Three centuries of Spanish rule and the making of a Catholic nation
From Legazpi's arrival in 1565, Spain unites most of the islands under a colonial government run largely through Catholic friars, turning the lowland population Catholic and creating the Philippines as a single country.
- State and Society in the Philippines — Patricio N. Abinales and Donna J. Amoroso, Rowman & Littlefield (2017)
- History of the Filipino People — Teodoro A. Agoncillo, Garotech (1990)
- The Philippines: A Past Revisited — Renato Constantino, Tala Publishing (1975)
- Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conversion in Tagalog Society under Early Spanish Rule — Vicente L. Rafael, Cornell University Press (1988)
- Pasyon and Revolution: Popular Movements in the Philippines, 1840–1910 — Reynaldo C. Ileto, Ateneo de Manila University Press (1979)
- The Propaganda Movement, 1880–1895 — John N. Schumacher, Ateneo de Manila University Press (1997)
In 1565 an expedition from Mexico under Miguel López de Legazpi landed in Cebu and began the conquest that Magellan had not. In 1571 Legazpi took the Muslim-ruled port of Manila and made it the capital of the new colony. The islands had already been named Las Islas Filipinas after the future King Philip II of Spain.
- State and Society in the Philippines — Patricio N. Abinales and Donna J. Amoroso, Rowman & Littlefield (2017)
- History of the Filipino People — Teodoro A. Agoncillo, Garotech (1990)
A colony of Mexico and of the Church
For most of its history the Philippines was governed through Mexico City, as part of New Spain. Its economy turned on the Manila galleons, which from 1565 to 1815 carried Chinese silk and porcelain to Acapulco and returned with Mexican silver, one of the first truly global trade routes. Chinese merchants settled in large numbers in Manila; their descendants, including many mixed Chinese-Filipino mestizos, became central to Filipino commerce and later to the nationalist movement.
- State and Society in the Philippines — Patricio N. Abinales and Donna J. Amoroso, Rowman & Littlefield (2017)
- History of the Filipino People — Teodoro A. Agoncillo, Garotech (1990)
Because few Spaniards settled outside Manila, colonial rule in the provinces rested largely on the friars: Augustinians, Franciscans, Dominicans, Jesuits and Recollects. The parish priest was often the only Spaniard in town, and he supervised schools, censuses, taxes and elections. People were gathered from scattered settlements into towns built around a church and plaza (reducción), owed tribute and a set number of days of forced labour (polo), and some were drafted to build the galleons.
- State and Society in the Philippines — Patricio N. Abinales and Donna J. Amoroso, Rowman & Littlefield (2017)
- The Philippines: A Past Revisited — Renato Constantino, Tala Publishing (1975)
A faith made Filipino
Conversion in the lowlands was rapid and deep, but it was not simply imposed. Filipinos translated Catholicism into their own terms: the historian Vicente Rafael has shown how Tagalogs reinterpreted the missionaries’ teachings through their own ideas of debt and reciprocity, and Reynaldo Ileto how the pasyon, the sung story of Christ’s suffering, gave ordinary people a language of hope and revolt.
- Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conversion in Tagalog Society under Early Spanish Rule — Vicente L. Rafael, Cornell University Press (1988)
- Pasyon and Revolution: Popular Movements in the Philippines, 1840–1910 — Reynaldo C. Ileto, Ateneo de Manila University Press (1979)
Resistance
There were many revolts, against tribute, forced labour and the friars, including the long rebellion of Francisco Dagohoy in Bohol (1744–1829) and Diego and Gabriela Silang’s uprising in Ilocos in 1762–63. In the south, Spain fought the sultanates of Sulu and Maguindanao for three centuries in what it called the “Moro wars” without fully subduing them. Highland peoples in the Cordillera also largely stayed outside Spanish control.
- History of the Filipino People — Teodoro A. Agoncillo, Garotech (1990)
- State and Society in the Philippines — Patricio N. Abinales and Donna J. Amoroso, Rowman & Littlefield (2017)
Towards a nation
In the nineteenth century the colony opened to world trade, sugar and tobacco boomed, and a class of educated Filipinos, the ilustrados, emerged. In 1872, after a mutiny at the Cavite arsenal, three Filipino priests who had championed native clergy, Mariano Gómez, José Burgos and Jacinto Zamora, known together as Gomburza, were garroted. Their execution radicalised a generation, including the young José Rizal, who dedicated his second novel to them.
- The Propaganda Movement, 1880–1895 — John N. Schumacher, Ateneo de Manila University Press (1997)
- History of the Filipino People — Teodoro A. Agoncillo, Garotech (1990)
Spain brought Christianity, which Filipinos made deeply their own, along with writing in the Latin alphabet, universities and a shared identity across the islands. The Philippines' Catholic faith is a source of pride, not a colonial imposition.
- Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conversion in Tagalog Society under Early Spanish Rule — Vicente L. Rafael, Cornell University Press (1988)
- History of the Filipino People — Teodoro A. Agoncillo, Garotech (1990)
Spanish rule was exploitation: forced labour, tribute, land grabbed by friar estates and a church that kept Filipinos subordinate. Historians like Renato Constantino argued that Filipinos were converted but never truly consulted, and that resistance was constant.
- The Philippines: A Past Revisited — Renato Constantino, Tala Publishing (1975)
- History of the Filipino People — Teodoro A. Agoncillo, Garotech (1990)
Why it matters today
Spanish rule gave the Philippines its name, its majority faith, its town plazas and fiestas, and thousands of Spanish words in Filipino languages. It also left a resentment of the friars that fired the revolution, and a lasting divide with the Muslim south, which Spain never fully conquered.