Ambition and Identity: Chinese Merchant Elites in Colonial Manila, 1880–1916

3. China and the Philippines,1571–1889

3 China and the Philippines, 1571–1889 90 The southern Chinese have lived and traded in the Philippine Islands for more than a thousand years. Consequently, the Philippines and the Manila Chinese have periodically played a central role in Chinese history. During the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), that role arose predominantly from the material consequences of Sino-Philippine trade. Mexican silver, New World crops, and the opening of markets for Chinese commodities and manufactures radically altered mainland China’s economy and society. New crops changed China’s demographic history, while export markets and imported silver commercialized and monetized the Chinese economy on an unprecedented scale, linking late imperial China into the global economy. Yet for all of their importance to the Chinese economy (and their proximity to China), the Philippines and the Chinese merchants residing there remained peripheral to China’s official consciousness. Before the late nineteenth century, only sporadic mention of the Philippines is found in the official records of the Ming and Qing dynasties. Yet these dynasties were a period of significant economic intercourse between China and the Philippines. Owing to the absence of a Spanish trading base on the Chinese coast or on Taiwan as the Portuguese had at Macao or the Dutch at Zeelandia, Manila was the major entrepôt for Sino-Spanish trade for the two centuries after its founding in 1571. Of all the Chinese products brought to Manila, silks and porcelains were the most sought after . To pay for Chinese manufactures, the Spanish exported huge amounts of silver from their Mexican and Peruvian mines. In 1597, for example, it was estimated that 345,000 kilograms of silver entered China and the Philippines 91 China via Manila. This exceeded the total amount of silver produced by China’s domestic mines in the preceding fifty years.1 Even in the twentieth century, the Mexican silver dollar was still the dominant, albeit unofficial, means of exchange on the Chinese coast. For China the material consequences of the Manila trade were spectacular. The discovery and exploitation of overseas markets for Chinese products catalyzed commercial expansion along the southeast coast. Demand created a boom in the trade networks of coastal China as suppliers scrambled to provide Fujianese and Cantonese merchants with exports. Demand raised prices and created fortunes for the ambitious, talented, and lucky, leading to a significant change in Chinese culture and society in the late Ming era. The great prosperity traveled through China’s river systems and marketing networks , resulting in a general increase in wealth. The importance of household putting-out industries, especially in tea harvesting and sericulture , commercialized the rural economy and raised the value of domestic labor, particularly the value of female labor. These developments had wide-ranging consequences for Chinese society and the economy. The key ingredient for this boom was foreign silver. Beginning in the sixteenth century and lasting until the 1820s, China was the largest and most aggressive silver consumer in the world.2 The massive importation of silver, however, created new problems, among them inflation, growing income disparities, and official corruption. Moreover, a drop in the silver supply was a triple threat: it depressed the economy; caused economic hardship, unemployment, and popular unrest; and, at the same time, decreased the state’s revenue and hindered its ability to respond to crises.3 In addition to vast quantities of silver, the Manila trade also introduced New World crops to China, including sweet potatoes, peanuts, corn, and tobacco; these had an enormous impact on Chinese agriculture and demographic development not the least of which was fueling the dramatic spike in Chinese population that began in the seventeenth century. From this brief overview, the centrality of Sino-Spanish trade to the economic and social history of late imperial China should be apparent, but the question remains as to why this critical trade relationship was not re- flected in a more substantive state-to-state relationship. Moreover, given that the Chinese merchants who traveled back and forth to Manila were such critical intermediaries in this trade, it might seem surprising that they are also largely absent from the historical record. 92 Chapter 3 The reason for these lacunae becomes clear when one understands the dynamics of China’s foreign relations in the late imperial period. Patterns of Foreign Interaction in Late Imperial China Throughout the late imperial period, the Chinese and their rulers interacted...