Introduction

When the Spaniards settled in Manila in the second half of the sixteenth century, the Chinese living there were few. However, the situation quickly changed and, before the end of the century, the Chinese numbered 4,000. By the beginning of the following century, they were over 15,000. The Chinese always outnumbered the Spaniards, even after the massacres that followed the myriad of seventeenth-century Chinese uprisings. They did not just exceed the Spaniards in purely numerical terms. The Chinese in Manila—known as Sangleys—were the backbone of the Philippine economy and Manila depended upon them. They provided almost everything necessary for colonial daily life—both in terms of material goods and in the city's workforce—and for the Manila galleon's trade, which brought into contact with one another two Spanish colonies, Mexico and Manila. The city of Manila also needed the Sangleys for the money they paid in the way of various taxes, such as customs duties imposed on imports, annual establishment licenses, and the tax on Chinese games, a typical pastime of the Chinese people. Even though the Chinese carried economic weight, they had no political power. In Wang Gungwu's words, the Chinese were “merchants without empire,” because their economic activities were not supported or protected by their home government.

From the beginning, the relationship between the Spaniards and the Sangleys was ambiguous and unequal, and the Chinese were always in a vulnerable position when facing the colonial power with which they dealt. Although at first the Chinese lived among the Spaniards and Manila's natives, their economic power and increasing number in the city led the Spaniards to implement certain control mechanisms, such as trying to limit their number to 6,000 or creating a specific place for them outside the city walls called a parian (that is, Manila's Chinese district). In fact, the Chinese represented a new challenge for the Spaniards. As García-Abásolo points out, when the Spaniards tried to classify mentally the Manila population, they considered the Filipinos to be Indians (whether they be Tagalogs, Cebuanos, or whatever else)—as they had done with the native population of America. But the Chinese community did not fit into this classification.