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C H A P T E R 1 A World Apart? S panish conquest and colonization of the Philippines brought fundamental changes to the political, economic, social, and cultural life of the islands. Scholarly studies of the early colonial period, such as those by John Phelan, Nicholas Cushner, and Martin Noone have focused on the initial conquest of the islands and Spanish attempts to set up an effective administration,1 while others, such as Horacio de la Costa, Pablo Fernández, and Vicente Rafael, have examined the role of the missionary orders and the process of Christian conversion.2 While these dimensions are critical to understanding the history of the early Spanish Philippines , the demographic decline that accompanied Spanish conquest and early colonial rule has not received such focused attention. This is partly because it is generally assumed that the Filipino population did not suffer a demographic collapse on the same scale as the native population of the Americas, where within the first 150 years of European contact it may have declined by as much as 90 percent, from about 50 to 60 million to only 6.5 million.3 Comparing the colonial experiences of Mexico and the Philippines, John Phelan concluded that “conquest did not unleash a sharp decline of the Filipino population.”4 Inasmuch as attention has been paid to demographic decline in the early colonial Philippines, it has been attributed to the impact of the Hispano-Dutch War between 1609 and 1648, which generated extraordinary demands for labor and supplies.5 Meanwhile the initial impact of conquest itself has often been overlooked. While recognizing the demographic impact of the Hispano-Dutch War, this study aims to fill this gap in the literature and will argue that the Filipino population suffered a greater decline in the early Spanish period than has previously been thought and that the prolonged decline brought significant changes to Filipino society even in regions that were distant from Manila. Even though demographic trends in the Spanish Philippines were similar to those in other parts of the Southeast Asian archipelago, this study will argue that the factors underpinning them were different. Disease or Conquest? In attempting to explain why demographic decline in the Philippines was not as great as in the Americas, two explanations have commonly been suggested: first, that the Filipino population possessed immunity to the Old World diseases that 3 4 Part I Introduction devastated American populations, and second, that conquest in the Philippines was more benign. Before exploring these propositions in more detail, it is necessary to note that any analysis of demographic trends is dependent on an accurate assessment of the size of the initial population. One reason why scholars may believe that population decline in the Philippines was limited in the early Spanish period is because the size of the pre-Spanish population has been underestimated. Current estimates for the population in 1565 range from 1 to 1.25 million.6 These figures generally exclude Mindanao, as will this study, because most of the island did not come under effective Spanish administration in the early colonial period. These proposed estimates are not derived from a detailed analysis of documentary evidence, but are best guesses based on a limited range of sources. The extent of any decline during the colonial period has not been investigated for the Philippines as a whole, though a few in-depth studies exist for some islands, such as Cebu and Negros.7 This study will undertake a detailed analysis of the population in each island and region in 1565 and will suggest that the pre-Spanish population probably exceeded 1.5 million. Despite the higher estimate, it will show that like other islands in the Southeast Asian archipelago,8 population densities were low. Differences in the scale of depopulation in the Philippines and the Americas in the early colonial period are usually explained by differences in the level of immunity that native peoples had acquired to Old World diseases in pre-Spanish times. In the Americas, the lack of immunity meant that in the early colonial period it was common for a single epidemic of smallpox, measles, plague, typhus, or influenza to result in the death of one-quarter, one-third, or even one-half of the population of a region.9 Filipinos on the other hand are thought to have acquired some immunity to Old World diseases in pre-Spanish times as a result of frequent contacts with regions in Asia where they had become...

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