Chapter 34

Filipino Merchants of the Early 1890s

F. Karuth, F. R. G. S., (President of an English corporation interested in Philippine mining) about 1894, wrote:

"Few outside the comparatively narrow circle who are directly interested in the commerce and resources of the Philippine Islands know anything about them. The Philippine merchants are a rather close community which only in the last decade or so has expanded its diameter a little. There are a number of very old established firms amongst them, several of them being British.... Amongst them also are firms--perhaps as far as wealth and local influence go, the most important firms--whose chiefs are partly at least of native blood.

NOTES

[1] New York noon is Manilla 1:04 next morning.--C.

[2] Navarrete, IV, 97 Obs. 2a.

[3] According to Albo's ship journal, he perceived the difference at the Cape de Verde Islands on July 9, 1522; "Y este día fué miercoles, y este día tienen ellos pot jueves." (And this day was Wednesday and this day they had as Thursday.)

[4] In a note on the 18th page of the masterly English (Hakluyt Society) translation of Morga, I find the curious statement that a similar rectification was made at the same time at Macao, where the Portuguese, who reached it on an easterly course, had made the mistake of a day the other way.

[5] Towards the close of the sixteenth century the duty upon the exports to China amounted to $40,000 and their imports to at least $1,330,000. In 1810, after more than two centuries of undisturbed Spanish rule, the latter had sunk to $1,150,000. Since then they have gradually increased; and in 1861 they reached $2,130,000.

[6] The Panama canal prevents this.--C.

[7] Navarrete, IV, 54 Obs. 1a.

[8] According to Gehler's Phys. Lex. VI, 450, the log was first mentioned by Purchas in an account of a voyage to the East Indies in 1608. Pigafetta does not cite it in his treatise on navigation; but in the forty-fifth page of his work it is said: "Secondo la misura che facevamo del viaggio colla cadena a poppa, noi percorrevamo 60 a 70 leghe al giorno." This was as rapid a rate as that of our (1870) fastest steamboats--ten knots an hour.

[9] The European mail reaches Manila through Singapore and Hongkong. Singapore is about equidistant from the other two places. Letters therefore could be received in the Philippines as soon as in China, if they were sent direct from Singapore. In that case, however, a steamer communication with that port must be established, and the traffic is not yet sufficiently developed to bear the double expense. According to the report of the English Consul (May, 1870), there is, besides the Government steamer, a private packet running between Hongkong and Manila. The number of passengers it conveyed to China amounted, in 1868, to 441 Europeans and 3,048 Chinese; total, 3,489. The numbers carried the other way were 330 Europeans and 4,664 Chinese; in all, 4,994. The fare is $80 for Europeans and $20 for Chinamen.

[10] Zuñiga, Mavers, I, 225.

[11] Dr. Pedro Pelaez, in temporary charge of the diocese and dying in the cathedral, was the foremost Filipino victim. Funds raised in Spain for relief never reached the sufferers, but not till the end of Spanish rule was it safe to comment on this in the Philippines.--C.

[12] Zuñiga, XVIII, M. Velarde, p. 139.

[13] Captain Salmon, Goch., S. 33.

[14] The opening of this port proved so advantageous that I intended to have given a few interesting details of its trade in a separate chapter, chiefly gathered from the verbal and written remarks of the English Vice-Consul, the late Mr. N. Loney, and from other consular reports.

[15] In 1868, 112 foreign vessels, to the aggregate of 74,054 tons, and Spanish ships to the aggregate of 26,762 tons, entered the port of Manila. Nearly all the first came in ballast, but left with cargoes. The latter both came and left in freight. (English Consul's Report, 1869.)

[16] In 1868 the total exports amounted to $14,013,108; of this England alone accounted for $4,857,000, and the whole of the rest of Europe for only $102,477. The first amount does not include the tobacco duty paid to Spain by the colony, $3,169,144. (English Consul's Report, 1869.)

[17] La Pérouse said that Manila was perhaps the most fortunately situated city in the world.

[18] Sapan or Sibucao, Caesalpinia Sapan. Pernambuco or Brazil wood, to which the empire of Brazil owes its name, comes from the Caesalpinia echinat and the Caesalpinia Braziliensis. (The oldest maps of America remark of Brazil: "Its only useful product is Brazil (wood).") The sapan of the Philippines is richer in dye stuff than all other eastern asiatic woods, but it ranks below the Brazilian sapan. It has, nowadays, lost its reputation, owing to its being often stupidly cut down too early. It is sent especially to China, where it is used for dyeing or printing in red. The stuff is first macerated with alum, and then for a finish dipped in a weak alcoholic solution of alkali. The reddish brown tint so frequently met with in the clothes of the poorer Chinese is produced from sapan.

[19] Large quantities of small mussel shells (Cypraea moneta) were sent at this period to Siam, where they are still used as money.

[20] Berghaus' Geo. hydrogr. Memoir.

[21] Manila was first founded in 1571, but as early as 1565, Urdaneta, Legaspi's pilot, had found the way back through the Pacific Ocean while he was seeking in the higher northern latitudes for a favorable north-west wind. Strictly speaking, however, Urdaneta was not the first to make use of the return passage, for one of Legaspi's five vessels, under the command of Don Alonso de Arellano, which had on board as pilot Lope Martin, a mulatto, separated itself from the fleet after they had reached the Islands, and returned to New Spain on a northern course, in order to claim the promised reward for the discovery. Don Alonso was disappointed, however, by the speedy return of Urdaneta.

[22] Kottenkamp I., 1594.

[23] At first the maximum value of the imports only was limited, and the Manila merchants were not over scrupulous in making false statements as to their worth; to put an end to these malpractices a limit was placed to the amount of silver exported. According to Mas, however, the silver illegally exported amounted to six or eight times the prescribed limit.

[24] La Pérouse mentions a French firm (Sebis), that, in 1787, had been for many years established in Manila.

[25] R. Cocks to Thomas Wilson (Calendar of State Papers, India, No. 823) .... "The English will obtain a trade in China, so they bring not in any padres (as they term them), which the Chinese cannot abide to hear of, because heretofore they came in such swarms, and are always begging without shame."

[26] As late as 1857 some old decrees, passed against the establishment of foreigners, were renewed. A royal ordinance of 1844 prohibits the admission of strangers into the interior of the colony under any pretext whatsoever.

[27] Vide Pinkerton.

[28] Each packet was 5 × 2 1/2 × 1 1/2 = 18.75 Spanish cubic feet. St. Croix.

[29] Vide Comyn's comercio exterior.

[30] The obras pias were pious legacies which usually stipulated that two-thirds of their value should be advanced at interest for the furtherance of maritime commercial undertakings until the premiums, which for a voyage to Acapulco amounted to 50, to China 25, and to India 35 per cent., had increased the original capital to a certain amount. The interest of the whole was then to be devoted to masses for the founders, or to other pious and benevolent purposes. A third was generally kept as a reserve fund to cover possible losses. The government long since appropriated these reserve funds as compulsory loans, "but they are still considered as existing."

When the trade with Acapulco came to an end, the principals could no longer be laid out according to the intentions of the founders, and they were lent out at interest in other ways. By a royal ordinance of November 3, 1854, a junta was appointed to administer the property of the . The total capital of the five endowments (in reality only four, for one of them no longer possessed anything) amounted to nearly a million of dollars. The profits from the loans were distributed according to the amounts of the original capital, which, however, no longer existed in cash, as the government had disposed of them.

[31] Vide Thevenot.

[32] According to Morga, between the fourteenth and fifteenth.

[33] Vide De Guignes, Pinkerton XI, and Anson X.

[34] Vide Anson.

[35] Randolph's History of California.

[36] In Morga's time, the galleons took seventy days to the Ladrone Islands, from ten to twelve from thence to Cape Espiritu Santo, and eight more to Manila.

[37] A very good description of these voyages may be found in the 10th chapter of Anson's work, which also contains a copy of a sea map, captured in the Cavadonga, displaying the proper track of the galleons to and from Acapulco.

[38] De Guignes.

[39] The officer in command of the expedition, to whom the title of general was given, had always a captain under his orders, and his share in the gain of each trip amounted to $40,000. The pilot was content with $20,000. The first lieutenant (master) was entitled to 9 per cent on the sale of the cargo, and pocketed from this and from the profits of his own private ventures upwards of $350,000. (Vide Arenas.)

[40] The value of the cargoes Anson captured amounted to $1,313,000, besides 35,682 ounces of fine silver and cochineal. While England and Spain were at peace, Drake plundered the latter to the extent of at least one and a half million of dollars. Thomas Candish burnt the rich cargo of the Santa Anna, as he had no room for it on board his own vessel.

[41] For instance, in 1786 the San Andres, which had a cargo on board valued at a couple of millions, found no market for it in Acapulco; the same thing happened in 1787 to the San Jose, and a second time in 1789 to the San Andres.

[42] In 1855 its population consisted of 586 European Spaniards, 1,378 Creoles, 6,323 Malay Filipinos and mestizos, 332 Chinamen, 2 Hamburgers, 1 Portuguese, and 1 Negro.

[43] The earthquake of 1863 destroyed the old bridge. It is intended, however, to restore it; the supporting pillars are ready, and the superincumbent iron structure is shortly expected from Europe (April, 1872).--The central span, damaged in the high water of 1914, was temporarily replaced with a wooden structure and plans have been prepared for a new bridge, permitting ships to pass and to be used also by the railway, nearer the river mouth.--C.

[44] Roescher's Colonies.

[45] A brief description of a nipa house, accompanying an illustration, is here omitted.--C.

[46] The following figures will give an idea of the contents of the newspapers. I do not allude to the Bulletin Official, which is reserved for official announcements, and contains little else of any importance. The number lying before me of the Comercio (Nov. 29, 1858), a paper that appears six times a week, consists of four pages, the printed portion in each of which is 11 inches by 17; the whole, therefore, contains 748 square inches of printed matter. They are distributed as follows:--

Title, 27 1/2 sq. in.; an essay on the population of Spain, taken from a book, 102 1/2 sq. in.; under the heading "News from Europe," an article, quoted from the Annals of La Caridad, upon the increase of charity and Catholic instruction in France, 40 1/2 sq. in.;