The Chinese in Philippine Life, 1850-1898

The development of overseas Chinese communities, economically powerful, socially and culturally resistant to assimilation, and tied in many ways to China, has been a significant phenomenon in the modern history of Asia. During the half century from 1850 to 1898, the Chinese population in the Philippines increased drastically from 5000 to perhaps 100,000, and penetrated every part of the archipelago. Liberalized Spanish immigration laws and their own superior business methods enabled the Chinese to profit from the development of an export crop economy, which involved the exchange of Philippine raw products for foreign manufactured goods, and caused a shift in the emphasis of Chinese enterprise - from small-scale retailing to a virtual monopoly of raw material collection and import distribution. Their increased economic power gave impetus to an anti-Chinese campaign in the latter years of the century, and the Philippine Chinese, for the first time, developed community institutions to resist assimilation and turned to China for aid. The purpose of this study is to describe the position of the Chinese in the Philippines as of 1850 and to determine how it was affected by the ensuing economic and social changes of the next four decades.