Spanish East Indies
The Spanish East Indies was the part of New Spain that included the viceroyalty possessions in the Malay Archipelago and Micronesia . It existed until the German-Spanish Treaty of 1899.
geography
Southeast Asia was divided in the Treaty of Saragossa between the then sea powers Portugal and Spain in 1529 , whereby the sea route from Europe to India and to the Moluccas ("Spice Islands") fell to Portugal.
The trade routes used by sailing ships and thus the necessary bases were dependent on the course of the ocean currents in the Pacific and the typical wind direction.
The Spaniards used the Kuroshio ocean current , which runs between Luzon in the Philippines along the east coast of Taiwan, and then sailed with the support of the North Pacific Current with a stopover in California to the port of Acapulco . On the sea route in the other direction, they used the north equatorial current and made a stop on Guam . The ship journey between Acapulco and the Philippines took an average of 79 days to 123 days. From Acapulco the goods went overland to Veracruz and from there with the treasure fleet to Spain.
history
A governor general with the rank of general captain administered the general captaincy of the Philippines from 1565 to the independence of Mexico on August 24, 1821 as part of the viceroyalty of New Spain. From 1821 to 1899, the Spanish East Indies was a Spanish colony administered by a governor-general .
The highest colonial authority and the highest court was the Consejo de Indias (Council of India). He also presented the king with a list of possible governors. Subordinate to her was the Casa de Contratación , which was founded nine years after the discovery of America in 1503.
In Manila there was a Real Audiencia from 1583, with an interruption between 1589 and 1595, to administer justice .
Due to the Spanish constitution of Cádiz (1812), the colony was temporarily represented in the Cortes in Madrid until this liberal constitution was replaced by the one of 1837 .
General captainate of the Viceroyalty of New Spain
With the search for a sea route from the American ports of New Spain to the islands of Southeast Asia, the Spaniards tried to participate in the successes of Portuguese India in the spice trade. The Portuguese Ferdinand Magellan discovered the Strait of Magellan and so he was the first to sail with a small fleet from the Atlantic to the Pacific and reached the Philippines in 1521, where he died. His fleet continued to sail in the Indian Ocean, then in the Atlantic and on to Europe. The only ship returning from the expedition, the Victoria , brought 26 tons of spices from the island of Tidore in the Moluccas archipelago . The next expedition took place in the years 1542 to 1544 from New Spain under Ruy López de Villalobos , where Palau was discovered. In 1565, Miguel López de Legazpi founded the first successful settlement of San Miguel (today Cebu City ) in the Philippines. In 1570, Maynilad, inhabited by Muslims and led by Rajah Sulayman , was conquered and renamed Manila . Cebu became the capital in 1571, followed by Manila in 1595. Brunei was conquered in 1578, but it could not be held.
The Eighty Years War (1568–1648), in which the Netherlands gained independence from the Spanish king, also had consequences in Southeast Asia. Sun, founded in 1602 took over Dutch East India Company by the Portuguese spice trade and established the Dutch East Indies and the islands of Indonesia as an essential component. The British East India Company , founded around 1600, took over trade with India from the Portuguese, although Portuguese India with Goa as its center continued into the 20th century. This gave Spain competitors, which hindered further expansion.
In the era of the Nanban trade between 1600 and 1623 there was a trade route from Manila to Japan, which a Spanish ship sailed about annually. In addition, the Japanese themselves operated long-distance trade with the so-called red seal ships . In the period from 1604 to 1624, 50 red seal ships sailed to Manila and there was even a Japanese trading post with 300 to 400 people in 1593 in Dilao , near Manila. After the beginning of the persecution of Christians in Japan, up to 3000 people fled to Dilao (see also: Christianity in Japan ). There were also journeys by Japanese ambassadors, so from 1582 to 1590 Ito Mancio was among others in Europe with Philip II and from 1613 to 1620 Hasekura Tsunenaga was in New Spain and Europe, among other things with Philip III. to agree on a trade agreement, which he refused. The ambassador undertook the sea voyage to New Spain on the Japanese-built sailing ship San Juan Bautista .
On the coast in northwestern Taiwan , Fort San Salvador near Keelung existed from 1626 to 1642 and Fort Santo Domingo near Danshui from 1629 to 1641. However, the Spaniards could not prevail against the Dutch who had already settled on the island since 1624.
The archipelago of the Mariana Islands was formally occupied by Spain in 1667, with Guam being particularly important as a stopover on the trade route from Acapulco to Manila.
In the 16th and 17th centuries there were repeatedly Spanish forts on the Moluccas islands of Ternate and Tidore , but they only existed for a short time. The opponents were local Muslims, Portuguese and later Dutch.
Under direct Spanish rule
The direct Spanish rule of Spanish East India lasted from 1821 to 1898. Territorial expansion only succeeded when the island areas of the Caroline Islands , the Mariana Islands and Palau were formally taken over by Spain. Initially, the Spanish claim was contradicted by the German Empire in the so-called Caroline question , but Pope Leo XIII. decided in favor of Spain in 1885.
The Spanish-American War from April 25, 1898 to August 12, 1898 was an interplay between the insurgents of the Philippine Katipunan and the US Asian Squadron under Commander George Dewey . In this case, the Spanish squadron under was Montojo in the Bay of Manila defeated (under observation of German squadron). The war ended with the Spaniards surrendering to the Americans. Spain then sold its Philippine property to the United States in return for a payment of $ 20 million. On June 12, 1898, the rebellious Philippines declared themselves independent, but that only led to the Philippine-American War from 1899 to 1902. On June 21, 1898, US troops captured the southern Mariana Islands (Guam). On February 12, 1899, with the German-Spanish Treaty, the Caroline Islands, the northern Marianas and Palau were sold to the German Empire for 17 million marks.
population
Before the arrival of the Spaniards, the islands of the Mariana Islands were already inhabited by the Chamorro people. Especially on Guam, the largest island in the archipelago, efforts were made to establish a colony. Between 1668 and 1695 there was fierce fighting between the colonists and the natives, the trigger being the Christianization of the Chamorro. In addition, a census in 1710 revealed that the population had fallen to just ten percent of its former value. It is believed that this was caused by introduced diseases, whereas other scientists rate this collapse of the population due to the long war of conquest as genocide .
The Spaniards also Christianized the native population on the Philippine archipelagos of Luzón and Visayas . On the southern island group of Mindanao , the sultanates there, such as the Sultanate of Sulu , the Sultanate of Maguindanao and the Sultanate of Buayan , could not be defeated for a long time and so the population was not fully Christianized. The conflict between part of the Muslim Moroz and the government in Manila continues to this day.
economy
In 1593, Philip II determined that trade between China and New Spain (Acapulco) was only allowed to take place via the port of Manila. The rule was valid until 1813. With the help of a system of trade licenses, the import and export of goods was controlled by the Spanish Casa de Contratación organized. The trade looked like that silver was brought from New Spain (from Zacatecas and Potosí ) to Manila and there foreign traders could exchange their goods for silver. These goods then went to Acapulco with their own ships, the Manila galleons , and from there to Spain.
The Real Compañía de Filipinas existed from 1785 to 1834. The company was on the instructions of Charles III. for direct trade (and thus in competition with America) between the Spanish East Indies and Spain. The aim was to promote trade between the Spanish East Indies and the motherland and to organize the export of agricultural goods from the Philippines. Direct trade with India and China was also allowed. The most important agricultural exports were: tobacco, sugar and abacá .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Henry Diaz and Susan Bacon: Manila Galleon Voyages
- ↑ Antonio Ponce Aguilar: El Galeón de Manila ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 609 kB)
- ↑ ebiografias.com: Biography of Andrés García Camba
- ↑ Patrick McSherry: The Capture of Guam
- ^ Francis X. Hezel: From Conversion to Conquest: The Early Spanish Mission in the Marianas
- ^ Gerd Hardach : King Kopra: The Marianas under German rule 1899-1914 . Steiner , Stuttgart 1990, ISBN 978-3-515-05762-2 , pp. 19-26 .
- ↑ Howard Shakespeare: The Spanish Royal Trading Companies ( Memento of the original of September 24, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
