Chinese and Chinese Mestizos of Manila: Family, Identity, and Culture, 1860s–1930s (review)

Focusing on the 1860–1930 period, Richard Chu’s book deals with an important aspect of Philippine history that has been relatively neglected in recent years. It contributes to transnational histories by documenting the flexible border-crossing diasporic strategies of a select number of Manila-born “Chinese mestizo” merchants and their families. The illustrative cases include those of Joaquin Barrera Limjap and his son Mariano Limjap, Ignacio Sy Jao Boncan, Ildefonso Tambunting, Cu Unjieng, Carlos Palanca Tan Quien-sien as well as Bonifacio Limtuaco (a mestizo born in China unlike the others and saw himself decidedly as Chinese). Chu argues that these Chinese mestizos deployed identities flexibly and strategically, especially during the late nineteenth century. Excelling in “liminal virtuosity” (300), they retained a Chinese mestizo identity, but concomitantly identified themselves as Chinese (chino or sangley) and were also naturalized Spanish subjects (españoles naturalizados)—a flexibility seen in their diverse and ethnically crisscrossing relationships. Settling on a particular identity as either “Filipino” or “Chinese,” Chu contends, did not occur until the 1920s and the 1930s, when singular identities hardened and were reified due to developments in Chinese and Filipino nationalisms.

These interesting points are pursued by describing in rich detail various familial practices ranging from dual families and residences (usually one in China and another in the Philippines) to the malleability and multiplicity of names, religious practices, adoption of children, inheritance practices, business practices, public presentations of self, linguistic adaptability, and so on. Akin to a subplot, kinship hierarchies oppressive of women and children are also discussed.

Chu emphasizes that, whereas Edgar Wickberg focused on macrohistory, his book’s focus is microhistory. Nonetheless, some assertions in the book are intended to rewrite Wickberg. In particular, the assertion that in the late nineteenth century Chinese mestizos did not necessarily identify with “Filipinos” or indios—or, more accurately, the naturales—is decidedly revisionist.

It should be noted that Wickberg’s broad canvass of history is supported by quantitative data gathered by Daniel Doeppers (listed in the book’s bibliography), which demonstrate a considerable decline in public identification with the mestizo category during the 1880s and 1890s. In Manila Chinese mestizos accounted for 10.6 percent of all announced burials in 1868–1870 and 10.2 percent in 1881–1882; however, by 1892 Chinese mestizos represented 5.2 percent only of the total. The reduction by half is demographically exceptional (unless large numbers emigrated to China or moved en masse to the provinces) and could be explained only by the large-scale shift in social identities during this period. This overall sea-change in identities did not preclude the existence of both the gremio de chinos and gremio de mestizos in Binondo, the existence of which Chu refers to as emblematic of the vibrancy of the mestizo category (252). It is known that the gremios were not formally dissolved despite the abolition of the tribute and the attendant legal categories of indios, mestizos, and chinos in the 1880s.

By 1903 US census data on males of voting age (21 years and above) in the city of Manila showed a substantially diminished group that publicly identified itself as mestizo. Removing Americans, Europeans, and Japanese from the total count, we find that the 802 mestizos represented a mere 1 percent of Manila’s population of “browns” (75 percent), “Chinese” (24 percent), and mestizos. The diminution of the mestizo category signified a shift to either the naturales or the chino labels: more likely the majority identified with the former. By implication, they rejected their Chinese heritage, at least in their public persona. In contrast to this macrohistorical portrait, Chu argues that “from the perspective of micro-history and first-generation Chinese mestizos (even the upper class) like Mariano Limjap, the picture looks different” because these mestizos “were very much in touch with their ‘Chinese-ness,’ even if, as in Mariano’s case, they may publicly or officially identify as ‘Chinese mestizo...