Manila, 1645

Pedro Luengo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000197587
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Asian History
• Index: History

Manila, 1645 reconstructs what the city of Manila was like before the earthquakes of the mid-seventeenth century.

The book demonstrates the importance of addressing the history of Southeast Asia as a multi-layered framework, rather than a series of entangled histories. In doing so, Manila is contextualized not merely as a Spanish settlement connected to New Spain via America, but instead within Southeast Asia, situated between the Chinese and the Sulú Seas, and located in the centre of commercial routes used by Armenian, Dutch, and Portuguese traders. This historical and geographical context is crucial to understanding later cultural dialogues. Urban planning, housing and architecture, and social networks in the city are also examined.

The book will appeal to students and scholars interested in early modern history, global history and architectural history.

1 Manila-Macao

The Final Jewel in the Iberian Global Crown

Recent approaches to Early Modern global history have highlighted the importance of the Asian field of study, especially in China.¹ In contrast to the European successes in the Americas, the Western powers were stopped on the Asian coasts, creating a boundary between worlds.² This affected not only the confrontation of East and West, namely, the Portuguese and Spanish Indies, but, as has been usually portrayed, also the many layers often marginalized by this dualistic view. Indeed, this context cannot be understood without considering the opposition of Catholics and Protestants, Christians and Muslims, metropoles and provinces, empires or pirates and companies, missionaries and diocesan priests, empires and localities, or periphery and centre, just to cite a few dichotomies. Although these studies have attempted to demonstrate the complexity of the relationships between the powers in this area, none of them has achieved a method of somehow measuring the complexity of the relationships between territories of this region affected by cultural dialogue.³ From this point of view, the singular cases of both people and processes are less important than a general quantification of cultural dialogues.⁴

1 Serge Gruzinski, The Eagle and the Dragon: Globalization and European Dreams of Conquest in China and America in the Sixteenth Century. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014, pp. 241–244.

2 Ibid., p. 244.

3 François Gipouloux, La Méditerranée asiatique: Villes portuaires et réseaux marchands en Chine, au Japon et en Asie du Sud-Est, XVIe–XXIe siècle. Paris: CNRS Editions, 2009.

4 In recent years, several attempts at writing a transnational history of South or Southeast Asia have been made. Some of the most successful have been those focusing on cross-cultural brokers. But in these examples, it is difficult to determine if a true cultural hybridization was taking place. See Kenneth McPerhson and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (eds.), From Biography to History: Essays in the History of Portuguese Asia (1500–1800). New Delhi: CHAM-Transbooks, 2005.

Obviously, this context cannot be analysed from a linear perspective, which attempts to identify the (dis)connections of two points. Moreover, it is not a problem of networks, reconstructing the linkages of a complex structure. Surely, it is not a bi-dimensional problem, but rather a tri-dimensional one. As Kapil Raj has recently pointed out, the study of Asia requires a complex multilayered approach.⁵ Every layer will attempt to show how cultural dialogue functions in every field, based on a general map. For example, the level of cosmopolitism in Manila’s architecture does not have to be the same as that of commerce or piety. One of the biggest problems of this approach is that “cosmopolitan level” cannot be measured quantitatively, so the comparison is always approximate and all too often subjective. Another difficulty is recognizing the simple coexistence of different traditions when they are combined. A good example is population: the high diversity of ethnic groups does not imply linkages between them. Finally, this aim can extend any research ad infinitum, but only from this perspective would it be possible to solve some of the uncertainties of the Asian tradition.

5 Kapil Raj, Relocating Modern Science: Circulation and the Construction of Knowledge in South Asia and Europe, 1650–1900. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

To frame this broad foundation, only those layers related to housing will be considered in this work. Furthermore, this merely attempts to scratch the surface, offering an initial glimpse of this approach while offering a new perspective on the historical context of Iberian Manila.⁶ Afterwards, the movement of people within these spaces of dialogue, who can be considered as intermediaries, will be taken into account. Finally, after the contributions of these cultural brokers, it has to be analysed how Manila’s society adopted a new way of behaving, considering it as a feature of self-awareness, and not just as a singular case of hybridism.

6 Frank Broeze (editor in chief), Brides of the Sea: Port Cities of Asia from the 16th–20th Century. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989. See also Gateways of Asia: port cities of Asia in the 13th–20th centuries. London-New York: Kegan Paul International, 1997.

This multilayered context had a direct impact on the development of all types of architecture in Manila, but especially on houses.⁷ First, the diversity of owners could affect the final aspect of the building. So, the innovations developed in India or America would be included by intermediaries and then adopted by local societies. Second, the development of self-awareness in the political sphere would be translated into the façades and internal organization of houses. The rising sentiment of creole identity, along with local features and imperial forms emphasizing universality, shaped the city, and, with it, its houses.

7 Alain Musset, “De Séville à Lima: villes identiques ou villes en quête d’identité?”. Villes en parallèle, no. 25, 1997, pp. 11–30.

A Multilayered Context

Imperial Universalism and Local Self-Awareness

According to Ramón María Serrera, the seventeenth century was a time of consolidation of American self-awareness.⁸ As he also underlines, European expansion therefore has to be explained from Western, local, and foreign rationales. Although this approach has been broached with regard to Spanish America, it can also be used for the early stages of Western presence in the Philippines, and particularly in Manila. The formation of an identity could be linked to the metropolis, to the vice-regnal capital, to the local, or to other, religious, terms. Apart from these cases, during the initial decades of the seventeenth century, the Iberian Union likewise has to be considered as a more complex situation.⁹ Many scholars have emphasized that the union between the two empires was never truly achieved. But, at the same time, it is clear that the unfinished union was well accepted in Southeast Asia as a minor problem in the face of the local threat of Dutch expansion, Chinese piracy, and Muslim sultanates. Manila was interested in stressing the sovereignty of the Spanish king over the Portuguese settlement of Macao.¹⁰ Indeed, the Philippine governor Gonzalo Ronquillo de Peñalosa sent a diplomatic mission to Macao in 1582.¹¹ Yet, as is made clear in numerous sources, both Portuguese and Spanish societies preferred to maintain their prior independence. Cooperation is perhaps more easily found in more general projects against the Dutch threats.¹²

8 Ramón María Serrera, La América de los Habsburgo (1517–1700). Seville: Universidad de Sevilla, 2011, pp. 221–236 and 281–292.

9 Kevin Joseph Sheehan, Iberian Asia: The Strategies of Spanish and Portuguese Empire Building, 1540–1700. PhD Dissertation. University of California, 2008.

10 Rafael Valladares, Castilla y Portugal en Asia. 1580–1680: declive imperial y adaptación. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2001.

11 Manel Ollé, La empresa de China. De la Armada Invencible al Galeón de Manila. Barcelona: El Acantilado, 2002, pp. 95–97.

12 Peter Borschberg, “Ethnicity, Language and Culture in Melaka after the transition from Portuguese to Dutch Rule (seventeenth century)”. Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 83/2, 2010, pp. 93–117.

With regard to the Dutch, the Spanish sources are clear. While the Portuguese are considered as foreigners in some sources, the Dutch are labelled as enemies. In fact, Dutch independence from Spain was not recognized until 1648.¹³ As a result, the Dutch attacked Manila in 1617, Goa in the 1620s and 1630s, Macao in 1622, and Malacca in 1644.¹⁴ In spite of these threats and the decreasing importance of Iberian commerce in the region, the cooperation between Goa and Manila was always difficult politically. Some of the clearest instances of cooperation between Portugal and Spain during this period were in response to Dutch attacks. Andrés Hurtado de Mendoza, who improved the Portuguese fortifications in the Indian Ocean, provides a good example.¹⁵ After leaving Goa in 1602, he decided to build a fort in Dachem and another in Sunda. He also visited some of those responsible for other fortifications, such as Esteban Teixeira de Macedo in Amboyne and Francisco da Silva de Menezes in Malacca.

13 Peter Borschberg (ed.), Journal, Memorials and Letters of Cornelis Matelieff de Jonge: Security, Diplomacy and Commerce in 17th-century Southeast Asia. Singapore: NUS Press, 2015, pp. 20–23.

14 Kevin Joseph Sheehan, op. cit., p. 440.

15 Archivo General de Indias (AGI), Filipinas, 35, n. 49, ff. 840r–844r.

This dual perspective on Iberian identity in the region, between cooperation and mistrust, even in the face of Asian or Protestant attacks, made a common self-awareness impossible. Any consideration with regard to Philippine self-awareness during the Iberian Union has to be carried out from the knowledge of the universal aspiration of the Spanish empire.¹⁶ While the king was insisting on the image of a global empire, the American and Southeast Asian regions were developing their own distinct features. While America was attempting to demonstrate its role in the empire’s universal image, Manila made very little effort in this sense. It is likely that the continuous renewal of the (New) Spanish population in the city, lacking as it did a permanent local oligarchy, made this even more difficult. On the contrary, the small number of creoles and the local population placed their faith in a hybrid culture, nurtured both from Iberian traditions and from other Asian and American features, from the very start.

16 José Javier Ruiz Ibáñez, “Las percepciones de la monarquía hispánica como un proyecto universal”. Pedro Cardim and Gaetano Sabatini (coord.), António Vieira, Roma e o universalismo das monarquías portuguesa e española. Lisbon: Red Columnaria, 2011, pp. 29–51.

Commerce

The Galleon is usually considered as the key Philippine commercial link with the rest of the world.¹⁷ During some centuries, the connection between Acapulco and Manila allowed for a route for American silver to reach the Chine...