 1858, in PNA, EPA, VI, "Albay 1859 Pueblo de Magallanes"; Francisco] A[huja], Reseña acerca del estado social y económico de las colonias de España en Asia (Madrid, 1874 -75), 1:29-30. 24. The business of the Plymouth Cordage Company actually doubled during the shipmaking boom of 1849 - 5 2 ; Morison, pp. 45 - 4 8 . 25. PHC circulars and DUSCM, 1 8 6 1 - 6 5 passim. The market for the small amount of abaca that actually reached the United States was quite high by 1864; Morison, p. 59; Anne Bezanson et al„ Wholesale Prices in Philadelphia 1859-1896 (Philadelphia, 1954), p. 147. 26. Morison, pp. 78 - 8 5 ; Arthur S. Dewing, History of the National Cordage Company (Cambridge, Mass., 1913); R1C, 1 3 : 1 3 1 - 3 2 , 1 3 9 , 1 4 7 , 1 6 3 ; CTJ16 (17 Feb. 1898): 5 6 - 5 7 ; 16 (21 Apr. 1898): 120-21; 16 (16 June 1898): 184-87.

52

Merchant Houses and Manila Hemp

Table 2. Abaca Prices and Exports (Five-Year Averages,

1825-1939)

Manila Price (Pesos/Picul)

Export Volume (000 piculs)

Export Value (000 pesos)

1825-29

5.80 a

7

41

1830-34

5.50

b

30

165

1835-39

5.12 c

67

343

1840-44

4.22

103

390

1845-49

4.85

136

619

1850-54

7.56

204

1,500

1855-59

6.75

376

2,360

1860-64

4.45

431

1,940

1865-69

8.23

426

3,500

1870-74

8.96

563

4,960

1875-79

5.74

620

3,560

1880-84

9.20

788

7,220

1885-89

9.37

1,013

9,780

1890-94

9.38

1,348

12,540

1895-99

9.29?

1,540?

12,650?

1900-04

19.50

1,878

36,620

1905-09

18.97

2,058

37,780

1910-14

16.86

2,285

37,360

1915-19

30.03

2,337

71,980

1920-24

20.16

2,471

49,320

1925-29

23.94

2,587

60,940

1930-34

8.09

2,321

19,160

1935-39

10.95

2,654

28,890

Source: Appendix A: table A - l , columns A, C, D; table A-2, columns A, D, F; table A-3, columns A,B,C. All prices prior to 1860 adjusted upward by P0.37 baling costs. For 1825 - 3 9 the "value" is obtained by multiplying the average price for the years available by the mean volume for all years. From 1840 onward, each column is computed separately; hence the average price will not necessarily coincide with the value divided by the volume. a 1 8 2 5 , 1 8 2 8 - 2 9 only. b 1830,1834 only. c 1 8 3 6 - 3 7 only.

M e r c h a n t H o u s e s a n d Manila H e m p ABACA

PRICES

IN P E S O S

AND DOLLARS

53

1870~1902

D A T E

FIGURE 2

ing value of silver, which fell over 50 percent relative to gold (and goldbacked currencies, such as the U.S. dollar) in less than twenty years. 27 Thus the Manila price peaks of the late nineteenth century—in silver pesos—were not abnormally high in the United States, while the slump of the mid-1890s, quite mild by local standards (troughs just under P6.50, well above those of the 1870s and 1860s, and actually higher than the peaks before 1850), was actually the lowest abaca had ever fallen in the American market. (See figure 2.) Declining freight rates also played a part in keeping Western prices down and local prices up. Although the devaluation of the peso was seen as a disaster by Spanish officials in the Philippines, it may have been beneficial for the average Filipino, particularly the cultivator of abaca. The low cost of abaca in gold kept it attractive on the world market, while high Manila prices, even in depreciated pesos, would presumably have helped those whose obligations were fixed in advance. Bikolanos would have paid somewhat more for imported rice and textiles, but such imports still repre27. Annual average exchange rates for the peso are found, with slight variations, in U.S., Department of Agriculture, Trade of the Philippine Islands, by Frank H. Hitchcock, Section of Foreign Markets, Bulletin 14 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1898), p. 11; Census of 1903,4:563n; Legarda, "Philippine Economy," p. 21. Monthly exchange rates for the peso in pounds sterling may be found in merchant circulars and in El Comercio.

54

Merchant Houses and Manila Hemp

sented only a small proportion of their total cost of living, and this increase should not have outweighed the effective reduction in their taxes and debts. Devaluation would, of course, have injured creditors and those whose income was in pesos but whose expenditures required hard currencies—for remission of profits to Spain (or payment for a son's education there) or for European-style luxury goods. We cannot assume that for most Filipinos, however, the dollar price of abaca or other goods was the "real" price economically. The local price, even in depreciated pesos, was at least as meaningful an index of relative prosperity. 28 American rule stabilized the peso relative to the dollar (at $0.50), but was no more successful than Spanish rule at stabilizing the price of abaca. The high prices which prevailed during and after the PhilippineAmerican War lasted only until the next world depression, which began in 1907, and they did not completely recover until midway through World War 1. 29 The wartime demand for hard fibers drove the price up to a new peak—briefly overP50 in early 1918—but the postwar slump cut this to less than -P15 within four years, and abaca would not reach such prices again. A lower crest (P30) was reached in 1925; then prices began sliding down once more, falling below P20 even before the Great Depression hit. By 1933, they were under-P6 per picul, the lowest they had fallen in over fifty years. In dollar terms, the average price in 1933 was the lowest it had ever been, lower even than the worst months of 1843 and 1861. The late 1930s saw a slight recovery, but scarcely even to the level of the slumps of 1907-11 or 1921-22. The century-long abaca boom was over. The pattern of abaca exports demonstrates a combination of these price cycles with the particular ecology and economy of production. The 28. Legarda, "Philippine Economy," p. 16. Such calculations as are possible of the cost of rice and other essentials in Kabikolan suggest that it tended to rise more slowly than the price of abaca during the late nineteenth century. This is consistent with the general tendency throughout Southeast Asia for the export price of rice to climb sharply relative to silver, but to remain constant or even to decline relative to gold and other commodities; Owen, "Rice Industry," pp. 90-91,104 - 8 . Toward the end of World War I, on the other hand, the cost of living apparently rose even faster and farther than the price of abaca; see Governor General (Harrison), cable to Secretary of War, 15 Aug. 1918, USNA, RG 350, 845-505; Adn. Hernandez (Director of Agriculture) to Wigglesworth & Co., London, 9 Dec. 1920, USNA, RG 350,845-696. 29. The low abaca prices of this period were also blamed by some on deliberate manipulation of the market by International Harvester Company, which had bought the Manila agency house Macleod & Co. in 1904 and rapidly made it the leading exporter of abaca; Theobald Diehl (Special Commissioner, Bureau of Customs, Philippines) to Clarence R. Edwards (Chief, Bureau of Insular Affairs), 8 Aug. 1911, USNA, RG 350,845-117; Hugo H. Miller and Charles H. Storms, Economic Conditions in the Philippines (Boston, 1913), pp. 73 76; James H. Blount, The American Occupation of the Philippines, 1898-1912 (Manila, 1968), pp. 611-12; cf. Hartman, pp. 1 9 4 - 9 8 , 2 1 4 - 1 5 .

Merchant Houses and Manila Hemp

55

latter will be analyzed in chapter 3; briefly, since it took three to four years for newly-opened abaca plantations to come into production, and since abaca, once planted, was worth harvesting in any but the most depressed of markets, there was a strong tendency for exports to reach a new high a few years after a price peak and to remain at or near the new level even when prices declined. Thus a chart of exports (presumably reflecting production) resembles an irregular staircase, with some steps high and narrow, some low and broad, each lagging just behind the peaks of the fiber price cycle. (See figure 1.) During the first half of the nineteenth century the available data are too few to establish this pattern with precision. From 1822 to 1838, with generally high prices, total exports increased fortyfold, a rate of over 25 percent a year. From 1838 to 1847, a time of depressed prices, exports continued to increase, but the rate fell to less than 4V2 percent a year. Then in the boom of 1847-54 the rate rose to 15 percent again. The price peak of 1854 drove exports over 400,000 piculs for the first time in 1858. Exports remained roughly in the same range (368,000-493,000) through the depression of the 1860s, until a new quantum leap (to 625,000 piculs) occurred in 1872, just three years after the price rose above P10 in 1869. A similar connection can be noted between the price peak of 1882-83 and the new export plateau reached in 1887, the prices of 1900 and the exports of 1903, the prices of 1906 and the exports of 1909, the prices of 1918 and the exports of 1923, and the prices of 1925 and the exports of 1929. There are, of course, some variations in this general correlation, and one clear discrepancy: the substantial export increase in 1880-81, when prices were just beginning to recover from the slump of the mid-1870s. The most plausible explanation is that this represents a short-term response to the temporary price rise beginning in late 1879—not new planting, but the hasty exportation of wild abaca, of abaca "butcher harvested" before maturity, and of abaca stored in provincial and Manila warehouses. (At the time of the Philippine Revolution, Cordage Trade Journal noted wryly that abaca "always developed . . . secret sources of supply at just the time that the most astute merchants and manufacturers had prepared everything for a shortage in supply and a rise in price.") The export decline of 1882-83 would, then, represent the exhaustion of these short-term supplies; the "recovery" in 1884-85 would in fact include the first abaca harvested from new fields opened during the 1879-82 boom, which was stimulated by the demand for binder twine. 3 0 30. Norman Goodner Owen, "Kabikolan in the Nineteenth Century," pp. 130-34; Marcos Zubeldia to Ogden Ellery Edwards, 22 Jan. 1882, Tucker Papers; Charles Klinck, 14 Sept. 1882, DUSCM; CT] 14 (1 June 1897): 1 6 9 - 7 0 (quote); cf. Cordage3 (15 June 1897): 259. On the potential of wild abaca, see the testimony of Neil Macleod before the Schurman Commis-

56

Merchant Houses and Manila H e m p

An overview of abaca exports suggests the enormous growth of the world fiber market, which consumed just 2,000 piculs of abaca in 1823 and 3,000,000 in 1923—an average increase of over 71/2 percent a year for a century. Closer examination shows that the annual rate of growth of abaca exports slowed steadily through this period, however, from 18 percent (1822-49) to 5 percent (1849-97) to just 2 percent (1897-1923) or even IV4 percent (1897-1935). A major reason for this decline was the competition of sisal (henequen), which lent itself more readily to mechanized harvesting and other economies of scale and which could be grown in a wider range of environments. Between 1910 and 1935 global production of sisal, including new plantations in Africa and Indonesia, tripled, while abaca, the world's leading hard fiber until 1913, actually declined slightly, after some temporary increases. 31 The same world market system which had made possible the rise of an abaca export industry in the Philippines also accounted for its eventual decline. T h e Merchant Houses of Manila The world market was eventually connected to Kabikolan by way of Manila, but establishing the connection took time—time to tear down old arrangements and build up new ones capable of handling the traffic. In the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries the supply of and demand for export goods in Manila still functioned rather haphazardly. Western vessels visited Manila on speculation, as a way station of "Oriental commerce" not far from regular routes between China and India. "Country traders" from British India had been calling in the Philippines for 150 years to take what advantage they could of the overspill of the galleon trade. With a growing eighteenth-century interest in the China trade the number of ships plying the South China Sea increased. Merchant captains sailed to Manila at their own discretion, sold what they sion; U.S., War D e p a r t m e n t , Division of Insular Affairs, Philippine C o m m i s s i o n , 1 8 9 9 1900, Report of the Philippine Commission

to the President (Washington, 1 9 0 0 - 1 9 0 1 ) , 2 : 4 9 - 5 0

(hereafter cited as S c h u r m a n Report). O n the h a r v e s t i n g of i m m a t u r e abaca, see A b e l a r d o C u e s t a y Cardenal, Memoria sobre el beneficio de abaca a maquina (Manila, 1887), p. 17; F o r e m a n , pp. 3 2 9 - 3 0 ; J . L . Barrett, " H e m p " [1900?], U S N A , RG 350, 8 4 5 - 4 ; [ H . T . E d w a r d s ] , " R e p o r t o n Investigation of the Abaca Industry . . . 1925," U S N A , RG 3 5 0 , 8 4 5 - 8 0 8 A ; Morison, p. 140; J[oseph] E. Spencer, "Abaca and the Philippines," Economic Geography 2 7 (Apr. 1951): 1 0 3 - 5 . 31. Philippines ( C o m m o n w e a l t h ) , D e p a r t m e n t of Agriculture and C o m m e r c e , Fiber Inspection Service, The Philippine Abaca Industry: Its Problems, by M a r i a n o G a r c h i t o r e n a (Manila, 1938), p. 2 2 (hereafter cited as M. Garchitorena); cf. H a r t m a n , pp. 7 6 - 9 2 , 1 9 4 - 9 8 ; [H. V. Klein-Iannace], " T h e World H a r d Fiber E c o n o m y : Problems and Outlook," U . N . , F o o d a n d Agriculture Organization, Monthly Bulletin of Agricultural 1963): 1 - 5 .

Economics and Statistics 12 (May

Merchant Houses and Manila Hemp

57

could of the goods they were carrying, and bought whatever they found there that might be resold advantageously in China or elsewhere: sugar and indigo for the European market, sibucao and other dyewoods, mother-of-pearl, birds' nests, carabao hides, and sea slugs for the ports of Asia. By the late 1820s there were opportunities to turn a quick profit carrying rice to southern China, since a cargo of rice exempted the carrying vessel from certain duties imposed in Canton. 3 2 There were considerable bureaucratic obstacles to this external commerce, which were only gradually dismantled in a long series of "reforms" running from the 1760s to the 1870s. The official opening of the port of Manila to foreign traders in 1834 is usually taken as the most important date in this sequence, though it occurred not only after centuries of illicit or quasi-legal foreign trade in that port, but seventeen years after the first United States consulate was established there. Whatever the specific details of the process, it seems clear that some relaxation of earlier Spanish restrictions on trade was a necessary precondition for the great growth of the Philippine export economy in the nineteenth century. 33 Yet despite the complaints of foreign traders and reform-minded Spaniards, arbitrary rules and regulations were not the only impediment to commerce, and tariff reform was no guarantee of increased exports. It was impossible to establish a regular and expanding trade so long as merchants had no assurance as to the type of produce available in Manila or as to its price if available. The patterns of internal trade in the Philippines were even more irregular than the arrival of foreign merchant ships in Manila. Most Philippine produce arrived in Manila through one of three channels. The best-documented of these was the official or quasi-official shipment by provincial governors of surpluses collected in their jurisdiction. The governors of the Bikol provinces, for example, were re32. Serafín D. Quiason, English "Country Trade" with the Philippines; Bowditch; W. E. Cheong, "The Decline of Manila as the Spanish Entrepot in the Far East, 1785-1826"; William Milburn, Oriental Commerce (London: Block, Parry & Co., 1813); C. Northcote Parkinson, Trade in the Eastern Seas: 1793-1815 (Cambridge: University Press, 1937); Michael Greenberg, British Trade and the Opening of China: 1800-1842 (Cambridge, 1951); James F. Warren, "Trade-Raid-Slave," pp. 36-114; AGI, U, 657 - 6 4 , F, 979; de la Costa, Readings, p. 140. 33. Robert MacMicking, Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines During 1848,1849, and 1850 (Manila, 1967), pp. 10-11; Taviel de Andrade, 2:17-30; Legarda, "Foreign Trade," pp. 22, 3 2 7 - 3 6 ; Gregorio F. Zaide, Philippine Political and Cultural History, 2 : 6 4 - 6 7 . Legarda, "Foreign Trade," p. 103, claims that one of the incidental benefits of the galleon trade was that by limiting the volume of commerce so rigorously as to exclude local produce it helped prevent the rise of an oppressive plantation system like that which plagued Latin America; cf. Fedorjagor, Travels in the Philippines, p. 28.

58

Merchant Houses and Manila Hemp

quired to furnish certain quantities of abaca fiber and cordage at set prices to Cavite Naval Yard. Whatever they collected above this quota they could ship and sell on their own account by paying the indulto de comercio (or indulto para comerciar), literally a "pardon for trading." Such private commerce by colonial officials had originally been forbidden by the Laws of the Indies, but by the eighteenth century it was a common and essentially legal means by which a governor could augment a salary otherwise inadequate to entice him to serve. Had the indulto been strictly implemented, there would have been little objection to it, for it did not grant the governor any right to compel production, sale, delivery, or transportation of the goods in which he trafficked, nor did it allow him to inhibit competition in any way. There was, however, no strong countervailing power within the province, so the indulto often came to be used as a license both to extort goods and labor from the Filipinos and to obstruct other merchants in the province. The volume of such quasi-official commerce was limited because governors, borrow and steal though they might, rarely had the capital to operate more than one or two small sailing vessels, each capable of making at most two or three round-trip voyages a year. The low price governors tended to offer for produce was certainly no incentive to increase production, and the vested interest they had in reducing competition may also have hampered private trade. 34 The other two channels of traditional trade were unofficial and indigenous, and for that reason much less well documented in the available sources. Interisland retail trade was carried out during the century of Chinese restriction (1750-1850) by Spaniards, indios (Filipinos), and Chinese mestizos from Manila and Iloilo. We can only speculate about many of the details of this trade, which apparently followed a common Asian pattern of peddling textiles and other manufactured goods from town to town, accepting local produce in return if it was salable elsewhere. Such interisland trade was limited in the volume of produce it could handle, and it was trammeled by the requirement that merchants and peddlers obtain travel permits from the governors of provinces in which they traded. Finally, there were scattered cases in which residents of the producing provinces—local landlords or even Spanish priests—would build or buy ships to carry their produce directly to Manila for sale on their own account. This traffic was irregular at best and hampered by shortages of 34. Tomás de Comyn, State of the Philippines in 1810, pp. 9 6 - 1 0 0 ; Wise, pp. 109-10; MacMicking, pp. 28 -30; Jagor, Travels, p. 93; Eliodoro G. Robles, The Philippines in the Nineteenth Century (Quezon City, 1969), pp. 1 0 5 - 6 , 1 1 1 - 1 5 . See also documentation on the abolition of the indulto in n. 43 below.

Merchant Houses and Manila Hemp

59

capital, by the need to take time off from other pursuits, and by the necessity to obtain travel permits. 35 Thus in the Manila market of the 1810s and 1820s foreign ships would arrive with no assurance of a supply of—much less a reasonable price for—the goods they sought, while governors, mestizo peddlers, and provincial producers brought in their goods with no assurance of purchasers—much less a reasonable price—for their wares. There were enough merchants in Manila to keep a speculative market of sorts going, but there was no systematic effort either to procure regular supplies of produce or to establish regular relationships with the consuming markets. 36 The limitations of the traditional Manila market became obvious only under the pressure of enormous demand proceeding from consumers outside the usual orbit of the Manila merchants. The Spanish were quite capable of handling the trade of the Philippines with the Iberian Peninsula, including the nineteenth-century tobacco trade. The Chinese continued to carry goods to and from the major markets of eastern Asia; when the Philippines started importing rice from Saigon in the last third of the nineteenth century, it was the Chinese who dominated that trade. But neither China nor Spain had industrialized economies complementary to the tropical economy of the Philippines and capable of absorbing its exports or supplying its growing demand for imports. 37 The expansion of the nineteenth-century commercial economy was primarily due to two exports, sugar and abaca, which traditional Manila merchants were unable to handle in volume, and two imports, textiles and machinery, which they were unable to supply. Export figures from 1792 to 1818 show not only substantial gross fluctuations, but also a considerable year-to-year variation in leading export products. By contrast, in 1837 sugar and abaca together represented over 50 percent of total export value, a level which they maintained, with few exceptions, for nearly a century, occasionally reaching peaks of over 80 percent. (See table 3.) Furthermore, most of these exports went to Great Britain and 35. Comyn, pp. 33,43; Mallat, 2:321-22; de la Costa, Readings, pp. 158-63; E[dgar] Wickberg, "The Chinese Mestizo in Philippine History," JSEAH 5 (Mar. 1964): 62 -100; Wilkes, in Lafond d e Lurcy, p. 31; Jagor, Travels, pp. 63 - 65; PNA, EPA, V, "Camarines. Año d e 1814. Espediente creado a representación del cura de Cagsaua . . ."; Wise, p. 79; cf. Alfred W. McCoy, "Ylo-ilo: Factional Conflict in a Colonial Economy, Iloilo Province, Philippines, 1937-1955" (Ph. D. dissertation, Yale University, 1977), pp. 20-21. O n the persistence of wandering traders in the early twentieth century, see Miller and Storms, pp. 336-38. 36. Bowditch, p p . 4 5 , 6 0 - 6 2 ; de la Costa, Readings,p. 140; MN, MS 1773,D14. 37. Legarda, "Foreign Trade," pp. 180-82; Edgar Wickberg, The Chinese in Philippine Life, pp. 8 4 - 8 8 , 103. Spain could obtain any tropical p r o d u c e it needed from its Caribbean colonies, thousands of miles closer.

CL. o UJ ^«

p

s:m

o o

(0

ra

ra CO

(U NO

Ö

r-¡

Ö

Ö

ra rH O

o

o

r-i

o CO

CN CN CO

ON rH i-I

cn

CO

CO

rH

ON

CO

O

3 T3

o »H PH co *

i—i

NO

CN rH

ra Ö

Xt O CN

io

ON

rH CO

rH

00

CN 00

NO

0) 2

z 2 a)

ai

O rH I-H

co

(N

rO H

XI ro H

LO 00

00 NO (N

(N CN CN

X>

en

LO

CTN

H

o

3

>>

LO

ON

NO

CO lo (N

o

od

00

o\

CO

CN 00

i—i

O o u

ra

Xi ,o

XI r0 H

o U

o U

00 (N

LO oj CN

NO CO

tx 1—i CO

H

a.

on

co CTl 7

m

00

CN CO

a

tO

.2

ON

CN

CTN

rH

CO co ON rH

s

ON

CO ON rH

:

;

.s z

s è Jj

a. o

a;

S

S

3

qj 1 T3 e ». £

ïï

3

a

*

u O fa

O